Devil Dogs

King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan

Saul David

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781639362004
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Award-winning historian Saul David reveals the searing experience of the DevilDogs of World War II and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne. The "Devil Dogs"of King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines—part of the legendary 1stMarine Division—were among the first American soldiers to take the offensiveinWorld World II—and also the last. They landed on the beaches ofGuadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1942—thefirst US groundoffensive of the war—and were present when Okinawa, Japan's mostsoutherlyprefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June1945. Inbetween they fought in the "Green Hell" of Cape Gloucester on theisland of New Britain, andacross the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the PalauIslands, a campaign described by oneKing Company veteran as "thirty days ofthe meanest, around-the-clock slaughter thatdesperate men can inflict on eachother." Ordinary men from very differentbackgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlementsacross America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take onthevictorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective, "utterlyruthless and treacherous"soldiers in world history—and defeat it. Thisis the story of how theydid just that and, in the process, forged bonds ofbrotherhood that still survive today. Remarkably, the company contained anunusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs providethe color, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winninghistorianSaul David sets the searing experience of theDevil Dogs into the broadercontext of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Illustrations
• Maps
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: ‘I Would’ve Followed Him Anywhere’
• Chapter 2: ‘Where I’m Going Will Either Make or Break Me’
• Chapter 3: ‘Will I Run? Will I Be Afraid?’
• Chapter 4: ‘You Think We’ll Ever Get Off This Damned Island?’
• Chapter 5: The Goettge Patrol
• Chapter 6: ‘Boy, They Were a Sight for Sore Eyes!’
• Chapter 7: ‘A Pesthole That Reeked of Death, Struggle and Disease’
• Chapter 8: ‘Thirty Hours of Pure Hell’
• Chapter 9: ‘It Was Just a Crazy Thing To Do’
• Chapter 10: ‘We’ve Got the Bastards Licked!’
• Chapter 11: ‘Saviours of Australia’
• Chapter 12: ‘The Trick Is to Run Just Fast Enough’
• Chapter 13: New Arrivals
• Chapter 14: Planning for Action
• Chapter 15: Green Hell
• Chapter 16: Suicide Creek
• Chapter 17: ‘So Long, Dutch’
• Chapter 18: Walt’s Ridge
• Chapter 19: Seek and Destroy
• Chapter 20: Operation Appease
• Chapter 21: ‘The Sickness, the Rain, the Spider’
• Chapter 22: ‘Whose Bright Idea Was This Anyway?’
• Chapter 23: Changing Places
• Chapter 24: Operation Stalemate
• Chapter 25: Sledgehammer
• Chapter 26: ‘They Really Put On a Show’
• Chapter 27: ‘This Is Going to Be a Short One, a Quickie’
• Chapter 28: ‘This Is It, Boys!’
• Chapter 29: ‘Move It! Move It!’
• Chapter 30: ‘They’re Nip Tanks!’
• Chapter 31: ‘Everywhere Shells Flashed Like Giant Firecrackers’
• Chapter 32: ‘I Never Saw Such Agonized Expressions’
• Chapter 33: ‘I’m Hit! Christ, I’m Hit!’
• Chapter 34: ‘Put the Man Out of His Misery!’
• Chapter 35: ‘Shit, They’re Behind Us!’
• Chapter 36: Hillbilly and Ack-Ack
• Chapter 37: The Lucky Few
• Chapter 38: ‘We Were Worn Down and Sobered’
• Chapter 39: Where Next?
• Chapter 40: ‘The Road to Certain Victory’
• Chapter 41: ‘In Some Ways It Was Bigger Than D-Day’
• Chapter 42: Love Day
• Chapter 43: ‘We Were Euphoric, Undisciplined, and Stupid’
• Chapter 44: ‘I Burned the Whole Village to the Ground’
• Chapter 45: ‘Hit the Deck and Dig In!’
• Chapter 46: ‘We Gotta Get the Hell Outta Here’
• Chapter 47: ‘Hell’s Own Cesspool’
• Chapter 48: ‘Wild-eyed Expressions of Shock and Fear’
• Chapter 49: The Final Stretch
• Chapter 50: End Game
• Chapter 51: ‘We Sure Have a Lot to Be Thankful for’
• Postscript: ‘We’d Forged a Bond That Time Would Never Erase’
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright