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Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima
Berkley
May 2012
On Sale: May 1, 2012
Featuring: Charlie Tatum
368 pages
ISBN: 0425247406
EAN: 9780425247402
Kindle: B0072NWKKG
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
In 1944, the U.S. Marines were building the 5th Marine Divisionโalso known as โThe Spearheadโโin preparation for the invasion of the small, Japanese-held island of Iwo Jimaโฆ. When Charlie Tatum entered Camp Pendleton to begin Marine boot camp, he was just a smart-aleck teenager eager to serve his country. Little did he know that he would be training under the watchful eyes of a living legend of the CorpsโCongressional Medal of Honor winner John Basilone, who had almost-single-handedly fought off a Japanese force of 3,000 on Guadalcanal, and survived. It was from Basilone andother "Old Breed" sergeants that Tatum would learn how to fight like a Marine and act like a man, as he went through the hell of boot camp to the raucous port of Pearl Harbor with its gambling, gals, and tattoos, to the island of death itself, where he hit the black sand of Iwo Jima with 30,000 other Marines in the climactic battle of the Pacific Theater. It was on that godforsaken strip of land that Tatum and Basilone would meet again under a hellish rain of bullets and bombsโand where Tatum would make his own mark, carrying ammo for the machine gun carried by Basilone. Together they would lead the breakout off the beach, driving through and destroying a swath of enemy soldiers in the first man-to-man combat on Iwo Jima. Red Blood, Black Sand is the story of Chuckโs two weeks in hell, where he would watch his hero, Basilone, fall, where the enemy stalked the night, where snipers haunted the day, and where Chuck would see his friends whittled away in an eardrum-shattering, earth-shaking, meat grinder of a battle. Before the end, Chuck would find himself, like Basilone, standing alone, blind with rage, firing a machine gun from the hip, in a personal battle to kill a relentless foe he had come to hate. This is the island, the heroes, and the tragedy of Iwo Jima, through the eyes of the battleโs greatest living storyteller, Chuck Tatum. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS
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