The HBO miniseries "The Pacific" was largely based on those two books. The video is "good", if you can use that word about such a subject. A couple scenes in particular. The books however convey a world beyond anything my feeble vocabulary could describe. How could anything be worse than fighting the Nazis in Europe? Try the Japanese in the Pacific, in spades. How can a book evoke such a sense of pervasive putrid rotting death? The heat, the rain, the flies, the mud, the death.


My son picked "With the Old Breed" off the CNO's book list for a summer Academy assignment. Thought I'd read it along with him as it had been on my list of books to read. It was so "good"/awful, I grabbed "Helmet". After reading those, I would definitely be checking the Pilot box and not the Grunt box on the application.


I was going to write they were "manly men". Doesn't even remotely do those heros justice.