Shame about the narrator

I enjoyed that this piece wasn't written up by a dyed in the wool author,instead it was written almost like a monologue,warts and all.
I imagine George Peto would have been a fantastic story teller and great company for an evening.
The ghost writer is almost surplus to requirements as George's memory appears razor sharp.
Unfortunately far and away the worst problem was the very very poor narrator.
Initially I thought it was a very early ai programme it is that poor,until I checked,and finding that it's an actual human made it considerably worse.
Poor narrator is one thing, poor narrator attempting to mimic other nations accents,very very very badly, I'm afraid is awful.

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I really enjoyed this book. What a life story.

I thought it was quite slow to begin with and the narrator took some getting used to. But once George got into the Pacific it really took off.

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Amazing,Brilliant,Fantastic!!

brilliant book,the whole time I was drawn to it not once did I loose interest,would definitely recommend 100%

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An amazing biography if a real hero.

One of the best Pacific war biographies ever written.
This book will make you laugh, cry and be amazed at the shocking experiences this incredible guy has been though in his life. Narration excellent too.

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Interesting, But Not The Best

After reading Eugene Sledge's memoir of his Pacific campaigns, particularly his time fighting on Peleliu, I thought it would be interesting to read about another U.S Marine's time on that God forsaken and often overlooked island that formed part of the Pacific campaign of World War II. Seeing this book had good reviews and included that island as well as Okinawa, I purchased it. If nothing else, it would provide more, and sometimes overlapping, commentary on combat on those two particular islands and create a more complete picture.

I'll cut to the chase here, I was somewhat disappointed with this memoir compared to Eugene Sledge's 'With The Old Breed'. I found it lacked the more verbose visceral descriptions of the horrific conditions that Sledge experienced. In many ways for me, it was the conditions and how it impacted the human spirit that Sledge put across so well. Sure, George Peto was certainly a brave Marine and fought well. However, despite the often vivid combat accounts, I felt his writing lacked the impact of Sledge's. In particular, I felt Peto's writing about Peleliu less brutal and harrowing than Sledge's account. It's not that Peto's memoir was somehow bad, it just lacked as much a sense of the terror and misery written about in 'With The Old Breed'. Sledge's telling of his time on Peleliu has left an indelible mark on me that I've not found any other memoir to quite achieve in the same way.

Sledge and Peto were very different men, and perhaps this is part of the reason their experiences are written about differently. Peto, a poorly educated, rough and ready sort of kid coming from a dirt poor family whose father was an abusive alcoholic, contrasts the intelligent, well balanced frail boy who was more a thinker than a natural fighter. Their very different upbringing led to them seeing the horrors of war in slightly different ways. Sledge was a man who followed orders, didn't drink and wouldn't break the rules. On the other hand, Peto would regularly get drunk when he had a sniff at alcohol, even building their own still with his friends to brew questionable alcohol on the battlefield. In addition, Peto would often speak of women and his use of language when describing them often left me cold, his prose sometimes on the immature side. For example, he describes one native girl on Cape Gloucester as having, "large jugs," or words to that effect. Although he might well have thought that way as a sex starved 21 year old at the time, his choice of language when recounting those thoughts in his 90's, I found to be somewhat inappropriate, something that Peter Margaritis who put the book together really ought to have exercised some professionalism and edited. Further, his description of the native American code talkers he knew was poorly worded. They were "Indians" and their language was "gibberish" according to Peto. Similarly, the Japanese were "Little bastards" etc. Again, I understand both the different way people spoke back then and how a combat veteran may feel about the Japanese, but I still felt it crude to use such language today. In addition, his focus on sex was too much at times and I felt it was perhaps a product of his upbringing and background. As mentioned, Sledge was a more introvert, thoughtful man who never mentioned chasing women while on liberty and certainly had no time to remind the reader about the lack of female company while in combat.

In addition, I felt this book spent way too much time detailing Peto's childhood. Now, I fully appreciate that to understand the man, one often has to present some background. In the case of 22 on Peleliu, over two hours of the book was dedicated to all the exploits he got up to in the depression as a kid. Frankly, many of the things he appeared to recount with relish, were things I'd have edited out of a book or summarized. It was probably sufficient to explain that he had a hard time as a kid, with an abusive father, a subjugated and ineffective mother and did some things he wasn't proud of. Although Peto never lacked courage, even exhibiting a degree of foolhardiness in his youth, his personality traits didn't endear him to me. it might have been this lack of sensitivity that made him stronger mentally during combat. I think even Sledge alluded to something along those lines in his memoir.

What I did find interesting, was being able to fill in gaps in elements of the Peleliu campaign. Peto was perhaps only 300 yards to Sledge's left when coming ashore on that coral island and I was fascinated to compare their progress and the different challenges they faced at the same time. Now, what i need to find is an account of that landing from someone in the 7th Marines who came ashore to Sledge's right father along the beach.

After reading Sledge's memoir, I subsequently read R.V Burgen's book, 'Islands of The Damned' to provide perspective from another Marine in Sledge's company. That book, too, is one I'd recommend and is written by a man who didn't try to bed women whenever on liberty, instead marrying the girl he met in Melbourne and perhaps got drunk once or twice when off duty and recuperating between campaigns. Burgen's memoir isn't as visceral as Sledge's but it is a worthy companion to 'With The Old Breed'. Further, I found Burgen's account of his time on Cape Gloucester to be a little more focused on the combat rather than chasing native girls.

Peto saw plenty of combat on Okinawa, perhaps more than Sledge, as Sledge was a 60mm mortar man and not up front with the rifle men most of the time. Here, again, is where Sledge's prose paints a more deprived and miserable picture of the conditions on Okinawa and some of the night actions. I'll always remember how Sledge's fox hole at one point on Okinawa allowed him to see a vista of utter destruction and horror, lit up at night by occasional green flares that cast eerie shadows on the grotesque decomposing corpses littering the battlefield. One corpse in particular, a U.S Marine sat in a crater a little distance away facing Sledge, would slowly rot over days, his skeletal fingers still grasping his weapon, his ghoulish features decaying into a ghastly scull. These sorts of accounts of the unspeakable horrors left me far more impacted than simple tales of combat. Perhaps it's just me and my own sensibilities that much prefer Sledge's writing, I'm not entirely sure.

Interestingly for me, as I read the Okinawa campaign from Peto, there was a situation where I'm sure Sledge talked about and it might have been that those two Marines, at that point, were just yards from each other. After the Okinawa campaign had ended, Peto remained on Okinawa while Sledge shipped out to China and his comrade, Burgen, went home to the United States. It was interesting to hear what happened after most Marines left the island, as it added more to what went on during the aftermath of the battle.

So, yes, I found Peto's memoir interesting and it added to my overall picture of the battles for Peleliu and Okinawa in particular. However, as a memoir of combat, it doesn't provide the reader with quite the sense of the filth and misery just being in those places caused and as such doesn't paint as complete a picture of the combat endured by all those involved.

Oh, one production niggle I had that I found mildly irritating. There was some sort of audio issue, a very faint background one that sounded like a cricket was chirping away each time the narrator spoke a few words. At first I actually thought it was some critter that had crept into the recording studio and was hiding in some cabinet or something. However, it seemed to be some sort of artefact of the recording, perhaps a tiny vibration on the microphone stand or within the mic itself. It wasn't always present, there were long sections, likely different recording sessions, where I didn't hear the faint cricket. Many listeners will not likely notice this very faint background sound, so it's by no means a deal breaker for choosing this title, just something I noticed that was a little tiresome. One of those things that is so minor you don't notice it at all to start with, but if you listen on full cupped headphones as I do, then you may start to pick it up, and once you can hear it, it will niggle at you.

Overall, 22 on Peleliu is an interesting account of combat, but it's not the best in my opinion. Check out the aforementioned titles and Eugene Sledge's book, in particular, if you want better.

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