Bloodstained Sands

A thorough history of American amphibious actions during WWII.

The Second World War was, in many ways, an amphibious war. Both major theaters had their share of seaborne invasions, and much of the equipment and doctrine had to be invented on the fly. This is the story of some of the more significant US and Allied landings in both theaters.


=== The Good Stuff ===

* The book covers a mix of battles, including Anzio, Normandy, North Africa Guadalcanal, The Solomon Islands and many others. Each chapter stands alone, and Michael Walling gives the reader a good feel for the actual battle as well as its importance in the larger Allied strategy.

* The book was easy to read, used uncomplicated language, and contained some, but not an ridiculous amount, of first-person accounts.

* Walling is at his best when the narrative is in a small landing craft, at 2AM, approaching the shore of some enemy landmass. As a reader, you get a feel for the anticipation, fear, anger, enthusiasm, sadness, death, celebration and victory that went with each of these campaigns. The book concentrates mostly on American forces, although there is mention of other Allied troops. Axis troops and their struggles are mentioned only in brief passing.

* The book goes into enough detail that you can get a feel for the difficulty of the landings. For example, just the order that supplies were put into landing craft could have a major impact on a contested landing. One crucial supply, stored in the very back of the last landing craft to beach, could prove disastrous.

=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* The scope of the book is on individual units and small sections of an operation. That is great for giving you a good feel for the operation, but not so good if you are trying to get an understanding of the whole campaign or war. I understand why the author did this, but if you are not acquainted with the theater-wide strategies in place, you may wonder at the choice of invasion targets.

* Probably my biggest complaint is that each chapter is self-contained and they don’t build on each other. For example, in nearly every invasion discussed, one of the major problems is managing the flow of materials on the beach. Concentrated supplies on the landing zone were a tempting target for enemy defenders, and nearly every campaign seemed to have problems with this. No doubt the problem was studied, and improved upon, during the course of the war. But it would have been nice to see how this process changed with experience.

* Many of the stories were remarkably similar. No matter how hair-raising the tale and selflessly brave the individual actions were, one landing began to sound like every other.


=== Summary ===

I enjoyed the book, and got a great feel for what life was like invading some miserable swamp-covered island in the middle of the Pacific. The book offered a great connection with the individual soldiers and small units that were involved. I think the book would have benefited from a little more “big picture” content, but that is only my opinion.

A very good book about all of the beach invasions of World War two, Guadalcanal thru the last and final in Okinawa. What will be interesting for most people I think is first the ones in Europe like Casablanca, and Sicily. These are forgotten because of Normandy but were before and because of those changes were made. Just like in the Pacific after Guadalcanal changes were made as they were for Tarawa and, Peleliu. What was not really discussed was that the high rate of casualties on Tarawa was reported at home as Picket’s charge in the Pacific. Because of mistakes with tide calculations after this the UDT’S which is now the Navy Seals were formed. They would go in weeks before and make maps of coral reefs and tide calculations for the next landing. They would also set demolition of coastal areas if needed. Also something not brought out in this book is that after Peleliu. A better radio pack was invented to handle sea water and able to communicate shore to ship and land to land, while still not being extremely huge. These all would make next beach landings better but we all know the Japanese change tactics and by Okinawa the beach landing was uneventful until they got further inland. Overall this was a good book.

This is a thorough history of the US amphibious operations that were conducted during WWII - it has a lot of interesting information and I did enjoy it, I am looking this year to expand my knowledge of WWII and this book has really helped and will encourage me to look for other books on the same subject - 4 stars from me