It was early one morning in October 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon. Terrorists drove a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of explosives into the atrium of a building housing the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit. The explosives were detonated, razing the four-story steel and concrete building, killing 241 Americans, and injuring many more. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. pulled its forces out of Beruit. Within months of the attack, author Eric Hammel was granted an historic opportunity to interview survivors of the bombing and those who came to their rescue. This book is their story and captures the Marines' mission in Lebanon, including largely unreported battles fought in and around Beirut. Using recollections from the nearly 200 people interviewed, the book recounts in vivid detail the terrorist attack on unit headquarters, and how the survivors came out alive.

It was 1950, a brutally cold November in North Korea, and the war seemed all but over. And then a force of nearly 70,000 Chinese "volunteers" crossed the Yalu River, encircling the 30,000 United Nations troops at the Chosin Reservoir. The epic story of what followed--one of the iconic battles in Marine history--is told for the first time in gut-level detail in this book. From the point of view of the men in the foxholes and tanks, outposts and command posts, Chosin offers a harrowing, firsthand account of the 1st Marine Divisions breakout battle against overwhelming Chinese forces in the bitter North Korean winter. Seasoned military historian Eric Hammel describes the errors and miscalculations by American higher-ups that left the division strung out at the end of a narrow road scores of miles from the sea. Then he plunges into the action: the massing of Chinese forces; the punishing climate and terrain; the high-level over-confidence that crippled the American command; and the onset of the overpowering Chinese assault. His account provides a wealth of tactical and human detail and small unit action: from an intelligence officers efforts to make sense of conflicting reports, to engineers improvising a bridge from logs and snow, from Marines marching to POW camps, to a battle-weary messengers discovery of headquarter staff safely ensconced behind friendly lines, settling down in formal dress to a full-course dinner. The result is the most complete book ever written on this heroic battle, a masterful narrative from the perspective of those who fought. Previously published under the same title by Vanguard Press, 1981, ISBN - 081490856X; and by Presidio Press, 1990, ISBN - 089141782.

Marines at War 20 True, Heroic Tales of U.S. Marines in Combat 1942 - 1983 by Eric Hammel 272 pages with Maps ISBN 978-0-935553-40-6 In twenty hard-hitting, action-packed true, heroic stories, Eric Hammel chronicles the making of the modern U.S. Marine Corps from the desperate Guadalcanal landings in 1942 to the tragic bombing of the Marine headquarters in Beirut in 1983. Excerpted from all of Hammel's books on Marine Corps battles and a number of articles he wrote over the years for Leatherneck and other magazines, this collection includes stories of ground combat in the South Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, and Beirut, as well as tales of Marine aviators in action in three wars. Marines at War will prove to be inspiring to Marines, former Marines, friends of the U.S. Marine Corps, and any other reader of military history who wants to know what war looks like from the bottom up. Eric Hammel is well known to military-history readers for the way he blends riveting accounts of men at the bloody spearpoint with the big picture. His blending fact with analysis is the essence of his writing. Several of the chapters in Marines at War are rendered in the actual words of combat Marines.

By the summer of 1944 the tide had turned in the Pacific War against the Japanese. The war was not nearly over, however, and the U.S. Marines had their heaviest combat in front of them. Here for the first time is a detailed photographic history for the Fighting Leathernecks' fierce combat for the Marianas, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Illustrated with hundreds of never-before-published photographs and supplemented with full-color maps, Islands of Hell is a historical and visual treat.

Some of the biggest battles fought by the Marines during World War II took place on tiny islands scattered throughout the western Pacific. Among these, the battles for Tarawa and the Marshalls were some of the fiercest and most decisive of the Pacific campaign--critical engagements that this pictorial history brings vividly to life. In hundreds of rare photographs, many never-before-published, the historic drama unfolds beginning with the 2d Marine Division’s landing on Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll on November 20, 1943. Assured that the island’s defenses had been “pounded into coral dust” by naval and air bombardment, the Marines in fact found themselves in the thick of the first modern amphibious assault on a well-defended beachhead. Three days of intense fighting secured the island for the Allies, at the cost of 1,000 Marines dead and more than 2,000 wounded. The book then turns to the Marshall Islands where, early in World War II, the Japanese had built airfields on the Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls. Dramatic photographs document the taking of Kwajalein by U.S. Marines and Army troops after the most massive bombardment of the war. We then witness the landing of the 22d Marines on the five islands of Eniwetok on February 18, followed by the intense fighting that brought the entire atoll under Allied control within four days--securing crucial landing fields and operational support for the Allies’ island-hopping campaign to ultimate victory in the Pacific. A tribute to the rare courage and heroism that, for the Marines in WWII, were merely a matter of course, this illustrated history keeps their spectacular sacrifices and feats of valor forever before us.

Recalls the battle over New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, one of America's offensive actions in the Pacific during World War II

Between late 1942 and early 1944, the Marines took part in a series of major campaigns in and around the Solomons--including New Georgia, Bougainville, and Cape Gloucester--all part of the effort to reach the Japanese at Rabaul. Eric Hammel has scoured the National Archives to unearth every extant combat photo of these campaigns that paved the way to victory in the Pacific. Although the 1st Marine Division had broken the back of the Japanese on Guadalcanal in furious combat in October and November of 1942, there was still much hard fighting up the "slot" in the Solomons first in New Georgia, then Bouganville, and finally Cape Goucester on the west end of New Britain, where the 1st Marine Divsion returned to battle at the end of 1943 after being restored following its grueling fight for Guadalcanal. The Marines campaigns in the Solomons and onto New Britain resulted in the mighty Japanese fortress at Rabaul on the northeast coast of New Britain being isolated and the flank of the continuing army campaign for New Guinea under MacArthur being secured from attacks from Fortress Rabaul. The high watermark of the Japanese in the South and Southwest Pacific had now passed, and the Marines would continue their island hopping in the Central Pacific all the way to Japan.