Bougainville

"Bougainville - A Marine's Story" is part of my father's (Doan Helms) autobiography. He was an Indiana farm boy born in 1920. This rousing page turner describes him enlisting in the Marines shortly after Pearl Harbor, his relationship with his future wife, and follows him through boot camp at Parris Island, and then to the Pacific with duty at Samoa, New Zealand, Guadalcanal, and finally Bougainville, a campaign that received very little coverage. Most of the flag raisers at Iwo Jimo had been through Bougainville, and were spooked by what they called "the Bougainville Curse," the belief that they would not live through another battle.