Dale Maharidge - Bringing Mulligan Home: The Long Search for a Lost Marine

World War II had been over for more than a decade when Dale Maharidge was born, but he still sees himself as damaged by that war, in particular by the Battle of Okinawa, in 1945. His father, Steve, a Marine sergeant, brought that battle home with him, to a suburb south of Cleveland. It lived on, taking the shape of desolate anger, forever on the edge of violence, of pain that he parceled out to his wife and children over the rest of his life. Bringing Mulligan Home revisits that haunted battlefield and unearths the damage done to his father, his fathers war buddies and his family.

Lawrence Downes, New York Times

Bringing Mulligan Home offers bracing eyewitness and some fine writing.

Wall Street Journal

Gripping and unforgettablea sons search for his father in the shattered ruins of the Pacific War.

Pulitzer Prizewinning author Richard Rhodes

A scrupulous and heartfelt analysis of what it was like to be a cog in the biggest battle in the Pacific.

New York Post

A moving memoir. A powerful narrative of the dark side of American combat in the Pacific theater and the persistence of resulting injuries decades after the war ended.

Kirkus

Mulligan is that rare thing: a book propelled into being by heartfelt urgency and prodigious skill, a mission truly accomplished.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Author and journalist Dale Maharidge has written a compelling story about the experiences of U.S. Marines in the Pacific War. It is a graphic narrative akin to Eugene Sledges With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Maharidges text is polished, and the narrative entices the reader like a crime-solving mystery.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Burrell, U.S. Marine Corps, Proceedings Magazine, United States Naval Institute

Through deep and sensitive interviewing, Dale Maharidge has achieved what many have previously thought impossible: he has opened up the silent generation of World War Two veterans and enabled them to tell their stories.

Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq and Sand Queen

Unexpectedly uplifting.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

A wonderful story. The author brings to the art of non-fiction the rhythm and suspense of a tall tale. Masterfully written.

Huntington News

Wrenching, powerful. This is a reflective work that will prove of great interest to all war veterans, their families, and others interested in them.

Sea Classics Magazine

Herman Walter Mulligan and Steve Maharidge, Guadalcanal, 1944. Photographer unknown

In memory of Joan and Steve, my parents.

To the men of L Company, 3rd Battalion, 22nd Marines, Sixth Marine Division. Among some of those I came to know,

Arthur Bishop

Karl Brothers

Danny Cernoch

J. R. Collin

Bill Fenton

Fenton Grahnert

Frank Haigler

Edward Hoffman

Joe Lanciotti

Malcolm Lear

Jim Laughridge

Charles Lepant

Hank Markovich

George Niland

Frank Palmasani

George Popovich

Tom Price

Joe Rosplock

And to the civilians on Okinawa who wanted no part of war and others in Imperial Japan who felt the same way.

A bar of steelit is only smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man smoke and blood is the mix of steel.

CARL SANDBURG

T here are no heroes. You just survive.

SERGEANT STEVE MAHARIDGE, USMC

T he battle for Okinawa in World War II began on April 1, 1945. In the ensuing eighty-two days, an estimated 150,000 civilians would die along with some 110,000 Japanese and 12,520 American soldiers. The Americans called it Operation Iceberg. The Japanese called it tetsu no bofu, the violent wind of steel.

Dale

To me it was a state of confusion and FEAR with shouted hysterical commands, screaming, shells exploding, darkness, and flame from flares and fire. I was there and I never saw the enemy but knew he was out there somewhere. Trying to kill us. I did not know what day it was, how high Sugar Loaf was, the caliber of artillery, the battle planwhich I knew was insane even as a PFCregardless of what the asshole generals on both sides believed they knew from military school.

I fired at this dark hill that was scorched and smoking without having a target in my sights. I was a fucking sharpshooter who shot at rocks.