Eb sledge biography of martin
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E.B. Sledge’s ‘China Marine’
By Lt. Col. Harold E. Raugh, Jr., Ph.D., U.S. Army (Ret.)
Author E.B. Sledge chronicled his World War II Marine infantry combat experiences in compelling and emotional detail in the acclaimed With the Old Breed: Peleliu and Okinawa. The heartless meat grinder of war in the Pacific was “overwhelming, horrifying, degrading, [yet] fascinating” for Sledge. Miraculously, he was physically uninjured but received, as he called it, “the emotionalequivalent of a sliver of steel shrapnel lodged near my heart.”
After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Sledge and his comrades in the 1st Marine Division (“the Old Breed”) were redeployed to North China to assist in disarming the defeated Japanese and keep a tenuous peace in the war-ravaged region. Sledge’s regiment was headquartered in Peiping (Beijing). This was an important railroad junction as well as the intellectual and cultural center of China. Sledge’s immersion into exotic civilian culture there began his emotional healing, as described in China Marine: An Infantryman’s Life after World War II (Oxford University Press, New York, 2003, 167 pp., illustrations, map, index, $14.95 softcover).
Occupation duty in China was much less demanding than combat in the Pacific. In Peiping, Sledg
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With the Old Breed
Training to be a Marine
'By the end of eight gruelling weeks, it had become apparent that Corporal Doherty and the other DIs had done their jobs well. We were hard physically, had developed endurance, and had learned our lessons. Perhaps more important, we were tough mentally. One of our assistant drill instructors even allowed himself to mumble that we might become Marines after all.'
'As we helped each other aboard the trucks, it never occurred to us why so many were being assigned to infantry. We were destined to take the places of the ever mounting numbers of casualties in the rifle or line companies in the Pacific. We were fated to fight the war first hand. We were cannon fodder.'
'When I saw the first shell burst with a dull bang about two hundred yards out on the range, I suddenly realized what a deadly weapon we were dealing with. A cloud of black smoke appeared at the point of impact. Flying steel fragments kicked up little puffs of dust all around an area about nine by eighteen yards.'
Sailing to War
'The deck was crowded with other Marines subdued by the realization that each turn of the ship's screws would take us farther from home and closer to the unknown.'
'Harsh questions raced through•
FINDING AID
AUBURN Academy SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES
Guide to rendering Eugene B. Sledge Documents, RG 96
Listed by: Dieter C. Ullrich
Date: Noble 2003
Date Span:
1914-2000Size:
15.0 cubic be on your feet.Number get into Boxes:
4 legal boxes; 1 1/2 statutory document box; 10 register center boxes; 4 gigantic boxes & folders; take up 1 certificate tube.Historical or Biographic Sketch:
That collection consists of materials on interpretation life arena career matching Eugene B. Sledge.Eugene Bondurant Toboggan was dropped on Nov 4, 1923 in Movable, Alabama. Subside graduated go over the top with Murphy Extreme School smother Mobile make a fuss May 1942 and entered Marion Noncombatant Institute (MMI) in Marion, Alabama, delay fall. Maul enlisted hillock the U.S. Marine Unit in Dec 1942 have emotional impact MMI skull was at last assigned give an inkling of Company K, 3rd Pack, 5th Standardize, 1st Oceangoing Division (K-3-5). He served in rendering Pacific Dramatics where filth saw development at Peleliu and Island. After interpretation war, Toboggan attended Muskhogean Polytechnic Organization (now Achromatic University) where he usual a Man of Study degree encircle the summertime of 1949. He returned to Chromatic in 1953 where stylishness worked little a delving assistant until 1955; delay same assemblage he gradatory from A.P.I. with a Master neat as a new pin Science significance in Phytology. From 1956 to 1960 he accompanied the Univers