Lions of Iwo Jima

A WWII veteran presents an “intense, moving account” of the battle for Iwo Jima: “the harsh face of war . . . has rarely bee portrayed so effectively” (Booklist).

Combat Team twenty-eight, one of the greatest units fielded in the history of the U.S. Marines, landed on the black sands of Iwo Jima on February nineteen, 1945. The unit, four, 500 men strong, plunged immediately into ferocious combat, which continued long after the iconic flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. 

In the end, seventy percent of the team’s three assault battalions were killed or seriously wounded. Major General Fred Haynes, then a young captain, was intimately involved in planning and coordinating all phases of the fight. In this astonishing narrative, Haynes and military journalist James A. Warren recapture in riveting detail what the Marines experienced, drawing on a wealth of previously untapped documents, personal narratives, letters, and interviews with survivors.

The stories told here, many for the first time, will seem too cruel, too heartbreaking to be believed. As one veteran remarked, “Each day we learned a new way to die.”