God Isn't Here

With attention to detail only an eye-witness can offer, corpsman Richard E. Overton's gut-wrenching memoir of the battle at Iwo Jima, captures the insufferable horrors of combat at the greatest battle of the modern era. It Is likely the most chaotic, intense, and deadly conflict ever fought by the U.S. military. The Marines attacked an entrenched and invisible enemy whose suicidal plan was to protract the battle, and break the American's will to fight. Because of the continually shifting lines, the Japanese were everywhere, and Overton and his unit faced relentless close contact with the enemy. He endured persistent mind-numbing artillery attacks, night-time infiltrators and deadly hand-to-hand combat. Within the first few days of battle, most of the men of his platoon were lost. His own survival is a mystery that still haunts him to this day. The trauma of seeing men eviscerated, added to the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation and adrenaline overload, led to his evacuation from Iwo Jima... but not before he endured the unimaginable.