Unlike some volumes in the Images of War series, Hell in the Central Pacific shows a lot of faces.

Some books focus on weapons or other equipment. This one, which covers action in the Palau Islands in September 1944, gets up close and personal with soldiers on both sides of the conflict. And some of them are pretty grim.

First a little history. Vice Admiral William F. Halsey and the U.S. Third Fleet attacked Peleliu and Angaur, two islands in the Palau group of the Western Caroline chain, to forestall Japanese interference in General Douglas MacArthur's planned invasion of the Southern Philippines. Angaur fell quickly, but it took two months of hard fighting to win Peleliu.

Using photographs from the Wartime Archives, author Jon Diamond explains and illustrates the campaign. Many of the photos are stark and dramatic, showing troops -- mostly American, Australian and Japanese -- in the thick of combat, landing, marching, fighting and hunkering down. The collection doesn't flinch away from showing dead Japanese soldiers, many of them victims of ritual suicide in keeping with the bushido code (which frowned on allowing oneself to be taken prisoner).

Hell in the Central Pacific is grittier than some books I've seen in this series, because there are more photos taken in the heat of action, along with numerous corpses, that remind readers that war usually isn't pretty.

As always, this volume is packed with information, and the visuals make it all very real.