Overview

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From Sunday Times bestselling historian Saul David, the dramatic tale of the first American troops to take the fight to the enemy in the Second World War, and also the last. The ‘Devil Dogs’ of K Company, 3/5 Marines, were part of the legendary first Marine Division. They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1942 – the first US ground offensive of the war – and were present when Okinawa, Japan’s most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. In between they fought in the ‘Green Hell’ of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, a campaign described by one K Company veteran as ‘thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other.’ Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective soldiers in world history – and defeat it. This is the story of how they did just that and, in the process, forged bonds of brotherhood that still survive today. Remarkably, the company contained an unusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs provide the colour, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of K Company into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne. Gripping, intimate, authoritative and far-reaching, this is a unique and incredibly personal narrative of war. Saul David’s previous book SBS -Silent Warriors was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart in the 35th and 36th week of 2021.

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9780008395773

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Reviews

PRAISE FOR SAUL DAVID'S 2021 BOOK, SBS: SILENT WARRIORS A SUNDAY TIMES #4 BESTSELLER A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'It is incredibly refreshing to read of these fabulously daring missions: of men of astonishing courage blowing up bridges, surveying invasion beaches, sinking ships in harbour and making clandestine rendezvous with secret agents - all by canoe and midget submarine ...This is a terrific book, written with all the gusto, thrills and heady excitement these SBS operations richly deserve. It really is one of the most enjoyable histories I've read in many a year' James Holland, Daily Telegraph, five stars 'It's an extraordinary trawl through the archives, backed up with diaries and interviews; an accomplished act of storytelling ... This is a book about big personalities, adventurers and inventors ... An authorised history of a secret unit has to record not only the bravery of its unacknowledged warriors - which David has done with style - but also make a case for its strategic importance ... David has written a book that often gladdens the heart, but also makes you think about the nature of sacrifice' The Times 'A brilliant account of how the SBS was born from wartime needs, and just how much the organisation and its affiliated units were able to achieve in those early years' Daily Mail 'Riveting ... Saul David has shown great skill in pulling the disparate threads of unit reports into a cohesive story. The knowledge of those involved, their bravery and jeopardy, will grip the general reader' Spectator 'An absolute must-read if you are a fan of derring-do and Andy McNab. I am going to be telling everyone to buy it' Rob Rinder, Talk Radio

Author Information

Saul David is a historian, broadcaster and the author of several critically acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction. His history books have been shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature and variously named a Waterstones Military History Book of the Year and an Amazon History Book of the Year. He is Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham.

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