Red Blood, Black Sand

Red Blood, Black Sand

Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima

Additional Formats
  • Paperback
  • ISBN 9780425257425
  • 368  Pages
  • Berkley
  • Adult


In 1944, the U.S. Marines were building the 5th Marine Division—also known as “The Spearhead”—in preparation for the invasion of the small, Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima. . . 

When Chuck Tatum began Marine boot camp, he was just a smart-aleck teenager eager to serve his country. Little did he know that he would be training under a living legend of the Corps—Medal of Honor recipient John Basilone, who had almost single-handedly fought off a Japanese force of three thousand on Guadalcanal.

It was from Basilone and other sergeants that Tatum would learn how to fight like a Marine and act like a man—skills he would need when he hit the black sand of Iwo Jima with thirty thousand other Marines.

Red Blood, Black Sand is the story of Chuck’s two weeks in hell, where he would watch his hero, Basilone, fall, where the enemy stalked the night, where snipers haunted the day, and where Chuck would see his friends whittled away in an eardrum-shattering, earth-shaking, meat grinder of a battle.

This is the island, the heroes, and the tragedy of Iwo Jima, through the eyes of the battle’s greatest living storyteller, Chuck Tatum.


“In my judgment, no combat veteran’s memoir is better . . . and only a handful are equal.”—Stephen E. Ambrose

“Chuck Tatum was there, a participant in and a witness to history. If it is possible to answer the question ‘What was it like?’, he tells you in this book.” —Tom Hanks