Transcript

EP33 Sledgehammer and Big Shot

From Dan Carlin · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 32 min · 16,533 words · 107 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "EP33 Sledgehammer and Big Shot", an episode of Dan Carlin published July 5, 2025 (1 h 32 min, about 16,533 words). It mentions 19 people, works and ideas, including With the Old Breed, Okinawa, Eugene Sledge, Pacific War, First Marine Division.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Eugene Sledge, Okinawa, Henry Sledge, Pacific War
  2. – 20:00: Eugene Sledge, Pacific War, First Marine Division, Hell in the Pacific
  3. – 30:00: With the Old Breed, Okinawa
  4. – 40:00: With the Old Breed, Eugene Sledge, Hell in the Pacific, Okinawa
  5. – 50:00: Okinawa
  6. – 1:00:00: First Marine Division, With the Old Breed, Helmet for My Pillow, Okinawa
  7. – 1:10:00: Okinawa, With the Old Breed
  8. – 1:20:00: Okinawa, With the Old Breed, Pacific War
  9. – 1:30:00: Henry Sledge, The Old Breed: The Complete Story Revealed, Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed
  10. – 1:31:39: Southern Fried Unicorn Tour, Raleigh, North Carolina

Notable quotes from "EP33 Sledgehammer and Big Shot"

  • I first made the acquaintance of Henry Sledge after he got in touch with me, after we did a show where I had mentioned or quoted his dad.
    about Henry Sledge · at
  • But like many other people, I became aware of him after his book with the old breed at Peloo in Okinawa first appeared in the 1980s. I don't remember when I read it, 83, 84, 85, somewhere in there. And then you started.
    about With the Old Breed · at
  • Now, if you don't know who Eugene Sledge is, he's a veteran of the First Marine Division. He fought in the Pacific War. He was at Peloo. He was at Okinawa. and it was horrifying.
    about First Marine Division · at
  • Documentary which is if you want to see top three documentaries on the Pacific War ever done. It was called Hell in the Pacific. It was a British production. you can see it…
    about Hell in the Pacific · at
  • And big shot Henry Sledge is on the show today to talk about his dad, his new book, The Old Breed, the Complete Story Revealed and War in General.
    about The Old Breed: The Complete Story Revealed · at
  • Men Armed by Robert Leki, a book that I've read many times. I remember his copy of Helmet for My Pillow where he, that came out in 1957, the classic book by Robert Le.
    about Helmet for My Pillow · at
  • Ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to do what I'm calling internally anyway here, the Southern Fried Unicorn Tour, because we always say there's no rainbows and unicorns in this program.
    about Southern Fried Unicorn Tour · at
  • A certain time. All I can say is maybe pay her some overtime. In any case, I'll be in Atlanta August 1st, Raleigh, North Carolina August 2nd, Austin on August 15th, and Houston…
    about Raleigh, North Carolina · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Okinawa — Place · 17 mentions · first at
    But like many other people, I became aware of him after his book with the old breed at Peloo in Okinawa first appeared in the 1980s. I don't remember when I read it, 83, 84…
  • Peleliu — Place · 3 mentions
  • Pelieu — Place · 3 mentions
  • Raleigh, North Carolina — Place · 1 mention · first at
  • Guadalcanal — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

It's hardcore history. I first made the acquaintance of Henry Sledge after he got in touch with me, after we did a show where I had mentioned or quoted his dad and we stayed in touch since then. And I don't remember if he was already writing a book or just planning to or if he was in the middle of it, but he uh there was a book involved and I along with you know lots and lots and lots of other people he talked to uh enthusiastically encouraged him to continue on or to write the book. And so I also said when you write it uh or when it's done please come on the show and we'll we'll talk about it. Now, if you don't know uh who Henry's dad is, first of all, his name is uh sometimes on the cover of the book uh or books that that he wrote, uh he'll be called EB Sledge, but his name was Eugene Sledge.

Uh he's he's been made famous more since his death because one of the characters in HBO's uh series on the Pacific War dramatization is this guy. But uh like many other people, I became aware of him after uh his book with the old breed uh at Peloo in Okinawa uh first appeared in the 1980s. I don't remember when I read it, 83, 84, 85, somewhere in there. And then you started seeing um this gentleman on a bunch of different uh documentaries and whatnot on the Pacific War. Um and so you got a chance to sort of get a feel for who the guy was. even in addition to the writing and he was just a really interesting deep um man that was such an a wonderful representation of um the various kind of people who end up in the military now of course still but even more so back in the day when uh everybody went I mean virtually everybody went when you had wars on where they're drafting the population uh

it's a much larger cross-section of the male group of people than you were maybe getting when you're asking for volunteers, right? Although Eugene Sledge would have been first in line to volunteer. In fact, uh he could have become an officer and instead, you know, was worried that the war was going to end too quickly and he was going to miss it, which was a pretty common thing. And you think about it now, you're going, we'd hoped to miss it. They were worried about missing it. But the reason Henry wrote the book is because his dad's book with the old breed at Peloo and Okinawa is one of the best war memoirs in American history by any soldier actually like on the front lines. It's fantastic.

And my copy has just over 300 pages index included. What we didn't know is that there was a lot more and that when um Eugene Sledge was to have his book published, basically the publisher said, "We're interested in like 300 pages. Uh leave out the rest." And it turns out to be this fantastic tome in American military history and we left out a ton of it. I mean, who would do that, right? But again, no one knew. And and apparently uh Mr. Sledge's intentions were never to publish this stuff anyway. He was writing it down for his family and to sort of, you know, it's it's an exercise in healing, right?

And his wife was typing up his longhand and basically said, you know, you have you have to publish this stuff. Now, if you don't know who um Eugene Sledge is, he's a veteran of the First Marine Division. He fought in the Pacific War. He was at Peloo. He was at Okinawa. Um, and it was horrifying. I mean, Pelu is a tiny little place. And, uh, you know, the US lost 1,252 guys or something there. Uh, almost more than 5,000 wounded and and 12,000 Japanese soldiers perished on this tiny little spit of land, this coral reef basically.

And then uh Sledge fought at Okinawa which was um a terrible terrible conflict because you were really approaching the Japanese home islands by the time you reach Okinawa and Okinawa is a big place. Uh the weather, flora, fauna, all that different and civilians. So Okinawa was a completely different kind of disaster. Uh but the US had 50,000 casualties, 12,500 basically killed and the Japanese lost almost 95,000 killed. I mean that's again indicative of you know what these guys were facing and the marines and uh and army soldiers who were fighting in the Pacific never quite got the attention that those fighting in the European theater got uh and they faced very different kinds of challenges in the European theater.

Uh the American forces were fighting against a a technologically sophisticated uh enemy, one that often had equipment that was better than our own. That's an interesting sort of thing to have to deal with. And Americans haven't had to deal with it since the Second World War. We've not gone into a conflict where in general the stuff of the people we're fighting was better than our own. you could have this weapon system or this plane, they could be better. But in general, when the US went up against uh German forces, part of the problem was their equipment was usually better. The way that they were organized and the way the equipment was built into things like the units was usually more efficient, right? Built around a machine gun section, for example, and the way that they did it, uh there were a lot of advantages. And so for the soldiers who had to fight against that foe, uh there were very specific kinds of challenges

and horrific things that had to be dealt with and and tactical problems that had to be overcome. You had the same sorts of circumstances in the Pacific theater. It it was just completely turned around there. The Japanese Navy was fantastic and sophisticated, but the army was a little backwards. Um not the greatest stuff, although some of the equipment underrated. The Namboo machine gun very good, for example. But what the Japanese did was they countered it by having just an incredible attitude. That's what my the football coach would say, right? The attitude made up for a lot. Their willingness to throw their lives away for trivial gains uh and their unquestioning obedience to authority.

That's a tool a general can use. as we said in our supernova in the e-series and as uh Henry Sledge is going to tell us in this conversation we're about to have. Um you know his dad said he wouldn't have wanted to fight the Germans but at least they went to bed at night. Uh the Japanese came out at night and and Henry Sledge says that his dad said that they had two shifts basically. The day shift and the night shift and when the day shift was done harassing you in the daytime they went back to the caves and went to sleep. and the night shift which had been sleeping in those caves came out at night. There's a different kind of horrificness with a more, you know, down to the earth holding a bayonet in their teeth crawling around your foxholes at night sort of enemy. Um, and one that's got an 88 mm anti-aircraft gun that'll cut through any tank you can drive, right?

Right. So, I mean, different either way, I wouldn't have wanted to be in either circumstance, but it seems to me that if you're worried about long-term nightmares um hounding you, like I said, either theater or give them to you, but I think the chances are higher you'd have them in the Pacific just because the way things were fought there, particularly nasty. And with the old breed, Sledge's book makes it clear there's some incidents in there that are just heartbreaking. And a lot of it revolves around uh standard things that happen in modern combat, right? I mean, you uh uh friendlies get targeted accidentally, for example. And that's one of the more heartbreaking things uh incidents that's talked about. I mean, in Eugene Sledge's book, there's an incident where the Japanese have this tendency to sneak around at night and then jump in a foxhole with US troops, um whether that's Marines or Army troops. And

usually the foxholes had two people. One would sleep in uh the foxhole and the other would stand guard. And in the story he was telling, one of the Marines fell asleep when he was supposed to be on guard. The Japanese got in the foxhole um started creating all kinds of havoc with knives and whatnot. So the marine that was asleep jumped up, you know, cuz of course he just awakened from a deep sleep, runs out of the foxhole. And all the other marines are around in the other foxholes. They can't see anything. So somebody basically hits this guy with a shovel and then another marine, you know, goes up and shoots him in the head cuz they think he's the enemy. And then in the morning they f find him. We talk about this in the upcoming conversations. That's the my god, it's Bill story. But you think about the Marine that shot his buddy in the head in a case of mistaken identity because another Marine fell asleep in a

foxhole and a Japanese guy who'd been sleeping all day waiting for the chance to go out at night and do something like I mean this is why something like Sledge's book hits so hard. And Henry Sledge, his son, um, grew up with a father who was both a hero in his mind and he knew what his dad had put up with and been through and a guy who was forever changed by the conflict and who simply by telling his story in the most, you know, open and honest terms, and this is often the case, by the way, creates an anti-war piece. I mean, the best way to make somebody anti-war is to show them the real thing.

And it's the humanity that a guy like Eugene Sledge always showed and always came through um that makes him the kind of figure he became, especially with people who paid attention to the Pacific War and watched the documentaries and read the books. And what Henry's done in his work is uh include things that were left out of the original book. And he writes in two sort of um voices. One's bold print and the other's regular print. And the bold print is the stuff from his dad. And the regular print is his own stuff sort of linking the other things together. So, first of all, if you've ever read Eugene Sledge's book with the old breed, this is the rest of the story. It's worth having just for that. Um, but it's it's the sort of thing where you sort of find out what it was like after uh Henry's dad came home and had to continue to, you know, be a productive member of society, you know, pick up his dreams

where they left off, right? The war interrupted a lot of people's lives, including Eugene Sledges, and then, you know, work out life the way we all have to, but with a lot of stuff in his background. I mean here for example is a story that he told that was in a documentary which is if you want to see top three documentaries on the Pacific War ever done. It was called Hell in the Pacific. It was a British production. Uh you can see it online I believe. Uh but this is Eugene Sledge. He by the way is the very first voice you hear uh in the entire series and it's a multi-part series. It's it's Eugene Sledge talking about, you know, the front lines are where the real war is. And he cringes every time some lawmaker wants to send troops in combat because they don't know what it's like. And he said, even people a 100 yards behind the front line don't know what it's like.

And at one point he was talking about coming back to sort of the regular world, right? You got to pick up your life where you left off. And he tells this story of going to sort of apply for a job. And the person that he's, you know, applying to basically says, "Well, you know, what skills did you have?" And he goes, "I was in the Marine Corps." "Well, what' the Marine Corps teach you?" And he had an explosive moment. And it sounded as he related it in, as I said, go watch it if you want to see one of the best documentaries ever done on the Pacific War, Hell in the Pacific.

This is Eugene Sledge. And you get a sense here as he's speaking about something that lots and lots of people in multiple armies around the world had to deal with after this war. I said, "Well, I qualified with the M1 rifle, the 45 caliber pistol, the model 20 machine like machine gun, the flamethrower with bayonet." She said, "What? What is it? What are you What are you doing all that for? I'm talking about academic credit. Why did you do all didn't you didn't they teach you anything?" I And I just said in this booming voice because I completely lost my head. I said, "Lady," and you could hear a pin drop. I said, "Lady, there was a killing war going on and I was one of the ones who had to do some of the killing." She was so embarrassed and apologized. And then I said, "Well, that's all right. I know you don't understand."

Well, who better to talk about what these challenges were and what kind of man this was and to incorporate the rest of the story of this guy's Peloo Okinawa and other existence that may have felt left out of a 300 or so page work that's a classic. Uh, if you told me you were going to give me more JRR Tolken, I'm snapping that up. And by the way, we have gotten more of that. And I have snapped it up. Well, this is more Eugene Sledge from, you know, his son who, you know, Eugene was known as Sledgehammer by his u military uh brethren. He called his son Bigshot.

and big shot Henry Sledge is on the show today to talk about his dad, his new book, The Old Breed, the Complete Story Revealed and War in General. When did you become aware of your father's sort of military history? I mean, are you four? Are you five? I mean, you and I are the same age and we come from a generation where it's pretty normal to say to your dad, "Hey, what'd you do in the war?" Uh, my father's answer to that question was frustratingly mundane. Yours would have been somewhat different. When did you first become aware uh that your dad had this personal history?

I have really early childhood memories, uh, Dan, of literally sitting in our living room and and the house we had at that point in my life and, you know, seeing on the mantel piece this K35, you know, unit insignia that was framed. And you know, I remember, of course, and I've talked about this, I I remember getting up and seeing my father writing on a legal pad by the by the fireplace late at night. But that would of course would lead to questions about, you know, what are you working on, Dad? Well, and he would say, "I'm just working on something for you and your brother." But it it seems like really literally I mean some of my earliest childhood memories are of just having this awareness that you know dad was in the first marine division.

Um it it it was never dad fought in the war. It was dad was in the first marine division. Dad was in the Pacific. Uh you know I can remember my brother and me going to we called them army surplus stores back then. Dan, I'm sure you remember that. I went to them all the time and I missed the old ones. Yeah, we would go to Army Surplus or Army Navy stores and I remember we went to one in Mobile. We were down there visiting my grandmother's and yeah, I was probably 6 years old and I just remember walking around in that store and my brother was probably, you know, my brother would have been about 12 13.

And I just have this clear memory of my father, you know, he'd pick something up and oh, we had one like that at Peloo or, you know, he picked something else. Oh, you know, a lot of the guys would wear it like this. Um, and and so I, you know, I had this really early appreciation for and like and like you said, Dan, we're the same age. I mean, we we were fascinated by the the the things they wore, the helmets, the packs, the cantens, the airplanes, the tanks. Um, but for me really early on, you know, I had, it just seems like I don't ever remember a time in my life when I wasn't aware that my dad was in the first Marine Division.

But that's something to a kid that's different from when you become a teenager or an adult, right? the difference between seeing your dad in a in a version of your mind of a John Wayne movie or something and then realizing the reality of what your dad and his buddies and a lot of other people on both sides went through. When did it start to hit you on a deeper level than you know the Army Navy store brings back memories? I mean we literally all ran around with some Korean War or Second World War guy's belt, you know, playing games. But but when did when did the deeper um understanding of the crucible that was what your father went through begin to sink in?

You know, I remember seeing type pages when my mother was typing the manuscript with the old breed. I remember it it was stacked up on a table as she would type the pages and my brother and I would pass through the room and we pick these pages up and read you know we would read them and I you know as I've said to many people I mean I literally saw what everybody has come to know in his book I saw it from my earliest years but but it I guess fortunately for my younger years it was not anything that that scared me or disturbed me. Um, I I will give you this example, Dan, because it it was very frightening and fortunately nothing like this ever happened again. Uh, I was probably 6 years old, my brother was seven, or I'm sorry, my brother was 12 or 13. The movie Patton came on. Um, and I remember when my brother went to see that in the theaters with his with his buddies, but it was coming on television

somehow. And my father hated war movies. Somehow my brother taught my dad into ah, it's really well done. Let's watch it. And my dad agreed to watch it. So we sit down in the living room. We're watching Patton. And the scene where they're in tobuk and it's this massive, you know, tank battle. You you've got high caliber this cacophony of just relentless shell fire and those Persian and those and those Persian tanks masquerading as as German tanks. Yeah. With the Balkan crotzes on. Absolutely. And so I just remember sitting there and I just remember my father sitting in the chair and him he started to become agitated and it's like like you know the scene I'm talking about Dan. I mean it's just one highcaliber shell hit after another.

But it's it's literally like this huge setpiece battle. And my dad's sitting there and he's just I can literally sense him and see him tensing up and becoming physically agitated. All right. He he got up out of his chair, walked into the kitchen and began pounding the refrigerator. And of course, you know, my mother immediately, "John, turn the TV off." So my brother turns off the TV. She and my dad was sobbing, pounding the refrigerator. She runs in there to the kitchen, you know, gets him back in the living room. He he she gets him in he sits down. And of course, I'm terrified. I've never seen my dad act like this for anything. And I just remember him sitting there and sobbing.

And I we she he calmed down and we never spoke of that night again. But I found out later that, you know, and as I became more engaged with all of this history, found out later that he told my mom that when they were under really high caliber shellfire, they would just pound the sides of their foxhole in frustration or not frustration, but just terror, fear, and frustration. And it was just this act of sheer desperation. And that was, you know, that that was this Pavlavian response to that scene in Patton, him pounding on the refrigerator. That I never s like that was the most physical manifestation, the most physically overt manifestation of anything I ever saw. I never saw anything like that happen again. And my dad never never spoke of that. Um, and I actually did not write that about that in my book, but every, you know, and then I'll use another example. Um, a lot less intense, but but no less significant. I remember

when with the old breed came out um and you know my dad autographed a copy of it for my 17th birthday and I remember sitting down and reading it and the part on Ingressibbus which is was part of the Peloo operation when they're at the bunker they get get into a big firefight they end up killing like 17 Japanese soldiers um and you know the the one where the Amtrak had just blasted a hole in the side of the bunker. Uh my dad's standing there with his car being a Japanese soldier appears in the opening and he's trying to activate the percussion cap on a grenade to throw it. And my dad shoots him, empties his clip into the guy's chest.

And the way he described the feeling it gave him when his bullets were tearing into this man's chest and he, you know, and that of course speaks to the kind of guy that my dad was, that he knew his job was to be there and kill the enemy. And yet he looked at his carbine and soberly reflected. His exact words were he said, "I realized that my sober reflections were the modeling meditations of a fool. But to read that as a as a 15, 16 year old kid, well 17, I guess, you know, and I mean I felt, you know, a sense of pride. I mean like this is my this is my dad. I mean we all grew, you know, Dan, we grew up watching the same World War II movies. and to read like here's my dad doing the very thing that I'm seeing done in these movies. It was I felt a sense of pride but also in later years and of course writing my own book I read reread and reread with the old breed numerous times. Um, and I feel the same pride I felt in him

then, but now it's balanced with an appreciation for the fact that, you know, here's a guy who was disgusted by what they had to do, yet he did it bravely. You know, he he he could juxtapose the performance of his duty and yet still feel sadness at at this killing field that was Peloo and that was Okinawa. And you know, the fact that he he could do his duty bravely and yet still feel saddened and disgusted by what it all entailed. You know, that's kind of and you know this better than anyone, but I mean that's one of the things that's always made your dad stand out and why I why I think he captures, you know, it's it's funny. So much of his fame and notoriety has come since he's left us, but how much his humanity is what sort of made him uh apart from the crowds cuz you know, you said it, we we grew up in an era which the Second World War seemed a long time ago and yet as we got older and I look back on it now, I realize, my

goodness, it was all around us. It had just ended 20 years ago basically. Um, and you have these guys walking around with you in your society. At the 50th anniversary of D-Day, there was a uh a national uh um opinion piece that was printed by an army psychologist and he was talking I I remember the term was the murderer who lives next door to you or something like that. And the implication was that you don't know that that nice neighbor of a certain age living next door to you, you know, killed 25 people or something and you're not afraid of him. You don't and and yet while he's, you know, offering to mow your lawn and living a normal life, as far as you're concerned, he is living every day with what happened 20 25 in this case, you know, all those years ago. Um, and and and so your father fell into a category of man I didn't normally run into because normally when I would interview veterans, um, and they used to

encourage us to do that back in history class, you know, go find a veteran and talk about him. And in general, the rule was the more combat they saw, the less they were willing to talk about it. And a lot of the people, like my stepdad knew a guy up in Albany, Oregon, who'd seen a ton of combat, and he was excited to take me up there so I could interview him. and we got up there and he refused at the last minute to talk to us. He was a guy drowning in alcohol every day was something from that war. And so many of those guys ended up that way. And then there's a third kind like I grew up next to a Air Force colonel who uh bombed people from heights. He was a fighter pilot mostly, but he used to say, "I never saw the people on the ground." And so it changes the experience. Your father saw the people on the ground, went through the whole thing, stayed really human afterwards, and was able to

talk and teach about it. That's a pretty rare person, don't you think? Well, I do. And, you know, I remember to go back to something you said just a moment ago, Dan. I had a lot of friends who, you know, I' we'd be at I' I'd spend the night with them on a Friday night and and a World War II movie would come on and we'd sit there and watch it and their dad would be in the room and, you know, and of course I mean here we were, you know, we're 12, 13 years old, 10, 11, whatever. And and the dad's sitting there and I knew for a fact that this guy had not seen combat. I knew that this guy had not been in World War II. And yet he'd sit there, oh yeah, it no it wasn't anything like that. Oh yeah, it was just that's exactly like it was, you know, and and then I mean like my the difference was it's like they were enjoying the movie but kind of reminding us that they were the man in the house, you know, that that's the way

it felt, right? The difference was my dad wouldn't even watch the movie, you know, like sitting down and watching Patton, that was an exceptional thing that my brother just talked him into, but he wouldn't watch World War II movies. Uh that that was the exception, not the rule. The rule was he did not appreciate or want to watch World War II movies. Then again, you know, if one of my buddies and and all my friends knew that he'd been a Marine in the Pacific and they knew that he'd seen a lot of combat. If you had a question, I mean, you could ask him a question and and and he would give you an answer, you know, and but he didn't he didn't arrandize, you know, he didn't dramatize it or try to, you know, give you the feeling that he was just telling a good story. And I and I saw some I saw some guys who did do that and there was something that just kind of struck me as disingenuous.

And I think it was just because I knew I could go home to a guy who I knew what my dad had been through because hell he wrote a book about it and I read the book while he was writing it and I just knew his attitude about it and his attitude was yeah I'll tell you about it but don't think that I enjoyed it or don't think you're going to enjoy what you hear. So let me ask you this. Did it make any difference? Uh because I generally won't watch uh dramas and stuff like that. I can't buy into the uh sense of disbelief stuff, but but I'll watch documentaries. Did it matter? Did your dad, for example, watch any documentaries about uh uh the various events he took part in?

He did in later years. Uh because remember, Dan, when you and I were really young, you know, cable television was just coming just becoming extant. Um and then, you know, in later years, yeah, he did. And in fact, um, I remember the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and my mother told me this and and I think I remember my dad talking about it some. There was some documentary on it and he he said, "Well, that's it. You know, this is the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. They're making a big deal out of it because it's the 50th. After this, nobody will care. People will just forget."

And and then of course there were the documentaries that he was a part of. Uh you know there were several back in the 90s. A couple of them were Lou Rita productions that I thought were just outstanding. Um and he did watch those. But um and I'm I'm sort of taking your question and bridging across to something kind of related but a little different if that's okay. Absolutely. You know, it was when he would be interviewed for a documentary on Pelu or Okinawa, it was always a really powerful thing, but we and the family almost got to where we hated to see it happen because it was exhausting to him. Um, and there was one that he did, I think it was in 1991 about Peloo, and you know, he became emotional in describing it and and of course what made him emotional was talking about, you know, at the end of the Battle of Peloo and and how many dead there were and how they were just gone and it was

such a tragic waste and it and it was tough, Dan. It was tough to to sit there, you know, and see your dad get emotional over that. Um, but it I I saw from the standpoint of being his son, I actually didn't go into this too much in my book, but I saw how exhausting it was for him to sit there and relive all of that for an interview because he he honestly he would go do that and then, you know, like they would go out of they'd go up to Minnesota or Washington DC or wherever to be a part of this documentary and then and and then he and my mom would come home and it was not uncommon that he would be sick for two weeks. Wow.

You know, it was which was the one the one I think I first saw so I read with the old breed sometime in the 1980s. I've read it many times since. Um but the first time I actually saw your dad was in one of those documentaries and I believe it was the Carlton films one uh that was in the UK. uh where he's the very first voice you hear in the whole series and it's multi-part series and the very first thing you see is your dad um talking about and and I think like I said we'll try to use a little clip of it about about the front line is really where the war is. The front line is really where the war is. And anybody a h 100red yards behind the front lines doesn't really know what it's like.

And this every time I hear people talk about sending troops into combat, I just cringe because I I think to myself, these people that send them have no concept of what hell is. And there's an old Marine poem that was written by an anonymous World War II Marine. It says, "When he When he gets to heaven to St. Peter, he'll tell another Marine reporting, "Sir, I've saved my time in hell." That was, let me see, it was Hell in the Pacific. Uh, yeah. And that was that was a British It was a British production, you said. And the reason it was so incredible to me was I saw footage in there that was not allowed in the United States at the time I saw it. And you know when you you know and you you just growing up as a Second World War fan, I was a history major.

We'd seen almost every piece of the Second World War footage that any documentary in our country showed and they had stuff I had not seen. And so I actually bought that film from the UK in a format I couldn't view just to make sure I'd have it forever. And your dad is the very first voice you hear. I'm I'm trying to remember because honestly there were so many he was in there they start to run together. Um but I I thought that might have been around 1999 something like that. Yeah, that that sounds maybe or middle 90s somewhere.

Yeah, because my wife and I got married in 2000 December of 2000 and it was right before we got married. So, um, it might have been late 99, early 2000, but I I do I remember when that gentleman came to the house to talk to my dad about, uh, making that. Um, he he's a huge piece of that. He's almost the Shelby foot of that whole series. Well, that that's Yeah, I mean um Yeah, I I do remember that. um that yeah it was just so in fact if if I remember correctly my brother and I had a conversation about that because he didn't want my dad to do it because he'd already seen my dad go through this process a few times uh because that was certainly not the first documentary that my father was in. And if it was 1999 you know 98 99 something like that then that wasn't long before my dad passed away.

Um, so he sounded more frail and he looked more frail than he had been in the earlier ones. But, um, but that was a pretty intense a pretty intense production. I do remember that. Did your dad know uh before he passed that he was going to be fictionalized in a drama someday? No. Um, he didn't. And that that that leads that, you know, we could segue that into a broader question. I mean what I I I have to say this and it's not mock you know it's not feigning modesty you know Allah my dad at all um one time you know like he got letters every day from people who read with the old breed would write him and he he sat there he tried to answer every letter and I just remember there was one from somebody who just was was going on and on about it and he he looked at my mom and he said, "What is it about that damn book that people just can't get over?" And she she just said, "I I think it's your humanity,

you know, and and one of the the Bruce, our friend Bruce McKenna, who was our main point of contact when the Pacific was being made, I've asked him because I know what with the old breed means to people." And I say this with total humbleness and honor. I've seen what that book and and that seeing what that book has meant to people really helped motivate me to write my own. And I've asked people, you know, what is it? What do you think it is about Eugene Sledge that seems to just be captivating to people? And I know Bruce McKenna said, Henry, it was his humanity. the fact that he could retain that, you know, that that that veneer of decency and still do what he had to do, you know, but the fact that he could just stay the decent human being that he was. And I'm not saying that many thousands and thousands of other men didn't do that, you know, but I mean my my father did write a book that is

wellknown. I mean, you know, so he kind of singled himself out there. Well, but let's let's make a distinction. I mean, these aren't bad people. These are people who've been traumatized, right? So, when we talk about people that are having uh a harder time retaining their humanity than your dad, it's because of what they went through. What makes your dad uh somewhat different is most people don't go through that and maintain. I mean, look, I I'll tell you a story. I I know a nurse who's of Japanese descent, and she had a an old gentleman at the hospital one day ask for a different nurse. He just couldn't have a Japanese a descendant of Japanese people as his nurse. And he wasn't being mean about it. He wasn't being racist about it. He just couldn't, right? Because of what he'd done, been through the whole thing.

I would think that most of us would be or or we'd be in the position of that guy, the veteran in Albany I went up to talk to who literally had to drown his memories every day cuz that's the only way he got to the next day. Your father coming off. So, I mean, look, we know he's traumatized. You can't you can't watch Patton without hitting the refrigerator with his fist, right? But that's a whole different level than so many of these other people. And I think that and then his ability to tell you and share what he'd been through. That's a pretty unique individual because the more combat you see, the less not just willing you are to do that, but you and I both know Henry, as do all the combat veterans listening, that the problem is context, right? The civilians you're writing to don't have any context. So things that you would tell a buddy who served with you that would seem perfectly normal is not going to strike

those other people the right way cuz they weren't there. They don't understand the context and it's really hard to explain it to you. And so that's why they talk to each other when they get together at their reunions in a way they can't talk to the rest of us and share what they've been through, what they know, what they learned. Your father was able to do that. That makes him kind of different. Well, yeah. And you know, as as again speaking from the context of of being his son, I we had some amazing conversations and and you know, Dan, because you've read my book, um we had some amazing conversations about his his experiences, but he always kept things I mean, they could be starkly real conversations and yet he kept things on a certain level of decency, you know. And so I I and I think I wrote about this. I I remember this so well. I can't remember how old I was, but I might have been, you know,

18, 19, 20, or I might have been 14, 15. I'm not sure. But I had walked over to his to to the University of Monaval campus, and we we were within walking distance, our house was. And I was walking into my dad's office to go see him. And I'm walk I'm walking up to the door, you know, he couldn't see me, nor could the person he was talking to. I could hear him inside in the office talking and and and you know my dad he cursed but he didn't use four-letter words. You know he he he did not do that. As I'm walking up to the door, he's talking to this guy and I I I heard him say, "Yeah, he I knew him on Peloo. got the knocked out of him by a close shell hit.

And I it literally stopped me in my tracks, Dan, because I'd never heard my dad say that before. And I thought, man, he, you know, he's he's talking to somebody like he's never talked to me before. And it was somebody I think who had been in Vietnam. Um, but I I honestly can't remember that part. But I I walked on, you know, I kind of recovered myself and walk on in his office and instantly he just, "Hey, Big Ch, how's it going?" You know, and he was all happy to see me and but but what I'm trying to illustrate is in that moment he was in another place and he was talking to somebody who he felt could understand, you know, something obviously I couldn't understand because I'd never been there.

So, you just bring up something I'd like to segue into myself. If you talk about the Vietnam War and I remember when we were growing up, I mean I they made us take courses and it was actually 60 Minutes I think did a whole uh segment once on the on the popularity of these Vietnam courses that were springing up in college when I was in college. And we used to have and every every session you'd have a veteran come in and talk to you from that war. And there was a lot of reading that we did that talked about the difference between the way that generation was working through uh their war experiences versus what the Second World War generation did for theirs. a much quieter man in the gray flannel suit sort of thing versus a generation that sort of had a mass psychology experiment looking into their souls and trying to work the the the long road home all those kinds of things. What was your dad's opinion both on that war and

the difference between the way that generation was working out what they went through the combat veterans I'm talking about and the way your dad's brethren did. I think you know that that I have really clear memories of that because some like in the early 70s some of my dad's uh students were young guys coming home from Vietnam and he got to be really good friends with one was an army vet, one was a Marine and he got to be really good friends with these guys because they came home and were getting their lives together and trying to move forward.

forward and and be productive citizens. Um, he admired that. He respected that. They respected him and admired him and they could they could connect with each other, you know, in a way that some other college freshman who literally had never done anything that that my dad just had a little bit more of a difficult time relating to. um he respected what they had done, but these were guys who didn't sit around and feel sorry for themselves and were moving on with their lives. Now, where it gets a little complicated with Vietnam, we all know that a lot of people came home from Vietnam and were treated very poorly. And that should have never happened. And and it's it's it's hard to think about that when you look at Vietnam veterans who maybe didn't respond well to that. Um and who and I'm I'm trying to say this without sounding like I'm judging anybody, Dan, so please understand that, okay?

But when my dad saw maybe a story on the news or something about, you know, a veteran of of Vietnam who was just outcasting himself from society and angry and bitter and turning to drugs and alcohol and and you know just and and I feel bad for the struggles that man was going through, but my you got to understand now here's a guy who'd been at Peloo in Okinawa. Here's a guy who lost some of his best friends in those two battles. He's looking at that and he's saying, "What you went through is no worse than what I went through." Probably not as bad.

Well, you know, if you want to say that, by all means, say that. If he wanted to say that, he could say that. I'm not going to say that because I don't want anybody saying to me, "Well, he's trying to judge certain people." And I'm not. But I'm telling you, my dad was really good friends with some Vietnam vets, but they were the ones who were getting their lives together and moving on. Anybody, I don't care, vet, anybody, it doesn't matter. My father didn't have a lot of tolerance for somebody who would sit around and drown themselves in alcohol or or worse drugs, you know, which became more prevalent later on and do nothing to better themselves or or better their situation. He whether rightly or wrongly he had no tolerance for that be because he's looking at it like okay I went through something every bit as bad if not worse. I came home and got myself together.

And that was just the that's why I say I think I say somewhere in the closing pages of my book and I've said it many times. There was a side of him that was a hard ass and I don't I'm not talking about the kind that a big tough guy is going to go you were talking about grading. I remember like grading papers and and student conduct. Oh yes. Yeah. But I mean, I'm also saying it from the standpoint of of just mental toughness. I mean, I don't mean the kind of guy who's going to walk into a biker bar and break a pool queue and go, "Okay, who who wants to fight?" You know, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a hard ass that just there's a job to be done. Get it done.

Do not feel sorry for yourself. And that whether people like to hear that or not, I'm sorry. But that's the kind of man he was. Well, that's a generational thing though, too. I mean, we all knew those guys. And the funny thing is I always say that that's a trope, right? That every generation thinks the next generations are weaker. And I always say that the the First World War generation thinks that the Second World War generation, the greatest generation, were a bunch of slackers. So, that's just how it always is. But those guys, and we all knew them growing up, they to us anyway, they looked pretty rough and tough and and for better or for worse, right? I mean, did your dad feel the same way about veterans from his conflict, too? I mean, if they came home to the States after the Second World War and couldn't cut it anymore because of the the damage done to them. Remember, we know shell damage

now actually does real physical things to your head. Um, any any more sympathy, any less sympathy, same amount of sympathy for those guys? You mean from World War II back when he was younger? Yeah. Or his buddies even who served with him? Um, yeah. I mean, there there Yeah, there would have been more sympathy. I mean, you know, I think that I just remember him telling me, well, he said it with the brie, but he told me too, you know, some of this just goes back to the strong feeling towards his enemy. Um, I just remember him saying, you know, I knew, and I'm going to use the word here because that's why he said it to me, and I'm I'm not gonna sanitize what he said to me in the name of political correctitude because I don't think that's what people want to hear. They want honesty. He said, "I knew the Japs could kill me, wound me, maim me for life. They could do terrible things, but I was not going to let them

take my sanity." Well, let me talk about that for a minute because that's one of the things. So I've always been fascinated with the different challenges that different soldiers on different fronts faced, right? So the difference between being a GI, for example, uh in Europe fighting the Germans versus being a Marine in the Pacific fighting the Japanese. And in your in your book, not with the OBR, but in your book, you specifically pointed out that your dad had said uh talked a little bit about the difference in fighting the two. And for those who don't know, the Germans had some of the best equipment in the war and that would have made them scary in their own right.

There the Germans long before the Nazi period were fantastic soldiers. There were a lot of reasons you wouldn't want to fight the Germans. But the Japanese didn't let you sleep, your dad said. And when I think about the damage, you know, the PTSD, the waking up with the dreams and all that sort of stuff. an enemy that's going to sneak up on you at night is something I would think would stick in your, you know, fight or flight memory for the rest of your life. You know, I think you said in your book, he said that the Germans eventually, you know, called it a day and would go to bed at night and that's when some of the Japanese were just getting up ready to harass you. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect because your father has some of the most horrifyingly heartbreaking stories about um guys in the middle of the night who jump out of their foxhole and get killed accidentally by their own guys. I mean,

my god, it's Bill still sticks with me. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. I mean, so let's I mean, let's just go back to it from a less emotional and more physical uh perspective. I mean, my dad was obsessed with making sure I went to bed early enough and got enough sleep. And I, you know, at first I go, why is he constantly telling me to go to bed, get enough, you know, I came to understand that it a lot of that tied back to what you just said on Peloo and everywhere in the Pacific, not just Peloo, not just Okinawa.

And I remembered him saying this so many times when I was a kid. You know how, you know, the Japanese were moving around at night. They moved around all night. They you had to worry about infiltrator. You you know he told me I I spent many a night in my foxhole and a K bar in one hand, a 45 in the other. You know, one guy had to be awake on watch, the other guy slept. Um their constant, you know, the way they exp I mean that we know on Peloo they had troops who fought during the day while there were other troops who stayed back in the caves resting. And then the troops who fought during the day, they would rest.

the troops who rested during the day, they'd go out and infiltrate at night. Um, and they were masters at it. And, you know, you had, he said, we had to attack them all day and fight them all night. And it was, it was exhausting. And I mean, that that um, just that the combat in and of itself is is just one is this accumulation of deprivation. You know, it's such a degrading experience on so many levels. It all just becomes even worse and compressed and magnetized to the to exponential degrees when you have to deal with it not having had any sleep and you're just physically and mentally exhausted. And you know he was in combat on pillow for what 30 32 days and 81 82 days on Okinawa. And I actually thought the material that got that I was able to use that got edited out of with the old breed for Okinawa was even because there was just more of it. But he he like I mean Dan as I'm sitting there reading

and researching his unpublished words I almost felt like God he's just belaboring this point of how exhausted he was how tired they were and how you know just you just reached this point of utter exhaustion that you just cannot go on anymore and yet you have to you know but yeah many times I mean he would say man the Germans were fine soldiers you know I would not have wanted to fight But at least you could get some sleep at night with them. It's interesting. I'm thinking about, like I said, some of the And folks, if you haven't read with the Old Breed, and then Henry's book is the perfect compliment to it. Uh this is one of the best books ever written by a Second World War American combat veteran. Uh and and and part of what he does is I mean there are images the one of him sliding seeing the guy slide down the hill or himself slide down the hill and then end up at the bottom covered in

maggots and vomiting. These are the sorts of things that don't make it into your John Wayne movie, but turn it 360° giving you a much better sense of what we're really talking about here. Right? It's a little like reading um Paul Fusell's book wartime where he talks about all the different ways you die in this war that nobody ever even talks about. And I remember the one he said was getting hit with a body part of your buddy. And and once you start to realize that when we talk about like that army psychologist who wrote on the 50th anniversary, wars cost is to the soul or whatever he called it, what these people had to go through and then walk around and live their lives which many of us find challenging enough without any combat experience in our backgrounds.

That to me is as impressive as whatever they had to do actually in the combat. You know what I mean? to stick it out on the long hall decade after decade. Yeah. Well, and that that's, you know, when I again as I got older and began to really understand that, okay, I mean, here's a guy who survived what he survived and then, you know, comes home and and tries to piece it all back together and figure out what he wants to do. And first, he got a business degree, which was not what he wanted. That was not his passion. And you know my grandfather was very wise perspicacious man and and told him look science is what you love you know go to Auburn and get involved in one of their bi their graduate biology programs and and you know that's what he ended up doing and and that was his passion and you know the the how academically rigorous that was and the fact that he could do that I mean I had such um tremendous respect

for that. Well, and again, that's I think that's part that plays into that humanity aspect. I mean, he's a guy who can't hunt anymore after the war, right? Because he doesn't want to inflict any suffering. He comes off like a professor who who maybe is like a bird watcher almost. Let me let me ask a different question because I always found it interesting when somebody who was in a conflict right on on a ground level for example went back later and started looking at the big picture zoom out decisions that the you know the MacArthur's and the Eisenhowers and the people at the top jobs were making did your did your father have specific views on the way the war were fought commanders that he and I don't mean like commanders of his unit but I mean you know the nimmites and the guys at the big level what were his views on on the or from the sort of zoom out macro level that he was on the ground in.

I that's a great question. I wish as I have, you know, become so passionate about World War II history through my life and read and researched it more and more. I I I look back on that I wish I'd had more conversations with him o along that subject along those lines. However, I can't answer your question because what I I can answer your question and what I will say is um when you look at Chester Nimttz and and look, I mean I I I think I'm I'm a Nitz fan. I think he did a fantastic job um doing what he did in the Pacific War. I think that on the subject of Nemits, my father was negative. I think he had a hostile view of NTZ. The reason for that is because Nemitz could have called off Peloo, but he chose not to. Now, a lot of people blame that on MacArthur. And I mean, after all, we attacked Peloo to protect MacArthur's flank as he was advancing along that southwestern axis back to the Philippines. And then he didn't even

need it. didn't even need it, you know, because they they I heard my dad say in an interview, not without bitterness, that, you know, we were still grinding it out or trying to finish up on Peloo when MacArthur walked ashore with with cameras grinding, you know. Um I think and he was no fan of MacArthur. Uh part of the reason for that was MacArthur was such an so egocentric, such an egoomaniac. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Um my father that was egoentrism was was a character trait that my dad just didn't have a lot of time for. Um so he he was he was not happy with Nemits for not calling off Peloo. Um he certainly felt some hostility towards MacArthur. Um, now to speak to Nemits, I mean to be to be fair, I mean if they'd have called off Peloo, the first Marine Division would have just gone somewhere else, you know, and and he certainly knew that, but the thing that made Pelu just a

little bit of a well, the thing that made Peloo so much of a a tougher pill to swallow was the fact that it really wasn't needed and he saw so much suffering and dying there among his friends. Um, as far as, you know, like what he thought of Ernest J. King, I have no idea because we never talked about that. Um I to get down to a slightly lower level I know that he was not an admirer of General Rapertis who was the first marine division commander you know and I don't think too many men in the first marine division were because they they reached a point where you know the 81st infantry division was ready and willing to come in and help after they had taken Angar just south of Peloo And General Repertis did not want army help. He was convinced the first marine division could do it alone. And the first marine regiment was decimated and had to be taken off the island after about a week of fighting or slightly

more than a week along with first marine tank battalion. And then that left the seventh marine regiment and the fifth marine regiment which my dad was in the fifth marines and and each of them became chewed up by the meat grinder of bloody nose ridge you know which was the high ground on Peloo. Um, you know, and of course it it finally took General Guyger, who's uh the core commander, to come in and and who was Repertus' boss, to come in and say, "Look, you obviously need help here. Bring in the army." Um, but and so I I I think he actually thought pretty highly of General Guyer, but uh but like General Pedro Delval took over the first Marine Division after repertis.

Uh and I have no idea what he thought of General Delval. I think I think I may have read something that got edited out when I did my research that he he had some positive things to say about General Delval, but um I I ended up having to edit that part out of my manuscript just because it was just getting too long. Um did your father did your father read about these campaigns after the war? I mean like did he read books on Peloo? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He he did. Um, and you know, of course he was interviewed for some of them, but but he did re look, you know, Dan, one of the first books I I remember this because I talk about it.

I remember, you know, in my dad's study, you know, his bookcase. I remember his KBAR sitting there with it scabbard on on his bookcase. I remember a Japanese samurai saber over in the corner. And I remember some of the books on his shelf and I remember one was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shy. Um he he had a copy of that. I remember Strong Men Armed by Robert Leki, a book that I've read many times. Um I remember his copy of Helmet for My Pillow where he, you know, that came out in 1957, you know, the classic book by Robert Le.

Yeah. Same campaign. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh he was in H21. My dad was in K35. You know, I remember one of the first World War II books I ever read was Helmet for My Pillow. And I remember and I God I don't know what happened to this. I wish I did. My dad's copy of it. We lost it. But I remember his reading his copy you know and seeing where you know my dad had made notes in it. Um because when he read that book he I mean who who knows it literally in his mind he's thinking he was literally preparing himself to write with the old breed. And of course the process had already begun.

You know he had already taken the notes out of his Bible and started writing an outline and then and then fleshing that out into you know that process began early on. Uh but there were other books he read too you know. Yeah he did he was very well read about all things but he read books about the the European theater. um you know and so and I'm sure reading all of these things and and I got to say this um I think one thing that bothered my dad because he he and I spoke about it um he always felt like you know that that our collective conscience of World War II was European centric you know it's it's like Normandy Normandy Normandy that's all we hear about and deservedly so not saying we shouldn't but he looks at it he he looked at it like what about what we went through on Peloo or Okinawa or what about what my buddies went through on Cape Glouster or Guadal Canal or or you know Ewaima which

obviously Euima is incredibly wellknown deservedly so too but um I think he just kind of felt like you know back in the 70s and 80s when when I was growing up that the war in the Pacific just wasn't as well known. It wasn't as well understood. It's harder to understand it for so many reasons. I mean, not not we, you know, to talk about the the added human element of fighting the Japanese compared to fighting the Germans, you know, that that was there were layers of complications to that, right? That that you it was just a war of visceral hatred that maybe some of that wasn't there against the Germans, you know, but not only that, but you the the enormous logistical complications of fighting in the Pacific. I mean it it's I mean I've studied it for years and it still boggles my mind. You know we should talk about that. I had a few questions uh uh in my mind about that and it's related to the difference between fighting the

Japanese and the Germans but not in terms of tactics or equipment or strategy more in terms of the kind of fight it was. Um to call the war in Europe a gentleman's war is a complete misnomer because we all know it wasn't. But you had things like the Malmi massacre during uh um uh during the Battle of the Bulge offensive, the second Ardan. Um and these sorts of things when we grew up were still trumpeted as these terrible outlier incidents that showed you just how terrible the Nazis were, right? And all and you start reading about the Pacific campaign and you realize that stuff's happening all the time, right? All like uh your father said something once. So, so we talked earlier about the Carlton film that had some footage, the UK film that had some footage that I'd never seen before. It was stuff that we all knew. If you had done your research, you knew if you talked to a bunch of veterans, you knew that the war in the

Pacific was not a big prisoner war. Uh especially if people were wounded. And your father talked about the possum squads and I had to bring that up by by name to some other people. And when you brought it up, they were okay talking about it. But they didn't volunteer that. and the Carlton film and I hope it is a Carlton film. I should have written that down. Um there they show you footage of that and and first of all I was amazed that the photographers took the footage. Uh these and it was it was film. It wasn't uh uh still photos. I was amazed that they took it and when your father explained it, you turned around and you realized what a different war this was because the Japanese were doing it on their side too. It just was a very very viscerally, you know, we talked about how they moved around at night and how that changed the dynamic.

Well, the we're going to chop up any of your people we we capture changes the dynamic. No one's taken prisoners. That changes the dynamic. That and and again, when we talk about PTSD, recovering after the war, having a Japanese American nurse, and whether you can stand that or not, I think a lot of that plays into it in a way. And look, let's throw in the Rword because it's part of it. The racism, too, right? you felt differently about people that were looked at as animals than you did about a bunch of blondhaired, blue-eyed Germans, right? So, there was a lot going into this that increased the exponentially, I think, the the damage and and stuff done to people like your father. And then the memory of the war afterwards and how you tell it in real truthful fashion, but now we're in cold blood, right? We're not in hot blood anymore. It's the same thing we talked about about how the veterans can't talk

about what they've been through because the civilians have no context. Same way in the Pacific here, right? Your father's trying to tell the truth in part to keep us out of future wars without thinking really strongly about what we're doing. And yet the truth is hard for people a generation or two later in cold blood to absorb. It's the same problem you have with the atomic bomb question, isn't it? Right. Well, you know that when you when you speak of the atomic bomb, I mean, my father and I my father and I had some conversations about that, you know, and what what I would say in this modern age when when we're so fond of judging our actions in the past as a nation is, you know, if if you think that we shouldn't have dropped the atomic bombs and and I don't moralize about this one way or the other in my book.

a stew anything like that. But I speak of this through the eyes of a guy like my dad. When you have fought the Japanese across the Pacific and you've seen how you couldn't take prisoners, you couldn't even try in many cases to help a wounded Japanese because he would try to detonate a grenade. That's right. And and kill your corman. You know, these are things that these guys had to live with on a daily basis and they're trying to survive. You know, all they care about is surviving this horrific experience and getting back home. And so when you when you deal with that and then you get to Okinawa and you have this added layer of complexity because of all the civilians Yeah. or Saipan and you see what happens there, right? You have, you know, Saipan and Saipan. Yes. Absolutely. and then even more so in Okinawa. And you see that and how the Japanese in some cases treated their own people and

you read about Okinawa through my dad's eyes. Read about that. Read read with the old breed and really absorb yourself in what was going on. And I go into it quite a bit in my book too with his unpublished material. And then imagine Okinawa times a 100,000 because that's what invading the Japanese home islands would have been. That's what my dad always told me. He said, "We were told, and it is horrific to contemplate this, but he said, we were told, get used to killing women and children because you're going to have to."

Wow. And he said, "If we invaded the Japanese home islands, we were going to have to kill every last one of them because they would fight us to the death." And so when you put your head in that space and put yourself as a young man who survived more than he should have and now you're thinking that you know at the end of Kenishi Ridge Dan at the end of Okinawa they go up to the Mobu Peninsula to the tent camp. They don't know that the war is about to be over. They think that, okay, I've just survived my second campaign and I'm damn lucky to have survived it.

Now we got to start training for the home mountain invading Japan because we know that's next and we know they're not going to surrender. And so when you when you think about it in that context, seeing the atomic bombs dropped makes sense. Well, first of all, it saves you from, you know, if we talking about the trauma of your dad having to shoot that Japanese soldier outside the pill box on Peloo, imagine if that's a women, children situation instead. I mean, you just exponentially change the damage to the psyche and all that. You know, the number of veterans and this may we can blame this on propaganda. We can blame it on anything you want, but the number of Second World War veterans, including my stepfather, who said about the atomic bomb, and I'm not proitizing here either because it is the most horrible weapon I can think of. It saved my life. It saved my life. I heard that so it saved my

life. Um whether or not that's true, the number of people who believed that and then there's a great line from the guy, I think it was Groves, one of the main people in the atomic uh uh development program who said, and again this is the difference between hot blood and cold blood, right? When we're examining something in cold blood, whereas the people examining it hot blood know that we're bombing, we're firebombing Japanese cities three times a week, right? And so, so it's not like we're going from no killing to a lot of killing. We're going from a lot of killing to a lot of killing with a different weapon. And I think it was Groves who said, "If we told the American people that we spent all this money, time, and effort, which could have been spent somewhere else, obviously opportunity cost, on a weapon that we decided at the last minute not to use, they would hang us from the nearest lamppost." And that's the

difference because of course you got to remember what you're saying to them. What you're saying to them is we're not going to use this on the enemy that attacked us sneakily at Pearl Harbor and your son might have to die to invade that island because we're not going to use it on them in hot blood several years into a war where we're not even taking prisoners on a lot of these islands when we're firebombing the I it's just it's it's again context. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the it it's it's a troubling it's all horribly troubling, you know. And your father used to bring that up. That was that was his I mean when you listen to him, he sounded like a guy, like you said, who had a job to do that was ugly and horrible and brutal, but he understood that he had to do it. And you know, I mean, and and the stuff about I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but but it is so much about what your dad if he

was just a gung-ho. I mean, there's a number of different, let's call them stereotypes of a second world war combat vet. Your dad doesn't fit any of them. And I think that's what makes him so different is when you listen to him, he comes off as the kind of guy who should be the spokesman for the people who fought in the Pacific War. And I think that's that's reflected in the popularity of his book and and the feeling a lot of us who never even met your dad have for him. Well he I think his prednatural decency showed through, you know, and and I I again I go into a lot of that in the reminiscing I did in in my book. But I, you know, I I just think that for him to have gotten it all down on paper, he just felt driven to do it. And it was not a pleasant task for him to do it. And I I know that he felt that way because he said that in a letter that came to my attention that he had written to some of his comrades

right around the time with the old breed was published. And and I just remember seeing this letter. I think I I think I saw an electronic image of it and he said in that letter, you know, I've I've had to spend the last several years obsessing about the details to make sure I got them right. like the the role of honor of somebody who got killed, making sure you got the details right. And he said, "It has not been a it has not been a pleasant task, and I'm ready to lay down my pen and get on with the rest of my life." And um and and I'm, you know, Dan, honestly, I don't know that I'm really addressing exactly or speaking exactly to what you just said, but I do think it serves the general purpose of illustrating that this this whole business it was not something to be glorified you know to him warfare was the most horrible human condition imaginable and I think his book with the old breed it it's an

interesting dichotomy in a way because a marine reads that book and they feel fiercely proud of being a Marine as well they should because my dad was fiercely proud of being a Marine And yet the book at its core is a very powerful anti-war statement. And I talk in my book about because my mom passed away. Sadly, she did not live long enough to see my book get published even though she was the inspiration for me to write it. But she and I talked a little bit about um when she was still healthy enough to have these conversations.

Um she and I talked about his feelings about the Vietnam War because I asked her about that because as if you remember Dan toward the end I make some some uh reference to that. That's what I that's what made me think about it. Yeah. And and she Exactly. and she said, "Yeah, Henry, I think your dad was so upset by the Vietnam War because I," this is what my mom said. I remember him saying to me, I thought that what my buddies and I did at Pelu in Okinawa and and everywhere else, you know, every other, this is me as a subtext here, everywhere else in World War II by every other World War II veteran. back to my dad him saying to my mom, "I thought what we went through there was so that we would never have to go through this again."

And yet sitting there watching the news as I and I remember when it just came to me at three o'clock in the morning that I needed to write that memory down in my book of him sitting there with our dog Holly in his lap and and seeing you know the the grainy footage of of Marines in Vietnam and soldiers in Vietnam and those those Huey choppers and you know wounded guys getting helped to aboard these choppers and you know you hear Walter Kronhite Marines taking heavy casualties in Viet that nom today. And you know, I just remember my dad just tensing up and getting so angry, you know, and now I understand why because in his mind it's like, look, this 20 years ago I was going through the same damn thing, you know, or 25 years ago it would have been really why are we doing it again, you know, and and that's that's a that's not a sophisticated, you know, like that's that's not getting into the geopolitical

analytics of it. And he certainly was a guy who was smart enough to do that. That that's just a veteran sitting there seeing these images and speaking in the moment after being at work all day and oh here it is here. Oh, they're out. They're in Vietnam today. They're now we're seeing guys getting shot up. I mean, you know, and some of these guys were like literally very close to soon being students of his. You know, it's it's one of those things, too, where he can instantly tap into the things that we civilians wouldn't think about. You mentioned it earlier. We're thinking of the guns and the bombs, and that's all well and good, but he's thinking also of the tiredness, of the grief of seeing a friend hurt. I mean, he he's he's tapped into the whole experience 360 when he's watching that grainy footage. Let me ask you an impossible speculative question here that just occurred to me. Um, sure.

You know, this is such a crucible in your dad's life and in the lives of so many combat veterans listening even now from a bunch of different wars. Uh, and I'd wondered the same thing about then, but what do you think the difference in your dad would have been given his upbringing, his temperament, you know, his parents and all that if he'd never gone to war? If that war didn't happen during his lifetime and he never had to go through this, how I mean I to say it changes him is obvious, but can you imagine how Yeah, I mean that is a very speculative question, but it but it's it's it's an interesting concept. I mean, when you He's going to still hunt, right? He's going to still hunt. There's going to be things that wouldn't have changed, right? Sure. I mean, so there I would go to the kind of man that my grandfather was and and my grandmother in the way that they raised their two sons, my uncle and my dad, you know, and

my grandfather was a guy who demanded academic excellence. He demanded uh a high code of conduct in his two boys. Um he was a man who was a loving father but didn't put up with a lot of crap from his children. Um and and you know that I literally Dan I mean I'm describing my dad and so had my father not been forged in the crucible of his World War II experience you know how how would he have turned out? I mean that that's a really interesting question. I mean, I think at his core, he would would have been the same strict but loving father, but yeah, there would have been so many things that, you know, he just wouldn't have had that perspective on like me sitting at the the breakfast table and complaining about my toast not being exactly right and then him sitting down and going, "Did I ever tell you about how we couldn't find a piece of bread on Okinawa that didn't have weevils in it?

Did I tell you that? That's just Wait, that's just the combat veteran version of we used to have to walk uphill in the snow both ways to school. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Um but you know that that I mean that so maybe some of that context he had like and there was some great stuff that got edited out of the Ory that I was really blessed to be able to use in my book. um where he he talked about buddies of theirs who rotated home and would write letters back to him when they were you know stalled out in front of Shuri you know sitting in the in the the you know flung into hell's own cesspool as my dad described it so horribly beautifully um and you know he that that that context of these guys you know we came home and hear people complaining about having to wait in a line or getting coffee that isn't hot enough. You know, how do you complain about that when you can't imagine getting a drink of

water that's filled with rust and diesel fuel, you know, which is what they had on Peloo at first, uh because they hadn't steam clean the drums properly on Pavu, you know. Um or you complain about something and my dad would just look at you and go, "I'm just happy I have dry socks." I remember that line. Listen, you mentioned the Shuri situation. Uh I have a quote from your book right here. Ladies and gentlemen, this is from uh Henry's book and his dad remembers sitting in front of Shuri and how the situation descended into a morass of horror. Uh this is a quote from his dad. quote, "The longer we stayed in that terrible place, and we stayed there over a week in almost incessant cold rain, our environment congealed more and more into a ghastly nightmare of mud, murderous shelling, casualties, rotting bodies, and maggots.

The place was enough to drive a strong man insane, and some did become emotionally shattered because of it. I never saw more pathetic wounded and killed than we lost each day here." end quote. Uh I mean that's the kind of stuff it is. You're right. That's both something to be proud of as a Marine and at the same time a ferocious anti-war statement. Yeah. Well, and and to to carry that even further, Dan. Um and and thank you for reading that because that I mean I I just the opportunity to find this unpublished material um from my dad's book was just such an incredible thing. But you you just you you just have to try to imagine that, you know, all of it was this dehumanizing experience, you know, that he just wanted to survive and forget about and then to have to relive it all to re to write what he wrote, you know, um that was an amazing thing to have accomplished. Henry, did he write it to

be published originally or did he write it more for you guys? He wrote it for the family. Um, and I do remember talking to him about that because um, and as I talked about in in in my thing there, Dan, I mean, my mom is the one because she started typing it. He asked her to type the manuscript and I remember not long before she passed away, she she told me her memory of that. Um, she said, "I didn't want to type it." You know, he was writing it all by hand on on yellow legal pads and and pencil and he asked me, she my mom said he asked me to type it and she said I didn't want to at first. And he said, "Well, if you don't, I'm going to have to pay somebody to do it." And so she relented and she did. And my mother was an incredibly smart and preient lady.

And as she typed it, as she began to go down into the abyss with him and experienced through his writing of what he experienced, she realized what a powerful story it was. And she was the one who said, "We need to try to get this published." And and he of course desissented. He disagreed. Um but no originally it was to be for my brother and me for for the family to just have some understanding of what he had gone through and part of what motivated him to do that. Um, I mean, obviously a lot of it was to tell the story of his buddies because I say that in my book, but but the other thing that I don't think I go into was the fact that we had ancestors in the Civil War who had written letters back home and my dad had been able to read some of those letters and it was so fascinating to him to read what, you know, I mean, imagine reading a letter of what an ancestor went through at Island Number 10 or Chickamoga.

you know, or Vixsburg or or Gettysburg or, you know, which I didn't have any ancestors at Gettysburg, but um you know, imagine reading a letter where they're describing what they're seeing. I mean, that that's maybe not everybody finds that interesting. I do and my dad did and I think he realized, you know, maybe I need to record my experience. Maybe I need to to write it down so that the family will just have some, you know, some idea of what we did and what we saw. And and also at the heart of it, Dan, is like and any veteran would say this. I mean, he's thinking of his buddies who got killed and he didn't want them to die for nothing.

Let's talk about that for a minute because you know um there have been some interesting things written over the years about the difference in the American military of that time period and the American military today. The difference in the kind of troops you get in a professional volunteer military versus the kind that sweeps from a larger segment of the population maybe including people that don't want to be there. Um, it strikes me reading about your dad's situation and and hearing about all his buddies that it, you know, you get such a wide range of different people from different economic levels, from different backgrounds, from different parts of the country. Uh, and then you go back home maybe after the war and the only thing that really connects you to each other and it's a huge thing is what you experienced. Did your dad stay close to the people? I mean, snafu comes to mind, but there's a

lot of Did your dad stay close to the buddies? And if so, was there more to it than than their shared experience? Or I mean, talk to me a little about that because it would seem to me that there's very few people that you could have a real deep um psychologically cleansing conversation about these sorts of things with than the people who experienced them with you. Certainly not on that visceral level, you know, where they could understand each other. Um yeah, he he did stay in touch with his buddies because he he wrote letters with them. and he had phone calls uh with them as he was riding with the orbee because he wanted to he wanted to make sure that that he got it right, you know. He wanted to make sure that um he got the details right, that he was accurate, that he was not putting something into print that that a fellow Marine would not approve of. Um because I can tell you and probably any veteran would say this, you

know, it's it was one thing to see a a a positive review of his book by, you know, a a literary professional, but the the opinions that mattered to him the most, and I think I saw where he said this in a letter somewhere, the opinions that mattered to him the most were the opinions of his fellow Marines. And and so, you know, he he the guys like like Jay Dow and Stumpy Stanley and and Snafu and, you know, Bill Leaden, he and Bill became really close. Um, you know, many times he had late night phone calls with those guys and and I guess I'm sure that they had conversations with each other. I know they did at reunions um where they talked about some tough things and reminisced about lives lost but what I remember from the phone calls the late night phone calls the back when I was a kid and he was writing with the old breed u it's a happy memory you know and I think I describe it as such in in

the old breed the complete story revealed um because you know he he'd get in there in the he'd go in there and close the door. And if it was Bill Lead, hey Billy, how you doing? And you know, and they and of course Bill Leaden was this jolly auncular New York guy, you know. Oh. Oh, Eugene, it's so good to hear you. How you doing? You know, and um and I, you know, I could just hear my dad guffawing for hours. I mean, they because they'd be reminiscing about more pleasant memories, you know. Um, and so yeah, I mean that was that was a positive aspect to it. But but I think at the reunions when he actually saw those guys and he and he did start going to reunions once his book came out. Um, I think that you know there there were some hard conversations I'm sure some hard late night conver I mean I didn't personally see that but I know that that they were there as they would be with any group of

veterans. My thanks to Henry Sledge for coming on the program, for writing the book, The Old Breed: The Complete Story Revealed, available now, by the way. Uh, if you're a fan of his dad, you're going to want that book anyway. If you're interested in the war at all, and you haven't read his dad's book, read that, then read this. I mean, there's a, you know, an order to go in. But he's one of the fabulously interesting people on the American side from that conflict. And um one of the best representatives you're going to find of these three-dimensional figures who so often in our history books uh in our writings, especially in the immediate post-war period, come off as like comic book characters. And they're much more deep and reflective and um impacted by their service than that. And those sorts of nuances are part of why so many of us have been interested in military history for so long. Something

that's not understood often by people outside of the interest is the multi-unionlike layers that go into something like this. And I've never seen a better representative of those things than Eugene Sledge. So my thanks to Big Shot Henry Sledge for coming on the program today. Go out and get the book. You'll love it. And as usual, thanks a ton for listening everyone. If you think the show you just heard is worth a dollar, Dan and Ben would love to have it. Go to dancarlin.com for information on how to donate to the show. So, who says we don't take requests? I don't do a lot of live events, but I've I've started doing a few here and there, and they tend to be sort of either nearby or places I'm going to anyway, and they just get added to the list if I say, "Well, I'm going to be here. Can we do something?" So, I I get requests to come to cities uh that I haven't been to yet. Um, and so we're

filling some of those requests now to show you what a genius I am. I'm going to the south in August. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, I'm going to do what I'm calling internally anyway here, the Southern Fried Unicorn Tour, because we always say there's no rainbows and unicorns in this program. There may be no happy ending. Um, but you know, it's hardcore history. It's not softcore history. uh if you'd like to see one of the live events and generally we have a person uh who goes on there with me who sort of acts as a prompter or what have you sort of runs the the show and every one of those people at every event we've done has been different and because of that you get a very different kind of event every time they've all been very different from one another and then usually uh sometimes we haven't been able to do this usually we get questions asked from the audience and then that turns it into

a a unique event every time I always run long so if you want to get your money's worth um uh you want to go to one of these shows if you have a problem with a babysitter who needs needs to be home at a certain time. All I can say is maybe pay her some overtime. In any case, I'll be in Atlanta August 1st, Raleigh, North Carolina August 2nd, uh Austin on August 15th, and Houston on August 16th. I'd love to see you out there. And listen, I'm You asked for it, we responded. How about that? The uh Southern Fried Unicorn Tour coming to a theater near you if you happen to live in one of those cities. Go to dancarlin.com.

We have um places where you can get the tickets right off the front page of the website. And by the way, going back to what is sort of becoming home base for us here, uh the Drowned Unicorn uh tour, uh going back to Portland um in September, those tickets available on the website as well.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "EP33 Sledgehammer and Big Shot"?

In order: 0:00 Eugene Sledge, Okinawa, Henry Sledge, Pacific War; 10:00 Eugene Sledge, Pacific War, First Marine Division, Hell in the Pacific; 20:00 With the Old Breed, Okinawa; 30:00 With the Old Breed, Eugene Sledge, Hell in the Pacific, Okinawa; 40:00 Okinawa; 50:00 First Marine Division, With the Old Breed, Helmet for My Pillow, Okinawa; 1:00:00 Okinawa, With the Old Breed; 1:10:00 Okinawa, With the Old Breed, Pacific War; 1:20:00 Henry Sledge, The Old Breed: The Complete Story Revealed, Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed; 1:30:00 Southern Fried Unicorn Tour, Raleigh, North Carolina.

What is mentioned in this Dan Carlin episode?

19 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including With the Old Breed, Okinawa, Eugene Sledge, Pacific War, First Marine Division, Henry Sledge. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "EP33 Sledgehammer and Big Shot"?

The episode runs 1 h 32 min; the transcript is about 16,533 words in 107 timestamped sections.

More from Dan Carlin

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.