Close Combat

Millions of readers have been swept away by W. E. B. Griffin's novels of the Marine Corps, a series that has only grown stronger and more popular with each volume. And now Close Combat - Volume VI - brings the saga of The Corps during World War II into ever more dramatic arenas. As the Japanese forces close in for an all-out effort to recapture Guadalcanal from the American forces occupying the island, many fates converge and intertwine. First Lieutenant William Dunn, twenty-one years old but already one of only two pilots remaining from his fighter squadron's original sixteen, must learn what it is like to lead men - and to lose them....Hot-tempered Sergeant Thomas McCoy finds he has a hero's welcome waiting stateside - if he can avoid a court-martial first....On a bloody island, Major Jake Dillon discovers just how much combat is involved in a combat correspondent's life....First Lieutenant R. B. Macklin, a consummate bully, is put on a War Bond tour so he will not endanger his own men....General Fleming Pickering, on a ticklish diplomatic mission, attempts to balance the hot and mighty temperaments of Douglas MacArthur, OSS chief Bill Donovan and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox....Corporal Robert Easterbrock, still wet behind the ears, discovers that the price of success in wartime may be uncomfortably high.... From the Solomons to Australia to Washington, D.C., old faces and new - generals, captains, privates, wives and sweethearts - find themselves faced with the challenge of their lives. This is the story of the men of the Marine Corps, their loves and loyalties, of an elite fraternity united by courage and honor. Filled with crackling realism and adventure, rich characters, realheroes, and that special flair for the military heart and mind that make Griffin's novels so loved, Close Combat is a dramatic, captivating novel, further proof, in the words of Tom Clancy, that "W. E. B. Griffin is a storyteller in the grand tradition."