Part one of three-part look at the U.S. Marines.                                                                                                       

When the world called for the marines they grabbed their guns for the wars and global clashes of the 19th and 20th centuries.                          

The U.S. fighting machine tackles one of their hardest assignments in the jungles of Vietnam.                                                          

It's a story of survival on a desert island--and it helped change the course of WWII! Within hours of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, about 1,600 US marines and civilians found themselves under surprise attack from Japan on a tiny Pacific Island. In a 2-hour special, we take six survivors of the siege of Wake Island back to the scene of their heroic stand. They retrace those horrific days in which they suffered eventual capture, beatings, and imprisonment--yet survived to tell their stories.

Private Eugene B. Sledge, U.S. Marine Corps, served in a rifle company and spent four months engaged in close combat with the Japanese. Years later, the man called "Sledgehammer" by his buddies wrote a book from notes scribbled in a Bible.

They were the Marines who fought for control of the Pacific Islands.                                                                                   

Examine the technology and tactics that produced this unique fighting force.