Book Description

Men of Honor contains more than 100 official citations for bravery above and beyond the call of duty along with several eyewitness acounts such as the following excerpt: ... When we approached the area, Captain Pless asked the crew, "you all with me?" He knew the answer would be yes. As we flew on, we saw four U.S. personnel laying on the beach and around them, not less forty or fifty armed Viet Cong. They, the V.C., were beating the helpless personnel. As we flew over the group of people, one of the beach waved to us, and for his efforts got a rifle butt in the face. The V.C. were too close to the Americans to safely fire at them, but the V.C. were killing them anyway, so Captain Pless ordered the right door gunner, Gunnery Sergeant Poulson, to fire on them. It took only a short burst to send the V.C. running for cover. When Captain Pless saw this, he immediately rolled in hot with rockets and guns. The smoke from our W.P. rockets obscured the V.C. who were running when we started our attack, but Captain Pless continued to fire into the smoke, displaying the most remarkable airmanship I have ever seen in my eighteen months in country as an air crewman. As crewchief of the aircraft, and knowing its capabilities, I couldn't believe what he was making that belo do, but when the smoke started to clear, I saw bodies laying everywhere . . . Along with the above there are short biographies of all thirty-eight men, newspaper articles, and photographs. Men of Honor is a look at only a few of the many heroes of the United States Marine Corps: Kenneth D. Bailey, Harvey C. Barnum, John Basilone, Gregory Boyington, Martin L. Brandtner. Evans F. Carlson, Justice M. Chambers, Raymond G. Davis, Joseph Donovan, Merritt A. Edson, Wesley L. Fox, Robert Murray Hanson, John L. Hopkins, Louis R. Jones, Howard V. Lee, William G. Leftwich, Homer Litzenberg, Harry B. Liversedge, James E. Livingston, Joseph J. McCarthy, Frank N. Mitchell, Raymond G. Murphy, Raymond L. Murray, Steven Pless, Lewis B. Puller, Harold S. Roise, Carlton Robert Rouh, Webb D. Sawyer, James V. Shanley, Alan Shapley, David M. Shoup, Ray L. SMith, Alexander Vandegrift, Jay R. Vargas, Robert W. Vaupell, Kenneth A. Walsh, Lewis W. Walt, Stanley J. Wawrzyniak.