This book combines autobiographical narratives by two Marines who landed on the beaches on the first day, cheered the flag-raising, and went on to take part in the grinding combat to the end. Howard McLaughlin, nineteen years old on the first day, settled in California after the war, became a civil engineer working in highway construction and other community service. Ray Miller, twenty on that day, returned from the war to his native Midwest and eventually settled in Maine, along the way becoming a psychologist, an inventor, and a musician. These two men lived through the most intense weeks of their lives within a mile of each other, but never knew of each other's existence until this book began to take shape six decades later. Neither is a professional author, but each writes vividly and memorably about what he did and about traumatic experiences that made him into a man different from what he would have become without the war.