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Zusatztext "A superb example of war reporting at its best." --From the Introduction by Mark Bowden "The book's secret is the simple secret of all good reporting--fidelity and detail." --Time Informationen zum Autor Richard Tregaskis was a writer and reporter. He received the Overseas Press Club's George Polk Award in 1964 for first-person reporting under hazardous circumstances. He died in 1973. Moana Tregaskis was a longtime journalist for The New York Times. Klappentext This celebrated classic gives a soldier's-eye-view of the Guadalcanal battles--crucial to World War II, the war that continues to fascinate us all, and to military history in general. Unlike some of those on Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, Richard Tregaskis volunteered to be there. An on-location news correspondent (at the time, one of only two on Guadalcanal), he lived alongside the soldiers: sleeping on the ground--only to be awoken by air raids--eating the sometimes meager rations, and braving some of the most dangerous battlefields of World War II. He more than once narrowly escaped the enemy's fire, and so we have this incisive and exciting inside account of the groundbreaking initial landing of U.S. troops on Guadalcanal. With a new Introduction by Mark Bowden--renowned journalist and author of Black Hawk Down--this edition of Guadalcanal Diary makes available once more one of the most important American works of the war. Chapter 1 APPROACH Sunday, July 26, 1942 This morning, it being Sunday, there were services on the port promenade. Benches had been arranged on the deck, facing a canvas backdrop on which a Red Cross flag was pinned. Father Francis W. Kelly of Philadelphia, a genial smiling fellow with a faculty for plain talk, gave the sermon. It was his second for the day. He had just finished the "first shift," which was for Catholics. This one was for Protestants. It was pleasant to stand and sing on the rolling deck with the blue panel of the moving sea, on our left, to watch. There we could see two others of our fleet of transports rolling over the long swells, nosing into white surf. The sermon dealt with duty, and was obviously pointed toward our coming landing somewhere in Japanese-held territory. Father Kelly, who had been a preacher in a Pennsylvania mining town and had a direct, simple way of speaking which was about right for the crowd of variously uniformed sailors and marines standing before him, pounded home the point. After the services, ironically, many of the men turned to the essential job of loading machine-gun belts. Walking around the deck in the bright morning sun, I had to step around lads sitting on the former shuffleboard court, using a gadget which belted the cartridges automatically. All you had to do was feed them in. The lads seemed quite happy at the job. One of them kept time with the clink of the belter. "One, two, three, another Jap for me," he said. Others tried other ideas. One was reminded of the song "Chattanooga Choo Choo," by the sound of the leader. He hummed a few bars of the tune. Another boy said, "Honorable bullet take honorable Jap honorable death. So solly." "I've got a Jap's name written on each bullet," offered another. "There's three generals among 'em." "Which one's for Tojo?" asked a buddy, offering to play straight man. "Oh, Hell, the first one's got his name on it," was the answer. This conversation, while it did not hit any stratosphere of wit, indicated one thing anyhow: that the lads here at least were relaxed and in high spirits. Probably the facts of full stomachs and clear hot sunlight, with a pleasant breeze, contributed somewhat to the psychology of the situation. I thought I might as well do a round-up on the morale situation aboard the ship, and so wandered through her splendid innards and t...
