Marine at War

Like another reviewer, I had read this book in grade school and it left such an impression on me, I tracked it down as an adult. Very honest and straightforward account of some of the toughest fighting in the Pacific. This deserves to be compared with other more popular accounts, such as Dr. Eugene Sledge's, "With the Old Breed" and Donald Burgett's accounts of his experiences fighting with the 101st Airborne in Europe. One interesting but little noted aside is that the author apparently served in the same unit as the noted Historian Robert Leckie. I believe Leckie makes reference to the author Russell "Dave" Davis as "the Scholar" in his memoir, "Helment for My Pillow' whereas Leckie is apparently the intelligence scout and former machine gunner "Bob" in "Marine at War." This gives the reader a rare overlapping account of the experiences of one 1st Marine Division unit from the earliest days of the War, to the desperate early fighting of Guadalcanal, through the bitter finish on Owkinawa. It's too bad a smart publisher doesn't add these together as companion works.

I first read a copy of this book in elementary school and it left enough of an impression that, fifteen years later, I recently tracked down a copy and read it again. It's the recollections of a Marine about his Pacific Campaign experiences some decade and a half after the fact. In part, it is an attempt to answer his sons' questions about war. From the foreward: "My sons have asked me many questions about war. I have always tried to answer their questions, but sometimes the answers weren't true, and sometimes they weren't complete. It takes time to think out a good and true answer. It is very hard for a father not to make himself seem braver and wiser to his sons than he really was. And war is so many different things all jumbled together. It is hard to sort all these things out and give a sensible answer to one particular question." Where I think this book succeeds, somewhat uniquely, is in capturing that jumble of things. The relatively short and easy to read account manages to make some profound observations on human responses to war. While the author fought in the Peleliu and Okinawa campagins, the book is not really a chronicle of how the author's experiences fit in to them. Instead, it is an account of how he experienced the war. He goes to some effort to observe the ways various people dealt with the stress and fear of combat and is extremely candid about his own responses to them. It's also notable that about a third of the book deals with the down time between campaigns, revealing different aspects of what a war experience can be. The author is a good story teller and the book is very engaging. In various anecdotes he manages to capture the jumble of war: the fear and confusion that can lead to a friend being shot in the dark by marines, the way humor helps a naval artillery spotter function amidst a deadly serious battle, the scrounging and dealing that some engage in to get a few comforts, and the realization, while searching enemy corpses, that a faceless and largely unseen enemy is human. Neither a glorification nor codemnation of war, the book provides some insight into what war is for those fighting it that is often lacking in other histories. I would recommend this memorable account to anyone interested in World War II history but, from my own experience with it, perhaps especially to interested children.

I Read this book as a young teen and have never forgotton it. Twenty-five years later I am still looking for a copy!

I read this book in the third grade and enjoyed it so much that I remembered it and began to search for it later in life. Excellent entertainment and educational for young and old alike!!

This book is written by a combat Marine, not a post-war historian. The author describes what the war with Japan was really like from a front-line perspective. Once you have read this book, you will only seek first-person accounts, when reading about combat. It is very different from any history book. Read it and see for yourself.