Customer Reviews

A Few Good Men: A History of the Fighting Fifth Marines

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Library Journal review of A Few Good Men incorrectly cites the lack of an index. There is, in fact, a twenty-eight page index that lists more than one thousand entries to include all names, units, and significant battle sites mentioned in the text. Aircraft,equipment,named operations, and weapons are also categorized.

This book details the history of the Fifth Marine Regiment, from its formation in 1914 to 1991. In spite of the iconic cover photograph of a Marine in WWII (the book actually describes who this is a photograph of and where it was taken), the book devotes a roughly an equal number of pages to WWI, WWII, Korea and Viet Nam, with a lesser amount of the book devoted to the period between world wars and the period after Viet Nam (including the first Gulf War). This is a regimental history that details all of the engagements that the regiment participated in. It is a very comprehensive history, with an index, list of sources and an appendix that lists all of the regiment's battle honors. The text mentions all or the regiments commanders, many lower level officers, and all of its Medal of Honor winners. Being a regimental history, it is focused on the accomplishments of the Fifth Marines and thus leaves out material about other outfits fighting alongside of them as well as much of the bigger picture of what was going on, and why.

I found that the highly focused and comprehensive nature of the book was actually, from my viewpoint, somewhat of a distraction. There is scarcely a paragraph that does not mention the names of those involved in a particular action, and in places virtually all of the sentences contain these names. At times I felt as is I were reading a Christmas letter describing the activities of a family that I was not familiar with. Personally, I did not need to know the names of all those involved in a particular operation, but someone more intimately involved with the regiment might find this level of detail very important. Also, as mentioned, one is getting a very focused view of events, with a lot of the big picture missing. This is OK if you familiar with the events being discussed and then the focus on this level of detail can even be very illuminating, but if you are less familiar with the events being covered greats gaps appear in the narrative. For instance, there is no mention of why, all of a sudden, the Fifth was fighting the Chinese and not the North Koreans.

This is definitely not an exciting personal history, such as Sledge's "With the Old Breed", which covers his experiences in the Fifth Regiment during WWII. In fact, I found the book being reviewed here to be rather dry - focused, factual, comprehensive, but dry. There is, however, a level of detail not found in books such as Sledge's. For instance, both books tell of the death of a much respected company commander, A.A. "Ack-AcK" Haldane, but in this book there is a follow up telling that after the war Fifth Marine officers purchased a trophy in Haldane's memory, to be give annually to the senior of Bowdoin College, Haldane's alma mater, who demonstrated outstanding qualities of leadership. Haldane is also featured in the TV mini-series, "The Pacific", which is based in part on Sledge's book.

I recommend this book to those who served in the Fifth Marines, those very interested in the history of the Marines and those very interested in US military history. However, I would not recommend it to someone who only wants a more "popular" and exciting history.