The following information has been provided me by China Marine, Chuck Hardesty, who writes:
"Dick--
Here is the write-up, etc. for Gene's new book China Marine. It would be nice if you could post it on your website.
Gene and I were school mates before and after the war. We met while in Peiping also.....
Long Life & Semper Fi
Chuck"
Note:
My thanks to Chuck Hardesty for this information.
-Dick Gaines
************************
China Marine
E.B. SLEDGE Foreword by Stephen E. Ambrose
Introduction by Col Joseph Alexander USMC (Ret.)
From the respected author of one of the best books on World War II combat, comes an equally captivating saga of battle recovery, healing, and homecoming.
CHINA MARINE is the long-awaited sequel to E.B. Sledge's critically acclaimed memoir, WITH THE OLD BREED AT PELELIU AND OKINAWA. Picking up where his previous memoir leaves off, Sledge, a young Marine in the First Division, traces his company's movements and charts his own "difficult passage to peace" following his horrific experiences of battle in the Pacific Theatre.
He reflects on his north China duty in the ancient city of Peiping--now Beijing--and recounts the difficulty of returning to his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, and retsuming civilian life haunted by the shadows of close combat.
Distinguished historians have praised Sledge's first book as the definitive rifleman's account of World War II, ranking with the Civil War's RED BADGE OF COURAGE and World War I's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT.
Although WITH THE OLD BREED ends with the surrender of Japan, Marines in the Pacific were still faced with the mission of disarming the immense Japanese forces on the Asian mainland and reestablishing order. For infantrymen so long engaged in the savage and surreal world of close combat, there remained the personal tasks of regaining normalcy and dealing with supressed memories, fears, and guilt.
In CHINA MARINE, E.B. Sledge completes his story and provides emotional closure to the scarring events detailed in his first memoir. Through warm friendships with a Chinese physician and his wife and with a Flemish priest who was a former prisoner of the Japanese, Sledge experiences compassion, care, and culturally rich evenings of food, conversation, and classical music.
He speaks frankly about the real costs of war, emotional and psychological as well as physical, and explains the lifetime loyalties that develop between men who face fear, loss, and horror together. That knowing bond becomes one of the newfound treasures of life after battle.
With the hallmark of simplicity, directness, and lack of sentimentality, "Sledgehammer" has given us yet another great document of war literature.
E.B. SLEDGE was a World War II Marine veteran widely known for his landmark book, WITH THE OLD BREED AT PELELIU AND OKINAWA. He was a biography professor at the University of Montevallo, Alabama. He died in 2001.
*****
"This is an outstanding work that will have a wide appeal to scholars and to general readers....No one captures the scene better than E.B. Sledge does. No one....China Marine will have legs to it. The book will last. Like WITH THE OLD BREED, it will be read, appreciated,and taught, now and for decades to come."
--From the Foreword by
Stephen Ambrose, author of Band of Brothers
and The Wild Blue
5 1/2 x8 1/2
224 pages. 12 illustrations
ISBN 0-8173-1161-0
29.95 cloth
*****
www.uapress.ua.edu
Orders:
773-568-1550 or 800-621-2736
Fax Orders 773-660-2235 or 800 621-8476
The University of Alabama Press
Chicago Distribution Center
11030 S. Langley
Chicago, IL 60628
www.uapress.ua.edu
$29.95 plus $4.00 (USA)
See website for further info.
Checks payable to The University of Alabama Press
R.W.Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-'72
