Devil Dogs: A New History of the Second World War from the Sunday Times Bestselling Author of SBS Saul David

Product Information

David chose this unit of men because, with inevitably massive personnel changes, it was in action from the beginning to the end of the Pacific war: from Guadacanal, on the outer limit of Japanese expansion and a relatively short hop from the north coast of Australia, in August 1942, to Okinawa in the summer of 1945 via New Britain, off New Guinea, and Peleliu, east of the Philippines. Although their own bravery is conspicuous – officers and men will expose themselves in the open to try to flush out snipers, for example – there remains a sense of astonishment that the enemy continues to go on its own suicide missions when it knows the battle is lost. Specialising as they did in amphibious operations, the US Marines played a vital part in taking the fight directly to the enemy, as one heavily fortified and unforgiving island after another had to be flushed clean of Japanese soldiers as the Americans made their advance towards the home islands of Japan. Absolutely frightening account of how these men became embroiled in the intense fight with the Japanese military forces to reconquer all the territory lost.

David recounts in this stirring saga the WWII campaigns of Company K, the 1st Marine Division unit … Skillfully plumbing the rich array of firsthand accounts by Company K veterans, David vividly describes pillbox raids, accidental deaths, and hellish jungle conditions, and draws incisive portraits of Marine officers and their command decisions. A Times History Book of the Year 2022 A Daily Telegraph History Book of the Year From Sunday Times bestselling historian Saul David, the dramatic tale of the first American troops to take the fight to the enemy in the Second World War, and also the last. It is like all those films you have seen of the Pacific war; but this is a scholarly work, and the copious footnotes refer the reader to the accounts showing that these remarkable events really happened.

It covers all the same stuff in Ambrose's Pacific, from Guadalcanal, to New Britain, Peliu, Iwa Jima and Okinawa, with a brief mention of the naval battles. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. A Times History Book of the Year 2022From Sunday Times bestselling historian Saul David, the dramatic tale of the first American troops to take the fight to the enemy in the Second World War, and also the last. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1942 – the first US ground offensive of the war – and were present when Okinawa, Japan’s most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945.

The difficult mountainous ground, filth, squalor, smell of rotting corpses, the humidity, the endless artillery and mortar attacks made it one of the hardest campaigns the Amercican forces had to endure. A harrowing account of the USMC King Company as they fight the Imperial Japanese Army from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942 - 1945. He draws heavily on the memoir of Eugene B Sledge, or “Sledgehammer”, who saw most of the fighting that David describes and who became, effectively, the unit’s official chronicler.They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1942 - the first US ground offensive of the war - and were present when Okinawa, Japan's most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. Saul David's previous book SBS -Silent Warriors was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart in the 35th and 36th week of 2021. For K/3/5, or King Company, the next war was a far longer, bloodier, tougher one, with a high rate of casualties and for the men concerned more than a fair share of horror.