The `Canal`...Bloody Saipan. Terrible Tarawa. Iwo Jima where "...uncommon heroics were a common occurence." The 1st Marine Division by the war`s end had had ALL of it`s original members wounded, killed or replaced due to tropical illnesses, and simple combat fatigue save for 38 out of a total strength of the approx. 4,600 Marines who 1st went on the offensive and went ashore on Aug 7th 1942 in the Solomon Islands. Keep in mind by war`s end the 1st Marine Division had over 6,000 men. 38...The other Marine Divisions suffered just as badly...Pelielu, Okinawa, Makin, Betio...otherwise God forsaken but at that time immediately strategically and tactically critical locations like the "Sugar Loaf" "Meat Grinder", "the Knob", "Carnage Corner" Hill 281...places that made modern horror films just pale in comparision and each and every 1 of them paid for literally with hundreds of lives of young Marines and their Navy corpsmen along with thousands of others wounded in both body and in their minds...That was just in WW 2. There were and still are (to this date anyway) America`s "GREATEST Generation", without taking 1 iota from their just as dedicated and brave successors in Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, Grenada, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan...