During the Pacific War (1941 to 1945), one of the deadliest fights the Marines fought was over a miserable piece of rocky, steaming jungle called Peleliu in the Palau group of islands.  Near the equator, average daytime temperatures were about 115 degrees and 100 percent humidity.  Tom Lea was a combat correspondent and artist working for LIFE magazine.  He accompanied the Marines to Peleliu and recorded their fight in some of the most realistic and horrifying combat art ever seen.  Peleliu was supposed to be taken in four days.  The Marines fought, sweated, bled and died over that miserable piece of rotting vegetation and stone for two months.  Nearly 1,600 were KIA and three times that were wounded.  The Japanese lost over 10,000 men KIA.

 

The Japanese fighters on Peleliu were just as fanatical as  the Islamofascists we fight today in Iraq and other places.  They are just as deadly and as dangerous as their counterparts of  60 plus years ago.  They will not surrender and they must be killed.  That is the calculus of this war.

 

   GOING IN by Tom Lea

 

   ADVANCE ON BLOCKHOUSE by Tom Lea

 

  THE LAST STEP (aka THE PRICE) by Tom Lea

 

  TWO SNIPERS by Tom Lea

 

   TWO THOUSAND YARD STARE by Tom Lea