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Title: A Very Readable Lie
Review: William Manchester was NOT a rifleman. He gives the reader the impression that he was at all the invasions mentioned when in fact he was on Okinawa and served as an "intelligence" type. He claims "trumatic lesions of the brain", but gives little info on how that happened. He was a REMF ("rear echelon ..."). The book borrows liberally from other WWII accounts. It is not HIS story but a compendium of what other Marines went through.If you want to read a much better, closer to the fray report on WWII Marines, read E B Sledge's, With The Old Breed At Pelilu and Okinawa.I have a letter from Dr. Sledge where he lambasts Manchester's revisions history of his own military service as "bunk." Sledge's book is used at the Naval War College while Manchester's is not - says something.Yes, it does read well. But it's not what it is supposed to be. It's not a memoir - it's mostly a fraud.
