The Lions of Iwo Jima

The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Bloodiest Battle in Marine Corps History

Fred Haynes, James A. Warren

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781429937924
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History

A WWII veteran presents an "intense, moving account" of the battle for Iwo Jima: "the harsh face of war . . . has rarely bee portrayed so effectively" ( Booklist ).

Combat Team twenty-eight, one of the greatest units fielded in the history of the U.S. Marines, landed on the black sands of Iwo Jima on February nineteen, 1945. The unit, four, 500 men strong, plunged immediately into ferocious combat, which continued long after the iconic flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. 

In the end, seventy percent of the team's three assault battalions were killed or seriously wounded. Major General Fred Haynes, then a young captain, was intimately involved in planning and coordinating all phases of the fight. In this astonishing narrative, Haynes and military journalist James A. Warren recapture in riveting detail what the Marines experienced, drawing on a wealth of previously untapped documents, personal narratives, letters, and interviews with survivors.

The stories told here, many for the first time, will seem too cruel, too heartbreaking to be believed. As one veteran remarked, "Each day we learned a new way to die."

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Forming Up at Camp Pendleton
• 2. The Adversaries Prepare for Battle
• 3. The Assault
• 4. The Assault, Part II
• 5. The Fight for “Hot Rocks”
• 6. The Enemy
• 7. Breaking Through the Main Belt: The Battle for Hill 362A and Nishi Ridge
• 8. Driving North Toward Kitano Point
• 9. Bloody Gorge
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1: Combat Team 28: Organization
• Appendix 2: Combat Team 28 Survivors: What They Did After the War
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index