The Last Dawn - Book Four

The island was declared secured. The last darkness did not agree. They met it standing.

Book Four of The Black Sands of Suribachi: The Montford Point Marines of Iwo Jima, and the end of the series.

March 1945. The word comes down that Iwo Jima is secured, and the island begins to empty. But in the gorge to the north the last of the defenders are still waiting, and before first light on 26 March they come out of the dark into the tents near the airfield, where pilots, pioneers and the Black Marines of the depot and ammunition companies are sleeping.

With carbines in the hands of clerks and stevedores, the men the Corps had sent only to carry held the line at the runway road until the field was theirs again at dawn. Then came the last rows, the long ocean home, V-J Day in a tent, the trains south, Montford Point again, the papers and the GI Bill, and at last Executive Order 9981.

Thirty chapters, from the word and the guns to the last class, closing at a sunrise in 1995.

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