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

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A well wrutten and sholarly work, but the seemingly endless biographical details of the participants become somewhat tiresome, and one bottle seems very much like another. David decided to tell the story of the Pacific this way – about one unit fighting all the way through – following the example of Stephen Ambrose’s celebrated Band of Brothers, which looked at the progress of a unit from the D-Day beaches through to victory against Germany. 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. Gripping, intimate, authoritative and far-reaching, this is a unique and incredibly personal narrative of war. But above all there were the enemy and the enemy’s fighting code of Bushido, which places death with honour above life.

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. Exquisite detail…subtly textured… the Pacific War is rendered in painful and poignant detail… A narrative that reads like war in real time. 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. 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. 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.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.

We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. Saul David’s previous book SBS -Silent Warriors was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart in the 35th and 36th week of 2021. There is the shock one marine feels at seeing another pulling the gold teeth from a Japanese corpse, and the even greater shock of a marine deciding, until strongly advised otherwise, not to take a severed Japanese hand home with him as a souvenir.In Devil Dogs, award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of K Company into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U. 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.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective soldiers in world history - and defeat it. In Devil Dogs , award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of K Company into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin.Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. In between they fought in the ‘Green Hell’ of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, a campaign described by one K Company veteran as ‘thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other. A harrowing account of the USMC King Company as they fight the Imperial Japanese Army from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942 - 1945. 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.