With the Old Breed by E. B. Sledge

Of all the wars books that I have read, this is the most poignant and haunting in it's simplicity and recounting of the horrors of war. Sledge joined the US Marines in 1942 and fought at Peleliu and Okinawa. He was a mortar man, part of a 60 mm mortar team that provided support fire to the Marines. The book was the result of the notes he wrote and kept tucked away in his Bible.

They were not about the battles and campaigns that 1st Marine Division fought in the South Pacific but his experience, observations and feelings as an enlisted man on the ground, under constant enemy fire and watching friends and foes die. Although I know how it felt to be eating compo rations out of my mess tin under pouring rain in a crumbling fox hole on top of Marsiling 265 or watching 81 & 120 rounds pound the hills of Bajau and Snake ridge (yeah, I was in combat infantry a long time ago), there are no unburied rotting corpses, maggots or the smell of decaying bodies to remind me of the stark realities of war at Okinawa. Sledge lived through that and more, retaining his sanity amidst the madness of man's inhumanity to man.

To Sledge, "war is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste. But it will be necessary to accept one's responsibilities and to be willing to make sacrifices for one's country. If the country is good enough to live in, it's good enough to fight for."

A thought to ponder as Singapore celebrates its 43rd birthday.