February 19, 1945. Green Beach One, Iwo Jima. The ramp drops and a 23-year-old corporal from Dayton, Ohio steps into black volcanic ash carrying a weapon that does not officially exist. No stock number. No armorer's signature. Its firing mechanism came out of the wing of a wrecked Navy fighter. Only six were ever built, and not one survives today.

Ninety minutes later the men around him are still flat on their faces. Nearly seventy concealed blockhouses cover the ground ahead, and no American on that beach can see a single one of them. That is the real problem of Iwo Jima: firepower is useless against an enemy you cannot locate.

Tony Stein found a way to make the Japanese show him where they were. The gun was not the answer — it was only the receipt. What he did on that beach was written up by men who knew no board in Washington would believe a word of it.

Fifteen officers signed it anyway.

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