Blue Water Red Blood

Random events and coincidence fashion this story that sits on a knife's edge between historical fact and historical fiction. The novels subject: the development of a machine that saved thousands of Marines in WW II and the men who were responsible. Real lives of the historical protagonists and the events that shaped them, provide a study in leadership, and what power conviction and purpose provide for those who possess them. A Marine who participated in the Tarawa landing returns to that beach sixty years after the event forged him into the man he became. He realizes he survived because of the machine that got him to the beach and the men who saw that it was available for him to use. His emotions make him ask if the ordeal he and his friends suffered was in vain. He wonders about both. The story shifts to WW I and to the early battle experience of protagonist Holland Smith, the man destined to command the Marines in their conquest of the Pacific Islands in WW II. He sees the horrors and futility of frontal attack and vows to spare troops he commands if he can. Another kind of war, man's battle with nature, becomes the catalyst another man's quest. The killer hurricane of 1928 takes 2000 lives as it devastates the southern shore of Okeechobee. John Roebling, son of the Brooklyn Bridge's builder, uses the event to inspire his son Donald, our second protagonist, to develop a hurricane rescue machine and inject purpose into Don's life. While Don labors developing a rescue vehicle, Smith, whose nickname is "Howlin' Mad," becomes part of the effort planning for a war with Japan that military planners are sure will occur. It becomes apparent that amphibious landings, the most lethal form of frontal assault will be unavoidable. Smith struggles to develop tactics and methods to spare as many Marines as possible from the slaughter he knows they'll eventually face.