We follow Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone, three US Marines of the First Marine Division. Their lives are intertwined against the background of the battle in the Pacific during the Second World War. We see them from their first battles against the Japanese on Guadalcanal, the landing at Cape Gloucester, the Battle of Peleliu. Standing on the bloody beach of Iwo Jima, they survived the horrors of Okinawa and made the long-awaited but uneasy return after Japan's surrender.