D-Day and the Volcanic Dust - Book One
They landed on D-Day. The cameras turned away. These pages do not.
Book One of The Black Sands of Suribachi: The Montford Point Marines of Iwo Jima.
19 February 1945. The convoy reaches Iwo Jima, and the Black Marines of the depot and ammunition companies trained at Montford Point go over the side with everyone else, into black volcanic sand that swallows boots, jeeps and men. They were sent to carry, not to fight. On Iwo Jima there was no rear.
They carried the ammunition uphill under fire. They carried the water. They carried the wounded, and then they carried the dead out of the surf. They fought the fires in the dumps and held their ground through the first nights, while a camera on the mountain captured a flag and a newsreel decided who would be remembered.
On the last morning, they held the line that won the battle. And then they went home to the other war.
Thirty chapters, from the convoy to the other war, with a note on fact and fiction and the history of the four companies.
EPUB edition. Read it on any e-reader, tablet, phone or computer.
