Island Victory: The Battle of Kwajalein Atoll

An on-the-spot history of a fight in the Pacific during World War II, Island Victory was the first battle history written by then-Lieutenant Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, a veteran of World War I who would serve in Korea and Vietnam and become a brigadier general in the process. After the Seventh Infantry Division drove across Kwajalein Atoll in the first days of February 1944, successfully wresting control of the strategic southern tip from the Japanese, Marshall was charged with producing an accurate and comprehensive account of the fight. His solution: bring the front-line soldiers together at once and interview them as a group, tapping the collective memory of a platoon fresh from battle. In this book, readers get a rare, firsthand sense of all the emotions that soldiers in combat experience. Over a hundred maps and photographs help us visualise precisely what took place. A compelling work of military history, and the first book of its kind, Island Victory is itself an important chapter in the history of how military exploits are described and recorded. Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall (1900-1977) served as an enlisted man in World War I, an official historian in World War II, an Army Historian in Korea, and an advisor and observer in Vietnam. He wrote more than fifty books. Joseph G. Dawson III’s most recent book is Doniphan’s Epic March: The 1st Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War. He is a professor of history at Texas A&M University.