Oscar E. Gilbert, Ph. D., is a former Marine artilleryman and currently a geoscientist living in Texas. He is the National Information Coordinator for the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society.

No previous book has been devoted to Marine Corps armor in World War II. Gilbert's gripping narrative combines exhaustive detail on Marine armor and combat with moving eyewitness accounts, never before published, of what it was actually like to be a Marine tanker in action in the Pacific.