US Marines

Iwo Jima

In a picture that captures the violence and sheer destruction inherent in war perhaps more graphically than any other ever published in LIFE, Marines take cover on an Iwo Jima hillside amid the burned-out remains of banyan jungle, as a Japanese bunker is obliterated in March 1945. Wonder if these men had any hearing left? At least they must have ended up with a horrible lifelong tinnitus.