This is a weird book. I have read many books by Manchester. Histories where he is master of the composed sentence, paragraph and chapter. In all the other books I read of his he has been able to write from the god's eye view of History. This is more mental breakdown than full footnoted history. This has the stuttering prose of a mental patient who hopes by telling the memory can be lost.
The book composed of three intermingled parts. It is a general history of the Pacific war. It is a travelogue of a middle aged veteran touring the battlefields, the ones he fought on and the rest of the allied battlefields of WWII in the pacific theater. And a harrowing account of a young man's killing time. The problem is a whole it doesn't quite work.
The general history covers much of the same ground that other works including ones by the author have done better. The emphasis is on a general overview only. The travelogue by middle aged author is a morose and sad remarching through the battlefields he never saw and the ones where he never saw much of, except the man in front of him, the ground, the slit trench, some trees. It is the last part of the memoir is a memoir. It sketches a story of the author up until he joins the US marines from the narrative gets more muddled, scary, and angry. There is a lot of anger. The anger of the young is why can't things be better, the sadness of the old is the realization that things can't be.
The memoir of the young marine written by the middle aged man hits many of the points with the same we have seen in other works of history, memoir and fiction. Manchester is sent to Parris Island and is exposed, along with his fellow ivy leaguers, to the ignorance and violence of the traditional south. He is sent to OCS and flunks out. He trains with his intelligence squad. He has some experiences in California before shipping out and killing. Then the long slog as one by one his squad is killed. He gets a million dollar wound, not disabling but enough for a ticket home. He escape hospital and flees into combat for a worse wound. If Operation Downfall had occured he would out of hospital in time to die in Japan.
The violent language of the young marine is in sharp contrast to the Olympian view point of the historian or morose musing of the middle aged veteran. The language comes alive with descriptive terms both appropriate and filthy. REMF, rear enclelon mother fuckers. Fuck your Buddy, the self rating system of officer candidates. One of his squad, the Ragged Ass Marines, is turned away from a new cemetery because of a lack fresh clean clothes. The pointless death of a souvenir hunter. The necessary death of an incompetent officer.
All in all a good read filled with anger.
Here are two obituaries of William Manchester by a military site, and by his college where he taught, that reflects on some of the horror of memory.
The book composed of three intermingled parts. It is a general history of the Pacific war. It is a travelogue of a middle aged veteran touring the battlefields, the ones he fought on and the rest of the allied battlefields of WWII in the pacific theater. And a harrowing account of a young man's killing time. The problem is a whole it doesn't quite work.
The general history covers much of the same ground that other works including ones by the author have done better. The emphasis is on a general overview only. The travelogue by middle aged author is a morose and sad remarching through the battlefields he never saw and the ones where he never saw much of, except the man in front of him, the ground, the slit trench, some trees. It is the last part of the memoir is a memoir. It sketches a story of the author up until he joins the US marines from the narrative gets more muddled, scary, and angry. There is a lot of anger. The anger of the young is why can't things be better, the sadness of the old is the realization that things can't be.
The memoir of the young marine written by the middle aged man hits many of the points with the same we have seen in other works of history, memoir and fiction. Manchester is sent to Parris Island and is exposed, along with his fellow ivy leaguers, to the ignorance and violence of the traditional south. He is sent to OCS and flunks out. He trains with his intelligence squad. He has some experiences in California before shipping out and killing. Then the long slog as one by one his squad is killed. He gets a million dollar wound, not disabling but enough for a ticket home. He escape hospital and flees into combat for a worse wound. If Operation Downfall had occured he would out of hospital in time to die in Japan.
The violent language of the young marine is in sharp contrast to the Olympian view point of the historian or morose musing of the middle aged veteran. The language comes alive with descriptive terms both appropriate and filthy. REMF, rear enclelon mother fuckers. Fuck your Buddy, the self rating system of officer candidates. One of his squad, the Ragged Ass Marines, is turned away from a new cemetery because of a lack fresh clean clothes. The pointless death of a souvenir hunter. The necessary death of an incompetent officer.
All in all a good read filled with anger.
Here are two obituaries of William Manchester by a military site, and by his college where he taught, that reflects on some of the horror of memory.
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