SUDDENLY WE DIDN'T WANT TO DIE
Memoirs of a World War I Marine

NEW copy. Hardcover with dust jacket. Introduction and annotation by George B. Clark. Forward by LtGen Victor H Krulak USMC Ret. Presidio Press, 1993. 264 pp. "

"This beautifully written and truly gripping war memoir is a significant addition to battlefield literature. A minor classic. . . . An altogether remarkable job [comparable] to Crane, Remarque and Mailer. Deserves the widest possible audience." (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).

"As a recent enlistee, Mackin (1898-1974) joined the 5th Marines in June, 1918, during the battle of Belleau Wood. He served with the regiment until the Armistice as a rifleman and then as a runner--a job with a life expectancy usually measured in hours. Mackin's memoir, supplemented by interviews taped in the 1970s, covers six months of action. In direct and simple prose, his taut, immediate account details a time when, with air support and field radios far in the future, machine guns and barbed wire still dominated the battlefield. In overcoming these obstacles virtually unaided, the courage and initiative of such front-line soldiers as Mackin and his comrades were tested to their limits and never found wanting. This immediate, eloquent report, meriting comparison with Thomas Boyd's Marine Corps classic Through the Wheat (1923), belongs in all collections on U.S. participation in WW I. (Publishers Weekly).

"A real curiosity: a highly mannered World War I diary, published nearly 80 years after being written and 20 years after its author's death. Bright snapshots abound .... sometimes a young man's lyricism takes over [but] the horror of war never departs. The diary has the faults one expects, and the promise one prays for. A fine addition to WWI literature." (Kirkus Reviews).

"A forthright, eloquent, and powerful memoir certain to become an enduring testament to the drama and tragedy of World War I. Threaded with no small measure of poetry, this superb memoir is sure to become a classic." (Great Battles).

"A plain but powerful tale .... [in] vivid prose loaded with details that bring the horrors of World War I to life, he tells an exceptional new version of the old story of battle transforming a boy into a veteran." (American Library Association Booklist).

"To the ranks of Erich Maria Remarque, E.E. Cummings, John Dos Passos and Siegfried Sassoon, we must now add Elton Mackin. . . . who, in a terse style reminiscent of Hemingway, [succeeds] in making someone unfamiliar with war truly know the frightfulness of the trenches and the greatness of the many men who fought in them." (Marine Corps Gazette)

In the tradition of All Quiet on the Western Front, Elton E. Mackin's memoirs are a haunting portrayal of war as seen through the eyes of a highly decorated Marine who fought in every Marine Brigade battle from Belleau Wood to the crossing of the Meuse on the eve of the Armistice. Elton E. Mackin joined the Marine Corps in early 1918 and was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment on the second day of the battle of Belleau Wood, June 7th, 1928. Mackin was awarded the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, and two army Silver Star citations for his valor from October 3-5, 1918, at Blanc-Mont.

Excerpt: "Sign Post~ The path out of Lucy-le-Bocage skirted a trampled garden, passed a dead cow, followed the road to a gap in the hedge, and dropped into a drainage ditch. It cornered a bit of the field, and was covered, at least to our minds, by the promise offered by a copse of saplings across some open ground. At the copse, the path divided, one way going forward toward the ravine, the other turning half-left through the underbrush to Hill 142. A German soldier had died in the fork of the path, grotesquely and in pain. One upflung arm, spread-fingered and beseeching, was caught among the branches of a scrubby bush. For the guidance of travelers, some humorous soul had laced a cardboard sign between the dead man's fingers. Rough lettering spelled out the words Battalion P.C. above an arrow pointing west."

Mackin served with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 4th Brigade, 2nd Division, AEF.

Hardcover edition originally published at $19.95, now OUT OF PRINT.

$25.00