Last Man Standing: The 1st Marine Regiment on Peleliu, September 15-21, 1944 by Richard D. Camp |
Editorial Reviews
Review
This beautifully-printed retrospective makes available two of the most familiar battle pieces of author, illustrator, and artist Tom Lea. Both were written while he was an artist/ correspondent for Life magazine in the Pacific theater. 'Me first~ "A Grizzly from the Coral Sea," has a strong flavor of Somerset Maugham. As an aircraft carrier steams toward Guadalcanal, a correspondent and some of the crew take turns sharing part of their souls. The correspondent muses that if he were an Indian, he would like a bear as his totem. A regular Navy commander who collects coins remembers the incident, and later sends the correspondent a California commemorative half-dollar with a bear on the reverse side. Hardly a dramatic story, it conveys both the moods of men going into action and the way war broadened the horizons of Americans who, before Pearl Harbor, were largely a provincial, unhomogenized people. "Pelelieu Landing" makes a more direct impact. Lea landed on Pelelieu Island fifteen minutes after the first wave. He fourid himself in the middle of one of the hardest-fought and least-necessary battles of the Pacific War, a battle that all but destroyed the lst Marine Division. Lea's accoimt of the sounds and smells of combat, of random death and the banalities of survival, remains compelling though its themes are far more familiar now than in 1945, when the essay first appeared. Even at the end of a total war, Americans were just beginning to learn that in Lea's words, "war is fighting and fighting is killing." They were just beginning to learn as well that not only the enemy dies. The narrative of "Pelelieu Landing" is enhanced by Lea's stark sketches, made "before [his] hand steadied." No reader of Battle Stations will soon forget"The Price." A young marine has been hit by a mortar burst: His torso is shredded; his left arm blown away; half his face is gone. What remains wears an expression beyond shock or pain, a fusing of resignation and disbelief that brings home, beyond the capacity of words, the human costs of even a "good war." -- From Independent Publisher
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
 |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
Product Information from the Amapedia Community
Beta (What's this?)Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.
› See featured Amapedia.com articles
Look for Similar Items by Category
- Books > History > Military > World War II > Personal Narratives
- Books > History > World
Look for Similar Items by Subject
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
