Devil Dogs: King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan

Award-winning historian Saul David reveals the searing experience of the DevilDogs of World War II and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne. The "Devil Dogs"of King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines—part of the legendary 1stMarine Division—were among the first American soldiers to take the offensiveinWorld World II—and also the last. They landed on the beaches ofGuadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1942—thefirst US groundoffensive of the war—and were present when Okinawa, Japan's mostsoutherlyprefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June1945. Inbetween they fought in the "Green Hell" of Cape Gloucester on theisland of New Britain, andacross the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the PalauIslands, a campaign described by oneKing Company veteran as "thirty days ofthe meanest, around-the-clock slaughter thatdesperate men can inflict on eachother." Ordinary men from very differentbackgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlementsacross America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take onthevictorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective, "utterlyruthless and treacherous"soldiers in world history—and defeat it. Thisis the story of how theydid just that and, in the process, forged bonds ofbrotherhood that still survive today. Remarkably, the company contained anunusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs providethe color, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winninghistorianSaul David sets the searing experience of theDevil Dogs into the broadercontext of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne.