Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific - R. V. Burgin, William Marvel Audiobook

Written by R. V. Burgin, William Marvel
Read by Sean Runnette
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Tantor Media
Release date: March 7, 2012
Duration: 06:30:33

An unvarnished and moving memoir of a Marine veteran who fought his way across the Pacific Theater of World War II and whose story is featured in the HBO series The Pacific.

This is an eyewitness-and eye opening account of some of the most savage and brutal fighting in the war against Japan, told from the perspective of a young Texan who volunteered for the Marine Corps to escape a life as a traveling salesman. R.V. Burgin enlisted at the age of twenty, and with his sharp intelligence and earnest work ethic, climbed the ranks from a green private to a seasoned sergeant.

Burgin arrived in the Pacific Theater just after the six-month conquest of Guadalcanal. He shouldered a rifle as a member of a mortar squad. He saw friends die-and enemies killed. He saw scenes he wanted to forget but never did-from enemy snipers who tied themselves to branches in the highest trees, to ambushes along narrow jungle trails, to the abandoned corpses of hara kiri victims, to the final howling banzai attacks as the Japanese embraced their inevitable defeat.

In this memoir he remembers his life before, during, and after his service in the Corps. His gripping stories of two amphibious invasions–New Britain and Peleliu–will pull listeners into the action as only a first-person account can do

Narrator Sean Runnette uses a voice and rhythm just right for the job. The timing of his phrases fits the prose so aptly that one can easily imagine him to be the Marine recounting the traumatic events still stored in his memory. Although detailed troop movements can overwhelm and spoil a combat story, Burgin’s economy with unit names and geography leaves plenty of room for engrossing biographical thoroughness.