Robert Leckie, one of America’s greatest military historians, was both an eyewitness and participant to some of the greatest battles in the Pacific. This is Leckie’s vivid account of combat and survival in World War II. In January 1942, in the aftermath of the infamous Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the United States Marines Corps. From boot camp in Parris Island to the bloody war in the Pacific, Robert Leckie experienced it all. The booze, the brawling, the loving on sixty-two-hour liberty; the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U. S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, island by island across the Pacific to the shores of Japan.