30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Lifesaver, February 19, 2005
This review is from: God Isn't Here: A Young American's Entry into World War II and His Participation in the Battle for Iwo Jima (Paperback)
A real lifesaver
Richard Overton writes in a style that's true to his generation. The words are his. The drawings are his. This is neither a Hollywood adaptation nor a New York-edited (and censored) story. This is as genuine a tale as you'll find anywhere.
If you read "Flags of our Fathers," you've got to read "God Isn't Here." In "Flags of our Fathers," James Bradley does a magnificent job of telling the stories of six young men who just happened to appear in the most famous picture in the history of photography. James Bradley's father, John, was a Navy Corpsman who had the fortune (or misfortune) of being assigned to the Marines. Richard Overton followed a path that must have been similar to John Bradley's, so, for the big picture, read "Flag of our Fathers," but for the inside, first-person account of what it was like to be a Navy Corpsman serving with the Marines, read "God Isn't Here."
My review of this book is somewhat biased. In 2000, as my father, brother, and I toured the island of Iwo Jima, my father became convinced that the man who just happened to ride up to the top of Mt. Suribachi with us was the corpsman who had saved his life fifty-five years earlier when he was shot in the leg while carrying a stretcher. The man's name was Richard Overton, and while Richard didn't remember my father, my father sure remembered him. After my father recounted his story of how a corpsman ran out into enemy fire, picked him up, threw him over a shoulder, and carried him to safety, Richard agreed that he must have been the corpsman -- simply because all of the other corpsmen had been killed.
After the trip to Iwo Jima, my father sent Richard Overton copies of some of the letters he had written home to his mother. These letters, most of them censored by the government, were the only written documentation that my father had of the war. In return, Richard sent an entire manuscript to my father. Richard indicated that the manuscript was private, and that it was not intended to be published. After several of us read the manuscript -- all of us laughing and crying and turning the pages as fast as we could -- my father urged Richard to at least share the manuscript with a museum. Richard's story was just something that shouldn't be lost to history!
Fortunately, Richard later decided to allow the public to read his very detailed and personal manuscript.
In "Flag of our Fathers," there's a rather incredible story of how Ira Hayes hitch-hiked to Texas to tell Harlon Block's mother that it really was Harlon who was in the famous flag-raising photograph. Well, I think Richard Overton did Ira Hayes one better. After being evacuated from Iwo Jima and taken to a hospital on Guam, Richard Overton escaped from the hospital and then stowed away on ships to get back to his group, which by then had returned to Hawaii. It seems he made it just in time to leave again for Okinawa.
What a story! From enlisting in the Navy to appease his parents, who absolutely, positively did not want him to join the Marines, to training to be a Corpsman, to being assigned to the Marines, to training for amphibious landings at Camp Pendleton, to training on Hawaii specifically for the assault on Iwo Jima, to the actual battle of Iwo Jima, to a hospital on Guam, to stowing away to rejoin his group on Hawaii, to occupying Japan after the surrender, Richard covers it all. And it's all with the first-hand attention to detail that you're just not going to get from any historian who wasn't actually there.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An incredible account about surviving Iwo Jima, November 29, 2004
This review is from: God Isn't Here: A Young American's Entry into World War II and His Participation in the Battle for Iwo Jima (Paperback)
I came upon this book as part of my research about Navy Corpsman on Iwo Jima. Frankly I didn't expect too much, having read many personal accounts that were rehashing information that was available elsewhere. I was pleasantly surprised to read how well the author explained the gritty details of his Iwo Jima experience.
Never have I read with such detail how the Marines survived the night after night Japanese infiltrations, or the emotional toll it took on the American combatants.
My father was a WWII vet, and I recommended that he read it. He is a voracious reader, and has read most every WWII book he can get his hands on. He has always been a stoic man reluctant to show his emotions, but he admitted he openly wept after reading this book.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to know what combat is like. It is not an easy read, as he describes quite explicitly what he saw, heard, smelled, tasted and felt. It's not a perfect book, but one I would recommend, and certainly worth the $15 I paid for it.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you've read "With the Old Breed"......, December 20, 2005
This review is from: God Isn't Here: A Young American's Entry into World War II and His Participation in the Battle for Iwo Jima (Paperback)
If you've read "With the Old Breed" by Eugene Sledge, this book is very similar, with two exceptions. First, Sledge appears to be more comfortable expressing himself in writing. (He was a professor of Ornithology after the war.) Overton doesn't seem as comfortable using the written word to describe his experiences, but is still able to convey in his journey through what would be his involvement in one of the bloodiest battles in WWII. Second, Overton is not shy at all about describing EXACTLY what he saw and experienced. He describes in detail everything he saw. Sledge seems to have either on his own, or from somebody else, edited the most horrific parts of war out of his book. Overton, either in himself, or in his editing office, hasn't done this.
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