Excellent book on the average Marines who won the war

Manchester makes you feel as if you are there right from the begining of the book to the end. He writes honestly on what it was like and you feel as if you know all the characters. These are the stories of the simple infantry Marines who really won the Pacific war. One of the best books I have read.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

Goodbye Darkness is an autobiography tells the story of a retired sergeant who experienced the hardships and turmoil of World War II. William Manchester served as a Marine in the Pacific. In the time that he served he witnessed some of the toughest fighting on many different islands throughout the Pacific. Years later Manchester felt the need to go back to the different battle sites and experience them out of combat. He feels that in doing this he can make his peace and end the reoccurring nightmares he had been having since the wars end .He analyzes his actions and personality that he had as a sergeant and the personality he developed after the war. In Goodbye Darkness , Manchester also takes a look at past conflicts and the lessons he learned from his father, who was a World War I veteran. The author recalls graphic violence and some of the horrific events that he witnessed and tells about how they affected him later in life. Near the end of the book . One major theme that the author stresses is the horrors of battle and war. He states that, ¿ Even the men who aren¿t wounded during war are still casualties.¿ War affects the mental state of everyone who experiences it and each person must prepare themselves for the things that they will do and witness. One thing that Manchester did well in Goodbye Darkness, was the way he described every battle and event in great detail. He describes the layout and terrain of the battle fields he was on as well as the people he met very well . Despite his excellent detail and writing style the author tends to give the reader way more information than needed. Many times during the book he reminisces about childhood memories that are irrelevant or other battles that he didn¿t take part in. Manchester goes off topic many times and it makes Goodbye Darkness a bit hard to follow. I would recommend this book for others to read , because its interesting and informative. However I do feel that there had been better books written that are very similar. If the I had to rate the book I would give it two and a half stars out of five.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Manchester delivers

I am familiar with William Manchester's historical and biographical works. Death of a President, The Arms of Krupp, American Caesar, The Last Lion I and II, the word 'tome' was created for these books. That's why Goodbye Darkness so intrigued me. How would Manchester approach a memoir? Could Manchester make something very personal to himself, personal to the reader? Would his clinically dispassionate, journalistic style of writing carry into the recounting of his military experience? How would he approach the unapproachable memories of WWII in the Pacific Theater? Could he be as honest with his own memories, as he had been with the lives of the people about which he had written biographies? In typical Manchester style the reader starts with some historical perspective. Manchester tells of his father¿s experience in WWI and his family¿s military roots. Along with this family introduction Manchester sets the scene politically and socially. America is a more Balkanized country with, Segregation, sexual repression, grandfathers who had fought in the Civil War, mothers and fathers living through the Great Depression. Manchester writes of America before the awareness of a global economy and a global responsibility. It is America in a time of simple, God-given, prejudices full of the pleasures of a naïve nation. It is an Euro-centric America where every man has a nickname that introduces him to the rest of the world. Then Manchester blends his trip, in the 1970¿s, to the islands of the Pacific Theater, with the history of the battle¿s fought there, with his own experiences in the USMC. In an effort to maintain his perspective Manchester talks about the Sergeant. The Sergeant is Manchester as a Marine in WWII. The Sergeant is the man who killed. The Sergeant is the man who lost friends. The Sergeant lived in unceasing rain and mud. The Sergeant wondered when and how he¿d die. The Sergeant is the man who hated the enemy. The Sergeant is the man wounded. The Sergeant is the man who returned home to twenty-five years of nightmares. Always, the Sergeant is William Manchester. By creating this character, out of him self and his wartime experience, Manchester can be honest, he can be candid, he is cathartic. Goodbye Darkness is the first of Manchester¿s works I¿ve read where the timeline is incidental, trivial to the human experience. Manchester willingly confesses that his memories of this time in his life are tainted, by injury, by time, and by his decades old struggle to purge them. The fact that after twenty-five years his memories are so intact adds to the trauma of the events. As much as the experiences Manchester had in WWII were traumatic. The author refuses to succumb to maudlin prose. Manchester sprinkles in humorous and human events like his botched attempts to lose his virginity before shipping out. He also outlines the mundane tasks and burdens of the WWII combat Marine. Reading Goodbye Darkness makes other history books seem derivative. When Manchester talks about the Raggedy A-- Marines, the reader is quite sure he coined the term. Finally, Manchester¿s use of the English language and his classical vocabulary, are his ways of honoring the men whom fought and died in the Pacific Theater of WWII. Manchester¿s casual uses of multi-syllabic words, simultaneously distance Manchester from, and draw the reader into the story. His complex sentence structures are a way of forcing the reader to focus on what he has to say. The reader must think as well as feel their way through the battles of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Siapan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the myriad of unnamed islands in between. William Manchester¿s Goodbye Darkness solidifies, in my mind, his place in the pantheon of writers. This memoir satisfies completely. The level of intimacy the reader shares with the writer becomes more poignant with 2003¿s climate of looming conflict.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Best book ever

Have read this book over and over again. Hypnotizing. Have given many times as gifts. The only other book to compare is"Berlin Diary.". Highly recommend both.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Slow and plodding

Highly recommended

Probably one of the most interesting reads I have had in a while - a historian looks into himself, and finds... himself. Fascinating tribute to the lives given for our country in SE Asia. ~I may spend a lifetime, but I am gradually learning to understand my father's generation...

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