author
Cyril J. O'Brien
1919–2011
A Marine combat correspondent who reported from Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima, he later built a long career in journalism and public affairs. His writing brings World War II history close to the ground, shaped by someone who was there.
1 Audiobook
Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam
by Cyril J. O'Brien
About the author
Born in 1919, Cyril John O'Brien served with the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. He first served in a line company with the 3rd Marines on Bougainville, then became a combat correspondent and covered the battles for Guam and Iwo Jima.
After the war, he continued in journalism, working as a Washington correspondent on Capitol Hill. He later became director of media affairs at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and he was remembered there as the oldest known living Marine Corps war correspondent at the time of his death in 2011.
O'Brien is best known as the author of Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam, a clear, firsthand-informed account of the 1944 campaign. His background as both participant and reporter gives his work an immediacy that still appeals to readers interested in military history.