Goodbye Darkness

[Panzerman]

...by William Manchester.

It's on the Corps reading list. Anybody else read this one? I'm like two chapters in and I almost can't bear to pick it up again. What a weak, pedantic bitch this guy makes himself out to be. It's disgusting. Does anybody know if the whole book is like this, or does it get better?

[Vulture6]

Panzer, I've read it twice (once back in the 80s "for fun" and once recently for a class). It gets a little better, especially when he gets to the battles he actually fought in. He talks a lot about his johnson, if you haven't figured that out yet. He also thinks MacArthur was some kind of military genius and not the bumbling ego-maniacal boob that he really was.

If I were you, I'd bag it. There are a lot of better books out there for combat memoirs. If you haven't read it yet, try E.B. Sledge's book, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa -- 1000 times better.

[cincymarsdad]

Sarah told me that one of the Hornblower books was on her ROTC reading lists and did I have it. I loved those books (Forester).

The E. B. Sledge book is perhaps the finest military recollection I have ever read. He writes very well (I believe he was a biology professor) and was a private "johnny-come-lately" to 1st MarDiv after the 'Canal. It is "gritty".

[Panzerman]

Yeah. My original intent was to pick up Sledge's book, but they didn't have a copy at the Borders I was at, so I just picked up Goodbye Darkness instead because I've been meaning to read it anyway.

I'm usually not all that in to combat memoirs lately - I've got my own opinions on it, and the whole "experience of war" genre seems a little melodramatic to me now. But I did read Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer, and that one gave me nightmares - that's definately the most horrifying book I've ever read.

I read Victor Davis Hanson's Ripples of Battle last week, and it had a section on Okinawa, and it occoured to me how little I know of the battle. I think I'll go find Sledge's book.

[USMCRET6391]

I'm probably whistling in the wind here but if you havent read it, Leon Uris's (while fiction and yes the movie sucked) "Battle Cry" is one of the best WWII Marine Combat books written.

[Grimmy]

Originally Posted by Vulture6

Panzer, I've read it twice (once back in the 80s "for fun" and once recently for a class). It gets a little better, especially when he gets to the battles he actually fought in. He talks a lot about his johnson, if you haven't figured that out yet. He also thinks MacArthur was some kind of military genius and not the bumbling ego-maniacal boob that he really was.

If I were you, I'd bag it. There are a lot of better books out there for combat memoirs. If you haven't read it yet, try E.B. Sledge's book, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa -- 1000 times better.

I read a book, long long ago, back when I was a kiddy. It was, at least in part, about Peleliu.

It was a memoir of a Marine infantryman and went into some descriptive detail about the mental breakdown that was occuring towards the middle/end of the ridge fight that almost destroyed 1st Marines.

I still remember the image of a red headed Marine all wrapped up in his poncho and wandering around mumbling and drooling with bullets flying all around..his mind gone...from so many days and nights of straight, nonstop fighting.

Is that the book you listed? Or am I thinking of another?

[CadetFredendall]

I enjoyed the first part of "American Soldier" by General Franks with his experiences in Vietnam.