Challenge For The Pacific: the Bloody Six-month Battle Of Guadalcanal (1965)

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 05 May 2011 04:14:43 -0400)

In August 1942, after suffering a series of humiliating defeats, inflicted by a nation not much bigger than California, the Allies seized the initiative in their first offensive of the Pacific War. Nicknamed "Operation Shoestring," this unprecedented joint-services campaign involved both ground fighting, air combat, and naval clashes, including two carrier battles. For six months Allied and Japanese forces fought night and day in a ferocious struggle for possession of a tiny ramshackle airfield in the middle of the malarial, pest-ridden jungle of a little-known island called Guadalcanal.Robert Leckie, a decorated machine-gunner and scout with the First Marine Division, fought on Guadalcanal. His own experiences as well as those of other combatants - both Allied and Japanese - add immeasurably to the impact of this sweeping narrative. Leckie describes how the exceptional tenacity and courage of ordinary men transformed a campaign of uncertain outcome into one of the most decisive Allied victories of the war, a military triumph that, against formidable odds, decimated Japan's navy and air force, forever shattering her grand strategy and the myth of Japanese invincibility.… (more)