Summary:
William Manchester has been an historian in the public eye since his association with John F. Kennedy, before and after his death (Portrait of a President, John F. Kennedy in Profile, before, and Death of a President, after). His most lengthy work, a biography and history of Winston Churchill, is still in progress. With biographies of H.L. Mencken and Douglas MacArthur and general histories of the United States from 1932 to 1972, (The Glory and the Dream) and the European renaissance (A World Lit only by Fire) under his belt, he is one of the most popular historians still writing today. In Goodbye Darkness, Manchester writes of his personal experiences during World War II in the Pacific theatre of operations, and the experiences of the Marines in general. Goodbye Darkness is important reading material for anyone interested in understanding the nature of the World War II American soldier. Manchester's writing style falls about halfway between the elegance of John Keegan and the tough-guy prose of Stephen Ambrose. Flashes of both appear in Goodbye Darkness
A childhood divided
Manchester was the son of a World War I Marine veteran, and grew up in the shadow of what he considers one of the most charismatic people he's ever met (and Manchester has since met most of the powerful countries' leaders), his father. Manchester enlisted in the Marines after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, endured basic training at Parris Island, and after a brief try at officer school, was shipped out to Guadalcanal to begin his Marine career in earnest as a Non-commissioned officer, a Sergeant.
This is Manchester's first real opportunity to reminisce about his childhood and adolescence. There were tensions involved in being the child of a mixed marriage (Yankee father, Rebel mother). The Southern spur towards gentlemanliness conflicted with the Yankee aggression and induced paralysis in young William, making him the target for any bully who needed to show he had the right stuff. There were also tensions in being the son of a severely disabled father. In ill health and with the use of his left arm only, William's father nevertheless provided for their small family until his death, when William was 18 and attending Amherst College.
Even before his father's death, William felt a tremendous affinity for the Marine Corps, the ardor of which his father tried to dampen. The mythology surrounding the Corps has been built up over time, through their performance in pivotal battles (in the Argonne forest in World War I, in the Spanish American war, and in countless minor conflicts in Central America) and due to their legendary press corps (apocrypha has it that for every fighting Marine, there were two press agents behind him, writing of his exploits). After his father's death, William welcomed the thought of joining the Corps and subsuming his personality into the greater whole of the Marine Corps.
It was only after his combat experience that he realized that there is no greater whole, and that the whole legend surrounding the Corps counts for very little when you're on outpost duty on the line. Disillusionment was long in coming, however.
Harrowing pre-war experiences
Before going into combat, Manchester enjoyed a few brief months of relative freedom. He spent this time trying desperately to rid himself of what he considered a millstone around his neck: his virginity. Re-reading his descriptions of his two attempts to "get laid", I am still astonished by his candor and total lack of the need to appear dignified to the public. Manchester is to blame for my occasional nightmares involving Murphy beds that won't stay down.
The Pacific War revisited
To understand his own role in a part of World War II that is often overshadowed by the European conflict, Manchester visited all the major battle areas of the Pacific theatre of operations: Pearl Harbour, Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa, Peleliu, The Phillipines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
His brief tour of Pearl Harbor is full of wry observations. The PR film he saw seems to suggest that Pearl Harbor was actually a great victory for the Navy. But out of 176 anti-aircraft weapons, only a handful were manned and firing. Most of the Navy personnel were sleeping off hangovers. Ammunition for the AA weapons was locked away for fear that it would "get dusty". The attack was not or shouldn't have been a surprise for upper brass at Pearl Harbor, yet unaccountably, leave was not cancelled for Saturday night, and no special precautions were taken. Manchester's comment was that the professionals had screwed it up, and now it was up to the civilians to pull their fat from the fire.
His account jumps back and forth in time, from 1943-1945 to 1978 (when he visited the battlefields). His narrative usually tells us how he gets to these sometimes remote areas and then leaps back into the fray of battle, recounting a banzai charge here, an amphibious landing through a hail of bullets there. The battle scenes are gripping, showing just how close the Marines were to losing at Guadalcanal, and how that battle was pivotal to winning in New Guinea, and in turn how that turned the tide in the Pacific and put the Japanese military on the defensive.
The waste of life on Tarawa and Peleliu is explored and deplored by Manchester, who compares the waste of life there to the Battle of the Bulge. Not exactly a fair comparison, as the Battle of the Bulge was a defensive action, and Tarawa and Peleliu offensive actions. More appropriate would be to compare it favourably to the battle for the Hurtgen forest, taken at heavy loss in a frontal attack.
Fighting in the Pacific theatre was extremely rigorous, and Manchester does a great job of making us feel the stupefying tiredness in sitting in a ship offshore, waiting to land on a defended beach, or trying to dig a foxhole from coral, or hacking your way along the Kokoda trail in New Guinea. War is hard work. Manchester lets us know. The casual history buff will also find Manchester's views and opinions about the Pacific conflict good reading. There are also haunting images of horror, casually referred to, like the man in his unit last seen sitting astride a tank, firing his M1 into a pillbox and happily singing:
I'm a Brown man born, and a Brown man bred
and when I die I'll be a Brown man dead
He writes also of his own demons. The nightmares that haunt him, and that have haunted him since he threw away his .45 revolver after Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968. A steady feature of his nightmares is a younger version of himself, "The Sergeant", bitter and cynical, embodying all of Manchester's negative qualities. As Manchester's journey to the battlefields continues and he revisits the horrors of war once more, the Sergeant is an indicator of his growing confusion. Throughout, Manchester attempts to answer the great question, "Why?" Why did people risk their lives in these conflicts? Why did people knowingly stride up beaches to their almost certain wounding and possible death?
It is fascinating to watch Manchester come to grips with these questions.
Well worth your time.
Shortcomings:
It's not until you reach the end of the Manchester's book that you realize that he's tricked you, a little bit. Way back in his discussion of the landings on Tarawa, he relates his experiences with seawalls and the way they both offer protection to landing Marines and hold up an advance. His encounter with seawalls occurred on Oruku, he says. It's not until the end of the book that you realize that Manchester wasn't on Tarawa, and that he's speaking of part of Okinawa, where all of Manchester's fighting took place.
Other personal stories about the first time he killed a man, and about his shootout with a Japanese sniper (both which took place on Okinawa) are interwoven into his discussions of other battles.
The problem is that we've been given the impression that Manchester was at all these battles; Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Okinawa. In fact, he was not. He served for seven months on Guadalcanal, but did not fight. He never saw action on Tarawa, and his combat took place solely in a two month period on Okinawa. In no way is this criticism meant to belittle Manchester's combat experience, but we are misled.
So was Mordecai Richler. Manchester's story about the new officer suicidally trying to get soldiers he doesn't know to follow him over the seawall made it into Writers on World War II, a collection of writings on World War II edited by Canadian writer Mordecai Richler. It's placed in the 1943 section (the book is arranged chronologically), which is when the Tarawa invasion occurred, not in 1945.
Spreading these personal stories throughout the text without saying when they happened involves some pretty serious "legerdemain", in my opinion, and it deserves more than a throwaway paragraph at the end of a fine book. One star off for this lapse.
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