Winner of THE GENERAL WALLACE M. GREENE, JR. AWARD for outstanding
nonfiction
In May 1943 a self-described "really young, green, ignorant lieutenant"
assumed command of a new Marine Corps company. His even younger enlisted
Marines were learning to use an untested weapon, the M4A2 "Sherman"
medium tank. His sole combat veteran was the company bugler, who had
salvaged his dress cap and battered horn from a sinking aircraft
carrier. Just six months later the company would be thrown into one of
the ghastliest battles of World War II.
On 20 November 1943 the Second Marine Division launched the first
amphibious assault of the Pacific War, directly into the teeth of
powerful Japanese defenses on Tarawa. In that blood-soaked invasion, a
single company of Sherman tanks, of which only two survived, played a
pivotal role in turning the tide from looming disaster to legendary
victory. In this unique study Oscar Gilbert and Romain Cansiere use
official documents, memoirs, interviews with veterans, as well as
personal and aerial photographs to follow Charlie Company from its
formation, and trace the movement, action--and loss--of individual tanks
in this horrific four-day struggle.
The authors have used official documents and interviews with veterans to
follow the company from training through the brutal 76-hour struggle for
Tarawa. Survivor accounts and air photo analysis document the movements
-and destruction - of the company's individual tanks. It is a story of
escapes from drowning tanks, and even more harrowing escapes from tanks
knocked out behind Japanese lines. It is a story of men doing whatever
needed to be done, from burying the dead to hand-carrying heavy cannon
ammunition forward under fire. It is the story of how the two surviving
tanks and their crews expanded a perilously thin beachhead, and cleared
the way for critical reinforcements to come ashore. But most of all it
is a story of how a few unsung Marines helped turn near disaster into
epic victory.
