Description
Book SynopsisA 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.The Devil Dogs' of K Company, 3/5 Marines, were part of the legendary first Marine Division. 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. 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.'Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do
Trade Review PRAISE FOR DEVIL DOGS
‘Exquisite detail…subtly textured… the Pacific War is rendered in painful and poignant detail… A narrative that reads like war in real time. It's war unplugged: cruelty, destruction, pain, but also love, kindness and camaraderie. I cried for these men and then thanked God that I will never have to send my son to war.’ Times
‘Brilliant… A chronicle that is part Hollwood film-script, but never less than vigorously researched history. David has a claim to be our finest military historian… Superb’
’Daily Telegraph
‘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. The result is a captivating chronicle of the war in the Pacific’
Publishers Weekly
PRAISE FOR SBS: SILENT WARRIORS
A SUNDAY TIMES #4 BESTSELLER
A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021
‘This is a terrific book, written with all the gusto, thrills and heady excitement these SBS operations richly deserve. It really is one of the most enjoyable histories I’ve read in many a year’
James Holland, Daily Telegraph, five stars
‘It’s an extraordinary trawl through the archives, backed up with diaries and interviews; an accomplished act of storytelling… David has written a book that often gladdens the heart, but also makes you think about the nature of sacrifice’
Times
‘A brilliant account of how the SBS was born from wartime needs, and just how much the organisation and its affiliated units were able to achieve in those early years’
Daily Mail
