Book of the Month - August 2008

The Lions of Iwo Jima: The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Bloodiest Battle in Marine Corps History
by Major General Fred Haynes, USMC (Ret) and James A. Warren.

Although the campaign to capture the eight-square-mile island of Iwo Jima during the early months of 1945 has generated countless books, newspaper stories and TV documentaries, virtually none has focused upon the role of the legendary Regimental Combat Team 28 (CT-28).

Not only did that 4,500-man unit, considered by many as one of the best ever assembled in Marine Corps history, raise the flag atop Mount Suribachi after four days of fierce fighting at close quarters, but CT-28 also broke through the almost impregnable Japanese defense nine days later at “Bloody Gorge” in the northern part, to eliminate a final, almost invisible, 200-man pocket of resistance.

Now, in an extraordinarily absorbing new account, “The Lions of Iwo Jima: The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Bloodiest Battle in Marine Corps History,” co-authors Major General Fred Haynes, USMC (Ret) and James A. Warren, the highly acclaimed military historian who wrote “American Spartans,” offer an over watch the assaults and a fresh interpretation of the 40 days of slaughter that cost the lives of 22,000 Japanese defenders and nearly 7,000 Ameri or who died later of their wounds.

Employing hitherto unpublished sources from recently discovered reports and documents, as well as conducting in-depth interviews with more than 100 Japanese and American survivors, to say nothing of Haynes’ own personal recollections (he was a young captain at the time), the co-authors sketch their subjects with care. In vividly chronicling the combat, and effectively evoking the overall day-by-day experiences of the ordinary Marine, Haynes and Warren write with proper admiration, believing deeply in each man’s fighting spirit, innate courage and, yes, nobility.

Haynes experienced Iwo Jima as the assistant operations officer and operations officer for CT-28. Fortunately, he survived without receiving a single wound, completing a three-war Marine career, eventually commanding the Second and Third Marine divisions. Today, he is one of a very few remaining CT-28 officers, and perhaps the only survivor with intimate experience in planning and operations at the combat team level.

In illuminating detail, “The Lions of Iwo Jima” carries us from CT-28’s storming Iwo’s black sands on Feb. 19, 1945, to the lifting of the flag on Suribachi some 100 hours later. But the vicious combat had just begun—and would continue against fanatical defenders hidden in demanding terrain, multiple cave systems, and mutually supporting pillboxes and bunkers for an additional 51/2 harrowing weeks.

Chapter by chapter, we witness how almost 70 percent of CT-28’s brave men in three assault battalions are killed and maimed. Everywhere there is heartbreak and heroism, stubborn resolve and human sacrifice. Death is on every page and in every imaginable form.

After writing with skill and passion, as well as acknowledging that even the best military history cannot rest in a simple, factual recounting of battle action, Haynes and Warren conclude: “We researched and wrote all this in large measure as a call to contemporary and future generations to remember a terrible battle, fought at a crucial time in history; to remember the cruel demands and sacrifices that war requires of men. And, finally, this book is a call to remember the men of Iwo Jima, living and dead, by name.”

On March 24, 1945, with CT-28 engaged in sporadic fighting on the northern tip of the island, Admiral Chester Nimitz and members of his staff paid an impromptu visit. By then, the crews of 65 B-29s already had saved themselves from the Pacific Ocean by using Iwo Jima as an emergency landing strip. In the six months that followed, 400 more crippled B-29s and their 27,000 crewmembers would safely land.

Later, recalling how touched he was by the visit, Nimitz offered the Marines one of the greatest verbal commendations of all World War II: “Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

Don DeNevi

Editor’s note: Don DeNevi has written or co-written 35 books, including “Military Railway Service: America’s Soldier-Railroaders in WWII,” “They Came to Destroy America—The FBI Goes to War Against Nazi Spies and Saboteurs Before and During World War II,” “The West Coast Goes to War—Homefront Activities During World War II” and “America’s Fighting Railroads: A World War II Pictorial History.” In addition, he assisted in the reissuing of Captain Ellis M. Zach a Pacific, “Secret Missions.”