[raketenjagdpanzer]

By Sledge and Lecke, respectively.

Sledge's book is by far a better, IMO, view of the Marines in the pacific from a grunt's eye view. The book is a horror story; although Sledge sees active duty late in the war (the full title of his book is In With The Old Breed at Pelileu and Okinawa) the late-war almost calm that seems to permeate books about the Western European theater (Citizen Soldier, Band of Brothers, Beyond Band of Brothers, Biggest Brother, etc.) the fighting in the Pacific reached a fevered pitch up to the surrender in August of 1945 - and Sledge was in the thick of it.

It's fascinating to read about Sledge's combat experience on Pelileu, and his talk of the airfield - then to read Leckie's treatment of that same battle (Leckie's last; a Japanese field gun chased him down with shell fire until an errant round hit an ammo dump near him and the concussion left him temporarily deaf and suffering aphasia and he did not recover in time to be returned to the line).

Leckie's book is almost poetic in its description of everything, including the horrors of combat. Where Sledge focused on how war ground him down (he almost succumbed to the temptation to take gold teeth from the mouth of a dead Japanese soldier until a field medic cautioned him about "germs", although he relates that the medic was likely more concerned for the health of Sledge's soul rather than his physical well-being), and about the utterly dehumanizing conditions that his unit lived and fought in, Leickie frames the experience in terms of a grand adventure, a boys' own, even his own removal to a rear-area mental hospital for bedwetting which included threatening an orderly (albeit half-jokingly) with a captured Japanese pistol.

They're both great works, of the two, though, again, I prefer Sledge's story the most.

It was interesting (and a bit disappointing) to read them after having seen The Pacific on HBO: while Sledge's memoir was kept "essentially" the same, Leckie's book seemed to have been mined for its skeleton, but surface details wholly erased or recreated to fit a different story. For example, in the book, Leckie talks about stealing supplies from Army depots including canned peaches and apricots which he describes as being so good that he ate until he felt sick: in the miniseries, we're treated to James Badge vomiting profusely after eating part of a can. Likewise, a French expatriot who'd joined the 1st Marines and been given the nickname "Commando" is seen (in the mini-series) as succumbing to shell shock and committing suicide nude in front of the mess tent. Per Leckie, the actual person was stalwart (if a bit wrong-headed in applying urban and suburban guerrilla warfare tactics to jungle combat) and died in combat.

Tonally, The Pacific portrayed Leckie's experiences as much more in line with the way Sledge, perhaps, would have described them rather than how Leckie actually did.