Odin & Aesop

The Navy and Marine Corps attacked the Tarawa atoll on November 20th, 1943.  It was their first objective in the drive across the Central Pacific.  The island was defended by 2,600 Japanese troops and about 2,200 Japanese and Korean laborers.  They had spent nine months fortifying the atoll.  Most of the action took place on Betio.  Betio is the largest island in the atoll but it is only covered six tenths of a square mile big.  In 76 hours it took to seize Betio, 1,009 Sailors and Marines died, along with virtually the entire Japanese garrison.  It was a battle of utmost savagery and the reason Joseph Alexander used it for the title of this book. 

Imperial Japanese Navy pilots were an elite corps.  They lead the world in developing naval aviation between the First and Second World Wars.  Although their equipment was modern and tactics were cutting edge, their values and collective identity were based in something much older.  They were the modern incarnation of Japan’s ancient warrior caste, the Samurai, and adhered to the warrior code of bushido.  Saburo Sakai was one of them.  He fought throughout the war, became a leading ace, and was one of the very few who survived to write his story.

The U.S. Army’s Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division was part of the force that invaded Iraq in March of 2003.  It raced out of Kuwait in Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles across open terrain, fighting a battle for which they'd trained. Mechanized infantry combined with the tank sledgehammer brushed aside any resistance losing more vehicles to maintenance than enemy action.  Things and the plan changed when the Second Brigade made it to Baghdad.  Instead of encircling the city of seven million people and trying to clear it block by block with dismounted infantry, the decision was made to make a rapier armored thrust into Baghdad, seize the centers of power, and cause Saddam Hussein’s regime to collapse from within.  That is what the Second Brigade did and what is chronicled in David Zucchino’s “Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.”

In 1942 the British were fighting for control of the Atlantic Ocean.  If they lost this battle they would starve and be put out of the war.  German submarines were pushing the British to their limits and they could ill afford to have the German battleship Tirpitz sortie into the Atlantic and join the fight. To stop this from happening the British determined the best way to neutralize the Tirpitz was to destroy the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast that was large enough to accommodate the battleship should it take damage fighting on the open ocean. The Great Raid of All is the the story of how a small force of British sailors and commandos sailed under the noses of the Germans and destroyed the Normandie dry dock in Saint Nazaire.

The Marine Corps grew to 485,000 Marines during the Second World War.  This was twenty-five times larger than it was in 1939.  This greatly expanded Corps attacked and captured Japanese held islands across the Central Pacific from 1942 until the war ended in 1945.  Each island landing brought the United States closer to invading the Japanese home islands.  One Marine that participated in the Pacific campaign was Eugene B. Sledge.  He was a mortarman with Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines.  “With the Old Breed” tells Sledge’s story of fighting through the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa.

North Korea tried to unify the peninsula by invading South Korea in June 1950.  Initially the North Koreans had great success.  They quickly advanced south while the United States tried to get forces onto the peninsula to stop them.  This soon became a United Nations’ mission, and the North Koreans were stopped right around the southern port of Pusan.  Then the United States landed in the rear of the North Koreans at the port of Inchon next to Seoul on South Korea’s west coast.  The North Koreans started to collapse and the United Nations force pushed back up the Korean peninsula.  They pushed north of the 38th parallel into North Korea and headed towards the Chinese border on the Yalu river.  As the U.S. advanced during late October and November they got higher into the mountains and the weather got much colder.  While this was going on there was the question of what, if anything, the Chinese Communists were planning to do.  Would the Chinese go to war to keep U.S. forces away from their border? The U.S. commander General MacArthur didn’t think so.  He was wrong.  The cold, desolate hillsides were crawling with over three hundred thousand tough and committed soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.  David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter” tells the story of what happened when the Chinese sprung their trap.

James Nelson’s “I Will Hold” tells the story of Clifton B. Cates.  Cates began serving in the Marine Corps in June 1917.  He deployed to France as part of the 6th Marine Regiment and participated in the Third Battle of Aisne, the Battle of Belleau Wood, and the Battle of Soissons.  Cates was awarded the Navy Cross, two Distinguished Service Crosses, the Star, and Purple Heart for his service during World War One.  He remained in the in Marine Corps and served during the Second World War where he lead the 1st Marine Regiment at Guadalcanal and then commanded the 4th Marine Division for the seizure of Tinian and Iwo Jima.  Cates went on to serve as the nineteenth Commandant of the Marine Corps.  He retired in 1954. 

In April 1968 large elements of the North Vietnamese Army’s 320th Division crossed the Demilitarized Zone into South Vietnam.  They were advancing towards the 3rd Marine Division’s command post and major logistics hub at Dong Ha when they were engaged by the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines.  Fighting raged in and around the village of Dai Do from April 30th until May 3rd.  This was some of the Vietnam War’s most intense combat.  The United States suffered 233 dead and 821 wounded.  Keith Nolan’s “Magnificent Bastards” tells the story. 

The Battle of Guadalcanal took place from August 1942 until February 1943.  Because Guadalcanal is an island, both the Japanese and the Americans relied on the sea to supply their forces and bring in reinforcements.    James D. Hornfischer’s “Neptune’s Inferno” tells the story of the fight to control the seas around Guadalcanal.  These sea battles cost roughly three times as many American lives as the fighting on the island and gave the American surface fleet a hard lesson in modern fleet-on-fleet action.

The Allies landed in Normandy as the sun came up on June 6th, 1944.  A couple of hours before about 13,100 U.S. Army paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions jumped into the night inland of the Utah and Omaha beaches.  The 82nd's mission was to seize the town of Saint Marie Eglise and the causeways off Utah beach.  Ed Ruggero’s “First Men In” tells the story of how they did it and what it cost.