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"The brutal and heroic story of Marines in action" The New York Times
08:32, September 15, 1944.
The 1st Marines stormed the Pacific island of Peleliu.
Captain Hunt and his company of two hundred and thirty-five men were among some of the first to land; forty-eight hours later, only seventy-eight of them were alive.
Outnumbered and outgunned by the enemy, they beat off all attacks with a courage which is at the same time matter-of-fact and superhuman individual, yet collective and drawn from the real comradeship of men who cannot let each other down.
Here are dramatic accounts of wounded men miraculously still fighting, of two men seen in silhouette at night against the flashes of guns in a death struggle atop a cliff, of the flame-scarred bodies of Japanese in caves and pillboxes, of a nervous and badly scared youngster shooting one of his own comrades.
When, at last, relief came and Captain Hunt and his handful of men staggered back to the beach, they had withstood three terrible counterattacks and killed more than five hundred enemy soldiers.
"Coral Comes High is an unpretentious, stark, blow-by-blow story of a terrible action, well told in the fewest possible words" Time Magazine
"This is a story of fighting men told by a fighting man." General Alexander Vandegrift, United States Marine Corps.
Captain Hunt served in the 1st Regiment of the 1st Marine Division in the South Pacific and was decorated with the Silver Star medal and the Navy Cross. He received the Navy Cross for his part in the action described in this book. The citation for this decoration relates how Captain Hunt's company of riflemen was reduced to thirty-four men; how these survivors defended an isolated position "against three counterattacks killing four hundred and twenty-two Japanese." After the war he worked as a writer and editor for Fortune and Life magazines. Coral Comes High was first published in 1946 and Hunt passed away in 1991.
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