New Memoir Ties in to THE PACIFIC

HBO’s series, The Pacific, is based on memoirs that were published after the war.

A new memoir by a Marine who is featured in an episode of the series, was released yesterday.

It has not been reviewed. The publisher describes it as,

An unvarnished and moving memoir of a Marine veteran who fought his way across the Pacific Theater of World War II — whose story is featured in the upcoming 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. Along the way, 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.

Burgin was one of the few surviving vets who attended the 2/24 premiere  in L.A. where he posed for photographers with actor Martin McCann, who portrays him on screen.

Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific
R.V. Burgin, Bill Marvel
Retail Price: $24.95
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: NAL Hardcover – (2010-03-02)
ISBN / EAN: 0451229908 / 9780451229908

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