Peleliu Landing

El Paso: Carl Hertzog, 1945. Signed limited first edition. First edition, one of 500 numbered copies signed by Tom Lea on the limitation page. [iv], 34 pp. 10 full-page plates after drawings by Lea. Bound in Marine Corps green herringbone cloth, pictorial endpapers from a photograph by Lea. With the eight-page Life magazine color insert laid-in, as called for, housed in envelope. Toning to cloth, else Near Fine with a hint of mustiness.

Lea was an artist for Life who went to record the Pacific theater of combat during WWII. But, he writes, "On the beach I found it impossible to do any sketching or writing; my work there consisted of trying to keep from getting killed and trying to memorize what I saw and felt under fire." He was present for the first 32 hours of the Marines' assault on Peleliu Island. His text and sketches brilliantly capture the terror and shock experienced by the Marines in those first few critical hours. From Wikipedia's article on the landing, "In the US, [The Battle of Peleliu] was a controversial battle because of the island's negligible strategic value and the high casualty rate, which exceeded that of all other amphibious operations during the Pacific War."

The publisher's choices of type face, paper and binding compliment Lea's narrative and sketches. Certainly this work must be counted as one of Carl Hertzog's greatest achievements, who later called the book: "The most daring, exciting, and innovative volume produced in Texas to that time."

Katherine Simmons said of it, "All the agony and shock of the Marine landing on Peleliu Island are in Lea's narrative. The black and white of the sketches he drew 'before my hand steadied' are stark and poignant beyond the paintings he later made from them for Life magazine.