Full of adventures and memorable characters, this memoir tells how living through the Depression prepared one man to survive the bloodiest action in American military history: the invasion of Iwo Jima in WWII. Gene Curnow was among a contingent of 36 Medical Corpsmen landed with a Regimental Combat Team of 2, 500 Marines. After 10 days they were taken off the island, but of the original force landed, only 6 of the Medical Corpsmen and 88 of the Marines were still alive. Upon returning home from WWII, Gene used the G.I. Bill and earned three advanced degrees. Upon graduation in 1955 as a D.V.M., he established a successful veterinary medical practice, honored for pioneering the mobile veterinary clinic concept that is now popular worldwide. He retired from vet- erinary medicine in Portland, OR, in 2006. He is a volunteer counselor for the Veteran's Administration in the program Veterans Helping Veterans. He works primarily in the field of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.)