Audiobook5 hours
China Marine: An Infantryman's Life After World War II
Written by E.B. Sledge and Stephen E. Ambrose
Narrated by Dan John Miller
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
China Marine is the sequel to E. B. Sledge's critically acclaimed memoir, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa.
Picking up where his previous memoir leaves off, Sledge, a young marine in the First Division, traces his company's movements and charts his own difficult passage to peace following his horrific experiences in the Pacific. He reflects on his duty in the ancient city of Peiping (now Beijing) and recounts the difficulty of returning to his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, and resuming civilian life haunted by the shadows of close combat.
Distinguished historians have praised Sledge's first book as the definitive rifleman's account of World War II, ranking it with the Civil War's Red Badge of Courage and World War I's All Quiet on the Western Front. Although With the Old Breed ends with the surrender of Japan, marines in the Pacific were still faced with the mission of disarming the immense Japanese forces on the Asian mainland and reestablishing order. For infantrymen so long engaged in the savage and surreal world of close combat, there remained the personal tasks of regaining normalcy and dealing with suppressed memories, fears, and guilt.
Picking up where his previous memoir leaves off, Sledge, a young marine in the First Division, traces his company's movements and charts his own difficult passage to peace following his horrific experiences in the Pacific. He reflects on his duty in the ancient city of Peiping (now Beijing) and recounts the difficulty of returning to his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, and resuming civilian life haunted by the shadows of close combat.
Distinguished historians have praised Sledge's first book as the definitive rifleman's account of World War II, ranking it with the Civil War's Red Badge of Courage and World War I's All Quiet on the Western Front. Although With the Old Breed ends with the surrender of Japan, marines in the Pacific were still faced with the mission of disarming the immense Japanese forces on the Asian mainland and reestablishing order. For infantrymen so long engaged in the savage and surreal world of close combat, there remained the personal tasks of regaining normalcy and dealing with suppressed memories, fears, and guilt.
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Reviews for China Marine
Rating: 4.4215686176470586 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
51 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A dénouement for Sledge's outstanding World War II combat memoir, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. China Marine should be not be read separately, but only as the second part of With the Old Breed.Sledge relates his deployment to Beijing from October 1945 to February 1946. Though somewhat dismayed that combat troops like himself were not being sent home immediately after the war, Sledge wisely used the time to decompress. He also tells of his return home to Mobile, Alabama and how he re-adapted to civilian life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It is really the closing chapters to "With the Old Breed". Covering Sledge's time immediately after the war ended in Okinawa, then as part of the Marine's occupation force in China - which for me make an interesting counter point to the experiences of Joseph Needham in China during WW2. THe book is once again written from a very personal view point and does not try to cover the bigger picture. THe final part of the book recounts briefly his return home and settling back into civilian life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very short postscript to Sledge's account of the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa, it deals with his deployment to Beijing as part of the US effort to both disarm and disband the Japanese forces still in China and to install Chiang Kai-shek's weak national army in Northern China. The first task was surprisingly easy, giving Sledge lots of free time to explore the marvels of China. The second task less so. The Americans even used the hated Japanese troops to fight against the Communists, which should have given them a hint that they were betting on the losing team. Sledge, however, remained mostly uninterested in the big picture; his observations concern the people around him and the people he meets. This is both a strength and a weakness of the book. As good as he is on the small scale, his stoic acceptance of the status quo makes this a strange book, a look back in time, without reflecting on the profound changes that happened since.