Tarawa

In November 1943, the U.S. Marines undertook a battle of special importance. They invaded a tiny island one-third the size of New York's Central Park. Terrible Tarawa, as it would come to be called, was the first amphibious landing against a heavily defended beach since the Gallipoli disaster of 1915. Conventional military wisdom insisted that it could not be dome, and in seventy-six ghastly hours more than 8,000 Americans and Japanese casualties became the price of the attempt.