World War II Books

When I was a kid middle school and high school I was fascinated by WWII books, especially first hand accounts of soldiers and journalists who survived the war and later wrote books describing their experiences.

Some of the best included Robert Leckie's Helmet For My Pillow and Audie Murphy's To Hell and Back. These were great books that I read and re-read in my youth. Over the last few years I have purchased them again (the original books that I bought were lost long ago) and discovered again why I loved them - they were gripping stories well told and rich with memorable characters.

One of the most best loved of all these novels that captivated me as a youth was Richard Tregaskis' Guadalcanal Diary, a first person telling of America's first offensive in the Pacific war against the Japanese. I remembered even 45 years later passages of Tregaskis' vivid description of this brutal fight which lasted from August 7, 1942 to February 1943. Whole passages were burned in my mind of his description of the aftermath of the Battle of Tenaru, the horrific night bombardments by the Japanese Navy, still sailing proudly and not yet defeated by American naval and air power.

This was a combined arms battle in which the US did not have full control of the seas. In fact, until the US Navy learned the night fighting techniques the Japanese had mastered, we were badly mauled in one engagement after another at sea; many allied warships were sunk in Iron Bottom Bay, the name that was given to the waters around Guadalcanal by US sailors and marines. It was also at night that the Japanese ran it's Tokyo Express, a pipeline of men and material reinforcing its troops on this miserable island. For a time, the US Navy even had to abandon the men of the 1st Marine Division on the island, for fear of being caught unloading supplies by marauding Japanese warships.

It was this uncertainty that Tregaskis' book so effectively depicted. Yes the marines were angry with the Navy for abandoning them in the early stages of the invasion, but that turned out to only be temporary. The fact was that America was not ready to go over to the offensive in the summer of 1942. We still did not have the forces, material or support ships needed to sustain offensive action in the Pacific at that time. Tregaskis' book made the reader feel the insecurities of these times so well, and that's what riveted me to the story.

I have looked high and low for this book because I wanted to read it again. It's been out of print but I found it on Amazon Books. It's a fast read, but reading it brought back more than old war stories; I saw a 13 year old kid in thick black glasses, buried in this book and marveling at the world of struggle and triumph that it conjured up.