As for Iwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers is a GREAT book. If you want to get a good feeling for what it is really like to go to hell and back read that book. It is written by the son of one of the "flag raisers" who found a shoebox full of momentos in the closet of his late father and who decided to investigate into why his father refused to talk about it, and why the flag raisers were haunted by the fact everyone made heroes out of them when all they did was raise a flag and a lot of other guys on Iwo did far more heroic stuff than they.

Clearly one of the best books ever written about the front line Marines fighting the Japanese.

Perhaps that is what they are thinking of making into a movie.