The Graves of Iwo - Book Two

They carried the living. Then they carried the dead. And they called every roll right.

Book Two of The Black Sands of Suribachi: The Montford Point Marines of Iwo Jima.

The fighting moves north, and the men of the depot companies are handed the island’s hardest ledger: the dead. Fifty to a row in the black sand, each Marine identified, recorded, and laid down with his personal effects counted and his name entered right.

Through the rain and the counter-battery fire, the night burials and the wrong grave that has to be made right, they keep the count when the count breaks. They build a chapel out of ammunition crates, stand with the chaplains as the crosses reach a thousand, and help decide what will be told to the mothers. The Marines in the rows were white and Black alike. The Marines who kept them were the men the Corps had not wanted.

Twenty-eight chapters, from the detail to the living and the dead, with the rosters and a roll of honor.

EPUB edition. Read it on any e-reader, tablet, phone or computer.