On the sun-scorched morning of April 1, 1945, as the Battle of Okinawa roared to life, Private First Class Brandon Herrera, a lanky Texan with a mustache that defied Marine Corps grooming standards, found himself knee-deep in the mud of Kadena Beach. Operation Iceberg, the Allies’ audacious plan to seize Okinawa—Japan’s final defensive bastion before the home islands—had just begun. Over 180,000 U.S. troops, backed by a naval armada stretching to the horizon, faced 130,000 entrenched Japanese defenders under Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima. The island, a 60-mile-long snake of coral and volcanic rock, was about to become a meat grinder, claiming over 200,000 lives by June 22, 1945. But nobody told Brandon that. He was too busy polishing his secret weapon: a modified ukulele strung with barbed wire.

It was 1943, and the Pacific Theater was a sweaty, mosquito-infested mess of steel, saltwater, and screaming. Enter Midshipman Brandon Herrera, a scrawny 19-year-old from some nowhere town in Texas, who’d joined the Navy because he thought “midshipman” sounded like a cushy gig involving midday naps. Spoiler: it wasn’t. Assigned to the USS Rusty Bucket, a destroyer so dilapidated it was held together by chewing gum and spite, Brandon was the ship’s resident punching bag. His official duties included swabbing decks, peeling potatoes, and accidentally dropping signal flags into the ocean—skills that screamed “future legend.”