Marine War Heroes #15

A young Marine officer haunted by the heroic legacy of his grandfather and father finds himself commanding a decimated platoon holding a desperate position against overwhelming Chinese forces during the Korean War. Wracked with fever and self-doubt, he struggles between the shame of his apparent cowardice and the brutal reality of keeping his remaining men alive. As the enemy masses for a final assault, he must decide what kind of Marine—and what kind of man—he'll become when all the odds are stacked against him.

When Captain Jason Lomax leads his company into the trenches of France in May 1918, a brutal German dawn attack brings poison gas and machine-gun fire—forcing him to make split-second decisions that will define his men's survival. As the battle unfolds near Viller-Cotterés, Lomax must outthink a fortified enemy while protecting the Marines under his command, drawing on courage and tactical cunning in one of the war's bloodiest encounters. This is the battle that would earn him a chest full of medals and a place in Marine Corps history.

A young Marine named Earl Lomax ships out with the Corps in 1945 and discovers he has a gift for combat during the brutal island campaigns of the Pacific War—first at Guadalcanal, where he devises an audacious explosives rig to destroy a pillbox, then at Tarawa, where he charges an enemy blockhouse despite heavy fire and wounds. His son Mike, recounting his father's decorated service through war records and citations, watches the legend of S/Sgt. Lomax take shape from the perspective of a boy learning what it means to be a Marine.

The Battle of Okinawa unfolds in this 1966 account of one of the Pacific War's most brutal engagements, where American forces—over half a million strong—faced 100,000 Japanese defenders entrenched in formidable fortifications. From the massive first landing to the desperate kamikaze attacks offshore and the relentless cave-by-cave combat inland, this is the story of the final great battle that decided the war in the Pacific.