Eisenhower had a relationship with Patton for many years.  In the early 1920s, they worked together to come up with advanced uses of tanks.  Their relationship in many ways kept Patton fighting in Europe even after Patton’s “slapping incidents”.  I believe that keeping an aggressive commander like Patton was a smart decision even if he was a public relations liability at times.

There are multiple decisions that Eisenhower was criticized for during the war; however, Eisenhower never lost focus of his objective of crushing Nazi Germany.  One of the things that many wanted him to do was try to quickly get to Berlin near the end of the war.  Eisenhower argued that there was no military reason to head towards Berlin when the Russians were 20 miles away and his forces were 200 miles out.  It would have cost the Allies 100,000 additional casualties without any objective because according to the agreement between the Russians, British and Americans, Berlin would be handed over to the Russians at the end of the war.  His decision was right on based on the Russians taking 400,000 casualties taking Berlin.

Eisenhower was a soldier’s general.  He would spend time walking among the frontline troops asking them about themselves.  To quote the book, “When his son, John, asked for advice as he began his military career, Eisenhower did not admonish him to study hard, to court favors from influential people, or to be fearless in battle.  He told his son to take care of his men.”  That sums up why his men loved him and why he was so easily elected president.

After looking at a lot of Italy travel planning books, Fodor’s Essential Italy: Rome, Florence, Venice & the Top Spots in Between is the one I went with. We carried this book everywhere. It doesn’t have a lot of details about any one location within a city, but it has plenty to whet your appetite. We used the book to plan some of our days and to make sure we didn’t miss anything big. The book breaks out each region of a city with the highlights in that region. This is very useful for efficiency if you are someone who doesn’t like to backtrack. It still takes quite a bit of planning to make the most of your time. I am someone that likes to plan routes so I had a mental picture of the order and direction we would take to hit the most important things on my list.

The book also has some restaurant recommendations that we used a few times. Every restaurant we tried was excellent. Note: we never had a bad meal in Italy so, the Fodor’s recommendations could have been random and I bet the food would have still been good. Note #2: truffles taste like dirt. I don’t like pasta with truffles.  To me, truffles taste like dirt.

On the sites to see Fodor’s highlights certain “attractions” and when we were near one we made sure we got to that highlighted site when we could. This is my favorite book for European travel planning (at least for Italy travel planning).

Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates by Martin Caidin was one of a few Indiana Jones books written after the Indiana Jones movies came out. This book follows the adventures of Indy as he takes on an evil global organization bent on world power. Indy starts investigating heists involving some type of air power. Remember this is the early 1900s so it is very mysterious. All in all, this not a great book, but an okay read.

I just cannot get into Dispatches by Michael Herr. Michael Herr is a reporter in Vietnam in the 60s. This book is his perspective on what is happening over there, what troops are thinking and the general attitude in Vietnam. The book appears to be written using stream of consciousness. I just couldn’t follow. It is supposed to be one of the best Vietnam War books, but not for me. I will hopefully pick this one up again sometime and finish it because I hate leaving books unfinished, but not in the near future.

The six men made famous were Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, Jack Bradley, Harlon Block, Mike Strank, and Rene Gagnon.  Of these 6 men, only 3 survived the battle and Jack Bradley was hit by shrapnel.

I have seen the Clint Eastwood movie and it was pretty good.  I still prefer the book over the movie though.

As Sledge heads to Okinawa for the next invasion, they can’t help but wonder statistically what their odds of making it are.  On Okinawa, the soldiers had to deal with mud that at times could be up to knee depth.  Carrying ammo to the frontlines was a real nightmare.  There were also times that the fighting was so intense that marine dead had to stay where they fell.  This is not the practice of the Marine Corp and you can tell the agony of the other Marines that had to leave their comrades lying in those positions.

One interesting thing was the Japanese’s use of something called a spigot mortar.  The spigot mortar is a 320mm mortar equipped to fire a 675 pound shell.  They are incoming with a “terrible screaming sound”.  Another interesting item is that there were incidents of the Japanese throwing back American grenades because replacement Marines were never trained in the proper use.  A shocking number of the casualties in the 5th Marines were replacements who were taken down before anyone even got to know their names.

Sledge wrote this book from notes that he kept in a bible during his campaigns.  This book is an intense read outlining the true feelings and thoughts of a combat soldier in the Pacific Theater.

One of the new things I learned is that a Marine regiment includes combat engineers, Seabees and pioneers.  I’ve of course heard of combat engineers and Seabees, but had not heard of pioneers.  Pioneers are trained as combat troops, but their primary job is loading and unloading supplies.  This is critically important with a beach landing when each combat soldier is limited to no more than 100 pounds.  One of the critical supplies is water.  The Marines used old oil drums to carry water.  Unfortunately, the drums were not cleaned properly and many Marines ended up with stomach problems from the water.  One would think that the Marines would have learned their lesson; however, this is one of the things that E. B. Sledge also complains about in With the Old Breed.

There was a huge break at Tarawa.  The Japanese commander, Admiral Shibasaki and his entire staff were killed on the first day of the battle by a naval barrage that was called in by a pilot flying over the battlefield.  It is estimated that if Admiral Shibasaki had been alive on D-Day, there would have been a counterattack that quite possible would have annihilated the marines on their limited beachhead.

Four Medals of Honor were awarded at the battle of Tarawa, three posthumously: Staff Sargaent William J. Bordelon, Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman, 1st Lieutenant William Deane Hawkins, and Colonel David M. Shoup.  Colonel Shoup was the only one that was not posthumously.  It is also interesting that 50% of the Marine dead occurred in the water attempting to reach the beaches.