The pacific left me with the impression this was one of the most hellish battles of the war and that’s saying something
My grandfather was a Marine who landed on Peleliu.
I had the opportunity to go tour the island. It’s absolutely fascinating and powerful to be there. Many relics from the battle are still there, destroyed Sherman tanks and machinery, Half-tracks that never made it ashore, and destroyed structures everywhere.
All the US remains have supposedly been recovered, but we could see remains of Japanese soldiers in the underground caves and pill boxes. The Americans would lob grenades into the caves and then fill the entrance using backhoes, so there’s many remains that still haven’t been recovered.
One of the strangest things I saw was a family living there who had built their home off the front of an old ammo Bunker right next to a blown up Sherman tank that had been flipped by a mine, killing the entire crew.
The producers of “The Pacific” wanted to film there but were not allowed to. So they went and took extensive photos, and then CGI recreated the locations exactly as they looked (I stood in the HQ that they capture in the series, and it’s creepy how accurate it is).
What a hell that must’ve been for everyone on the island during that battle.
A touchstone Memoir of this Battle is “With the Old Breed” by Eugene Sledge, and what the HBO Series “The Pacific” is partially based on.
Apparently someone or some people recently discovered Sledge’s original manuscript for the book and it is like 800 pages long, like 3x longer than the book we have.
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What nightmares are made of.
The pacific left me with the impression this was one of the most hellish battles of the war and that’s saying something
My grandfather was a Marine who landed on Peleliu.
I had the opportunity to go tour the island. It’s absolutely fascinating and powerful to be there. Many relics from the battle are still there, destroyed Sherman tanks and machinery, Half-tracks that never made it ashore, and destroyed structures everywhere.
All the US remains have supposedly been recovered, but we could see remains of Japanese soldiers in the underground caves and pill boxes. The Americans would lob grenades into the caves and then fill the entrance using backhoes, so there’s many remains that still haven’t been recovered.
One of the strangest things I saw was a family living there who had built their home off the front of an old ammo Bunker right next to a blown up Sherman tank that had been flipped by a mine, killing the entire crew.
The producers of “The Pacific” wanted to film there but were not allowed to. So they went and took extensive photos, and then CGI recreated the locations exactly as they looked (I stood in the HQ that they capture in the series, and it’s creepy how accurate it is).
What a hell that must’ve been for everyone on the island during that battle.
A touchstone Memoir of this Battle is “With the Old Breed” by Eugene Sledge, and what the HBO Series “The Pacific” is partially based on.
Apparently someone or some people recently discovered Sledge’s original manuscript for the book and it is like 800 pages long, like 3x longer than the book we have.
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