War Heroes #1

Born in Buffalo and drawn to the Marines, Sergeant John Basilone—"Manila John"—finds himself manning a water-cooled machine gun on the steaming, jungle-thick island of Guadalcanal in October 1942, where Henderson Field has become the linchpin of the entire Pacific campaign. When ordered to hold a position beyond the barbed wire against a Japanese push, Basilone and his squad dig in for a nightmare of waiting and darkness, knowing what's coming. Through waves of enemy attacks and the grinding hours of that brutal night, his steady hands on the gun and his refusal to break become all that stand between the Marines and the sea.

Ed Ludlow came to war with a simple creed: keep your head down, avoid promotions, and never volunteer—convinced that playing it safe was the only way to survive. But when his outfit faces relentless enemy fire near the German border, this cautious corporal discovers that sometimes survival itself demands the very kind of action he's spent months avoiding. As the fighting grows desperate and leadership falls, Ludlow finds his careful philosophy tested in ways he never expected.