Fightin' Marines #39

A squad of Marines led by Tonka Tony, a former merchant seaman with local knowledge of the island, infiltrates an ancient underground passage to reach a heavily fortified Japanese blockhouse that commands enemy forces in the South Pacific. While their comrades stage a costly frontal assault as a diversion, Tony and his volunteers must navigate the hidden route and strike at the heart of the enemy's nerve center. This tense 1961 war story captures the desperate coordination and sacrifice required to turn the tide of battle.

Harold "Heshie" Gray, a battle-hardened Marine, finds himself stranded alone on a Japanese-held island after falling overboard during a transport operation—and discovers he's landed smack in the middle of an invasion zone. With nothing but bad luck and his wits, Heshie spots camouflaged enemy gun positions that threaten to decimate his incoming unit and races against time to stop them before the landing begins. It's a tale of one man's desperate gamble to turn his terrible fortune into his outfit's salvation.

At Iwo Jima in 1945, Major Tug Cardiff orders Corporal Ben Gold and PFC Ed Tunstall into a deadly cave assault—an order that costs Gold his life and leaves Tunstall haunted by what he sees as Cardiff's deliberate cruelty. Six years later, now a sergeant aboard a transport to Korea, Tunstall finds himself under the same man, now a colonel, and discovers an unexpected chance to confront the past when Cardiff orders him on a dangerous reconnaissance mission. As enemy fire erupts and the truth about that fateful order finally emerges, Tunstall must reckon with whether his hatred has blinded him to the full story.

When P.F.C. Punch Stokey, a North Carolina Marine with a reputation for toughness, finds himself frozen by fear during a brutal Korean War firefight, he discovers that his buddies' admiration masks a truth only he knows—that every act of valor has been driven by survival instinct, not courage. Forced to confront his own cowardice when he abandons his position and leaves a wounded comrade behind, Stokey must decide what kind of Marine he'll become when given a second chance under fire. A raw, unflinching war story that questions what bravery really means when a man is pushed to his breaking point.