The Final Campaign: Marines in the Victory on Okinawa

"The Final Campaign" is the war memoir by Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret). He served in the Marine Corps for 29 years. He had been in command of a company during his time in Vietnam and then a battalion in Okinawa. He later served in amphibious ships at sea for five years. Excerpt: "Daybreak on 29 May 1945 found the 1st Marine Division beginning its fifth consecutive week of frontal assault as part of the U.S. Tenth Army's grinding offensive against the Japanese defenses centered on Shuri Castle in southern Okinawa. Operation Iceberg, the campaign to seize Okinawa, was now two months old—and badly bogged down. The exhilarating, fast-paced opening of the campaign had been replaced by week after week of costly, exhausting, attrition warfare against the Shuri complex."