Overview
The Battle of Peleliu was not a battle that garnered headlines during or after the war. Due to the high casualty rates and the fact that it occurred in the months following the successful invasion of France (D-Day in Normandy), the battle was not well known other than by those who actually fought in the Pacific Theater. Because of this, the battle was overshadowed by the ultimate victory in the Pacific by American forces. However, two very well written and critically acclaimed memoirs prevented this from happening. Helmet for My Pillow: From Paris Island to the Pacific written by enlisted marine Robert Leckie and With the Old Breed which was written by enlisted marine Eugene B. Sledge both paint a vivid picture of the fighting that occurred on the island. Their work would eventually be the foundation for the popular Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg produced series The Pacific (a clip of the episode of the show depicting Peleliu is on the home page of this exhibit), which brought to life the horrors that the Marines of the 1st Division faced during the battle. The comination of the two memoirs and the series do an exceptional job of bringing to life what very well could have ended up a forgotten battle. The below video records the experiences/thoughts of Marines from both Leckie and Sledge's company on the fighting of Peleliu. The interviews were conducted prior to the making of The Pacific. The interviews demonstrate the frustration the marine veterans had that not many people really understood how brutal the fighting on Peleliu was.
PFC Robert Leckie
Leckie was a young marine from New Jersey who experienced fighting on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester prior to Peleliu. An avid writer, Leckie wrote about his experiences throughout the Pacific until he was wounded during the fighting to take the airfield on Peleliu. His accounts of the Battle of Peleliu give us a window into the brutal fighting that took place. Leckie wanted to make sure the fighting that took place on Peleliu (and the Pacific as a whole) was remembered for how it was: brutal and costly. He did not trust the military commanders/historians to make people aware of how bloody the fighting was and the sacrifices of the men he served with.[1]
Corporal Eugene Sledge
While both Leckie and Sledge fought on Peleliu, Sledge offers a different perspective than Leckie. Peleliu is the first combat that Sledge saw during the war while Leckie had already fought on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. Furthermore, Leckie never made it past the airfield on Peleliu due to being wounded. Sledge experienced fighting during all the phases of the fighting on the island (and the rest of the 1st Marine Division engagements for the remainder of the war). Like Leckie, Sledge described the fighting as the worst of his experience in the Pacific Theater. He also noted how the Guadalcanal and Gloucester veterans commented on the sheer tenacity of the fighting on the first two days of the Battle of Peleliu.[2] One of the most important observations that Sledge made about the fighting on Peleliu is the shift in Japanese tactics. Sledge's firsthand account allows us to see how taxing the new Japanese strategy of attrition/"bleeding the enemy white" was.
[1]Mark di Lonno, HBO Series Illuminates N.J. Marine's Book on World War II Experience (The Star-Ledger, February 21, 2010), http://blog.nj.com/njv_mark_diionno/2010/02/hbo_series_shines_light_on_nj.html.
[2]E.B. Sledge, With the old breed, at Peleliu and Okinawa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 82-83.
[2]E.B. Sledge, With the old breed, at Peleliu and Okinawa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 82-83.