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Joining the Marines in 1942 guaranteed an American youth only two things: the toughest military training, then frontline combat in some of the most intense and brutal clashes of World War II. Yet this was exactly what each soon-to-be Marine was looking for as he walked into his hometown recruiting station in those tumultuous days.
Following boot camp, a fortunate few found themselves assigned to “King” Company, part of the hardest-trained and best-led outfit in the entire Marine Corps: “Chamber’s Raiders.” Before long, this special group had built a reputation for being the unit that could always be depended on to succeed, no matter how daunting the task. Time and again in their campaigns that followed, the Kings were thus asked to undertake the most challenging and dangerous of missions in some of the Pacific’s most iconic battles.
The Kings were the definition of “gung-ho,” tough, aggressive, and with no small number of characters among them. Following an intense train up, their first action secured the key foothold essential for the main invasion of Roi-Namur. Then they island-hopped for miles across the dozens of small islets that made up the Kwajalein atoll. Yet rather than running into hostile Japanese, they found themselves ambushed by friendly native populations, experiencing some of the most unexpected and bizarre moments of the war.
On Saipan they fought off massive surprise attacks and used an ingenious method to seize one of the enemy’s most important strongholds, a mission planned out over a case of stolen Japanese beer. Their first night ashore on Tinian, the Kings alone blunted the main enemy counterattack of the entire battle, outnumbered more than four-to-one. Knowing what was about to attack them from out of the darkness, many chose to set down their rifles, preferring to fight the oncoming suicidal masses with knives and fists instead.
On Iwo Jima, the Kings were once again specifically chosen for the most critical – and dangerous – assignment of the entire invasion. Caught in the worst of the Japanese defenses, they were the hardest hit of all the units that landed on D-Day. Scattered and devastated, their officers gone, those that survived somehow managed to succeed against all odds, sacrificing themselves to save thousands coming ashore behind them.
Giants of men, the Kings were Marines whose experiences in training and combat were as intense as they were unimaginable. Yet this is exactly what each had signed up for when their nation had called. Few remained at the end. None returned unscathed.
Told through the eyes of these Marines, men whose stories inexplicably have yet to be told, Giants Among Kings is a captivating combat story unlike any other.
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