The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Silver Star (Posthumously) to Sergeant Charles D. Collins (MCSN: 431500), United States Marine Corps Reserve, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity while serving as a Squad Leader in a platoon of Company I, Third Battalion, Twenty-eighth Marines, FIFTH Marine Division in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands on 24 February 1945. Prevented from using defensive gun fire by the presence of nearby friendly units, Sergeant Collins and his platoon employed hand grenades and knives in repulsing numerous fanatical infiltration attempts by an estimated force of one hundred Japanese soldiers during the night. With the hard pressed Marines desperately in need of grenades to stem the vicious assaults he repeatedly crawled from man to man across the rough terrain distributing over four cases of grenades and issuing necessary instruction heedless of the constant hail of fragments falling about him. By his heroic actions, resolute fortitude and undaunted fighting spirit Sergeant Collins was instrumental in thwarting a hostile breakthrough which would have seriously impaired the entire position of his battalion thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and the United States Naval Service.