EP33 Sledgehammer and Big Shot

It's hardcore history. I first made the acquaintance of Henry Sledge after he got in touch with me, after we did a show where I had mentioned or quoted his dad and we stayed in touch since then. And I don't remember if he was already writing a book or just planning to or if he was in the middle of it, but he uh there was a book involved and I along with you know lots and lots and lots of other people he talked to uh enthusiastically encouraged him to continue on or to write the book. And so I also said when you write it uh or when it's done please come on the show and we'll we'll talk about it.

Now, if you don't know uh who Henry's dad is, first of all, his name is uh sometimes on the cover of the book uh or books that that he wrote, uh he'll be called EB Sledge, but his name was Eugene Sledge. Uh he's he's been made famous more since his death because one of the characters in HBO's uh series on the Pacific War dramatization is this guy. But uh like many other people, I became aware of him after uh his book with the old breed uh at Peloo in Okinawa uh first appeared in the 1980s. I don't remember when I read it, 83, 84, 85, somewhere in there.

And then you started seeing um this gentleman on a bunch of different uh documentaries and whatnot on the Pacific War. Um and so you got a chance to sort of get a feel for who the guy was. even in addition to the writing and he was just a really interesting deep um man that was such an a wonderful representation of um the various kind of people who end up in the military now of course still but even more so back in the day when uh everybody went I mean virtually everybody went when you had wars on where they're drafting the population uh it's a much larger cross-section of the male group of people than you were maybe getting when you're asking for volunteers, right? Although Eugene Sledge would have been first in line to volunteer.

In fact, uh he could have become an officer and instead, you know, was worried that the war was going to end too ...