John Wayne didn’t serve in World War II, but Duke sought to make up for it by starring in many patriotic military movies for the rest of his life, including one set during D-Day.

One of these shot shortly after the conflict was 1949’s Sands of Iwo Jima; a film that followed a group of US Marines from training to fighting the Japanese.

The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in the early months of 1945 that lasted five weeks and saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War. Around…