Episode spoilers.
Sledge's company prepares to move into Peleliu's hills, passing men whose exhaustion gives little reassurance about the ground ahead. Captain Haldane talks with him before the advance, offering a personal connection amid the orders and casualties. Elsewhere, Basilone's war-bond appearances continue, but memories of combat intrude even during a game of golf. Neither the public attention in America nor another day's progress on the island gives the Marines much distance from the men they have lost.
Jones and Burgin lead the advance through heavily defended ground. Sledge tends to Leyden when he is temporarily blinded and shoots a Japanese soldier who attacks him with a sword. Carrying the dead and wounded becomes part of the same slow movement through the hills. Jones dies from his wounds. News then reaches the men that a sniper has killed Haldane, taking away the officer Sledge trusted to guide them through the fighting.
Surrounded by bodies, Sledge begins trying to remove a dead Japanese soldier's gold teeth. Snafu stops him with a warning about germs, steering him away from a practice he has watched other Marines carry out. When the company finally returns to Pavuvu, nurses greet the survivors with drinks. Sledge stares at the offer, unable to fit its ordinary kindness to the fighting he has just left. His look silences Mac's teasing. He eventually joins the men swimming, with Haldane's absence still following the company home.