With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

The celebrated 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, winner of eight Emmy Awards, was based on two classic books about the War in the Pacific, Helmet for My Pillow and With The Old Breed. Audible Studios, in partnership with Playtone, the production company co-owned by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and creator of the award-winning HBO series Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific, as well as the HBO movie Game Change, has created new recordings of these memoirs, narrated by the stars of the miniseries. James Badge Dale (who portrayed Robert Leckie) and Joseph Mazello (who played Eugene Sledge) bring all the passion and emotion of their riveting television performances to these new audio productions.

With the Old Breed is a modern classic of military history AND has been called “one of the most important personal accounts of war that I have ever read,” by distinguished historian John Keegan. Author E. B. Sledge served with the First Marine Division during World War II, and his first-hand narrative is unsurpassed in its sincerity. Sledge’s experience shows in this fascinating account of two of the most harrowing and pivotal island battles of the Pacific theater.

On Peleliu and Okinawa, the action was extremely fierce. Amidst oppressive heat and over land obliterated by artillery shells, the combat raged ferociously. Casualties were extreme on both sides, and by the time the Americans had broken through at Okinawa, more than 62,000 Japanese soldiers were dead. Against military policy, Sledge scribbled notes and jammed them into his copy of the New Testament. Those notes form the backbone of what Navy Times said “has been called the best World War II memoir of an enlisted man.”

BONUS AUDIO: Tom Hanks, one of the executive producers, has written and narrated an original introduction to With the Old Breed where he describes his appreciation for the book’s author, the narrators, and the soldiers who had fought in the cauldron of the Pacific Theater during World War II.