Robert Sherrod takes you on a voyage into the
vast Pacific Ocean to the bloody beaches of Betio with the Second
Marine Division. One of a handful of reporters with the invasion he makes
use of notebooks kept while the battle was raging around him, and
afterwards while the mopping up was going on, the bodies were being
unceremoniously buried by bulldozer and the top brass were reviewing
the carnage which cost around a thousand American lives. Full of
imagery and horror, brought alive with details of overheard
conversations and on the spot interviews with Marines of all ranks
and backgrounds. He details the formidable Japanese emplacements
encountered and puts across his view of the reasons behind their
stubborn resistance. He concludes with extensive American casualty
lists. A very readable and personal account. Well worth while.
Mark Youngman, Amazon review.
He
was a wide-eyed teenager when he left his Minnesota home in 1943 to
learn to fly. By the end of World War
II, he was a battle-worn
Marine bomber pilot who'd survived more than a hundred missions in
the Pacific. With stunning eloquence and breathtaking clarity,
Samuel Hynes recalls those extraordinary years: the madness of war
and the horror of death, the friendships forged in cockpits and gin
mills, the wives and sweethearts left at home, and the wonder of
flying-that exquisite harmony between pilot and machine aloft in the
insubstantial air. More than a combat tale, this is the story of one
man's remarkable rite of passage in that timeless world of innocence
gone to war.
