72nd Anniversary of Flag Raising on Mt Suribachi

23 Fe 2017

[Yo-Yo]

[simpson96]

And may I recommend the book "Flags Of Our Fathers", to anyone who has not read it.

Would that it were required reading for the young generation.

[lurk]

6800 marines were killed in a month, on a patch of land only a few square miles.

It was in a day they didn’t have PTSD. Those men grew quiet about the Pacific Theater, came home and went on with life.

[MurrietaMadman]

http://www.recordsofwar.com/iwo/dead/dead.htm

[Dilbert San Diego]

Our fathers and grandfathers fought the Second World War, and defeated true evil. They created the world we all grew up in after World War II.

I admire the courage and bravery of those men who fought true evil and gave us the world we grew up in.

People who bitch about how Trump is Hitler or how its evil not to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual marriage_, are utterly mindless and clueless about what true evil is. These people who.bitch about such subjects never will call Muslim terror by its rightful name, or call terrorism evil. To them evil is not endorsing homosexual behavior or not being on board with global warming.

[Vermont Lt]

Thats a nice way to look at it.

I had two uncles in the Pacific. They were both walking PTSDs when I knew them as a young adult thirty years after the fact.

One drank his problems away. The other one was depressed to the point of losing most of the good things in his life.

They sure had it. They did not treat it. They ALL didn’t just go on.

I am not discounting the folks who did come home and get on with it. But there is a common theme that these men just sucked it up and came home and “went on with their lives.”

ALL wars take a toll for decades after the battles are over.

[laplata]

It was in a day they didn’t have PTSD. Those men grew quiet about the Pacific Theater, came home and went on with life.

---

It wasn’t called PTSD but the war adversely affected many and some were not able to go on with normal lives.

[NEWwoman]

Many thanks for the reminder

Found this video of it: https://youtu.be/c4J_fWJBrmI

God bless our military!

[A_Former_Democrat]

There is no way that people immigrating here could ever understand what it is like to truly be an American. Our fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers fought in two World Wars with heroism beyond description.

[A_Former_Democrat]

You are exactly spot on.

[poconopundit]

Good post. The suffering of veterans endures long after the guns are silent  One of the finest tribute to veterans is Emerson's Concord Hymn:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
   And fired the shot heard round the world.


The foe long since in silence slept;
   Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
   Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.


On this green bank, by this soft stream,
   We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
   When, like our sires, our sons are gone.


Spirit, that made those heroes dare
   To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
   The shaft we raise to them and thee.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[laplata]

Good post. Right on.

My Dad was in the CBI Theater of War. He lost three

childhood friends in the war. One of his buddies survived

the Bataan Death March and came back missing some fingers

which the Japs had chopped of with a hatchet. Those men were

all deeply affected at different levels and dealt with it

in different ways.

[stylin19a]

For some, their therapist was Jack Daniels....

[Vermont Lt]

My Dad was in Korea. I recall sleeping in the room next to my parents. I would occasionally hear the nightmares.

Again, this was in the late 1970’s.

When a family member had some “issues” later in life, my Dad took him aside and told him to not worry about what people think—go get help. Its not worth wrecking your life.

[laplata]

God bless them all.

[Jim Noble]

It was in a day they didn’t have PTSD

Sure.

When I was a medical student in the 1970s, there were psychiatric hospitals that were filled with WW II psychiatric casualties (and a few from Korea).

Here's a link if you are interested.

As late as 1998, I had a patient admitted to my service with severe abdominal pain. He was 88 years old then.

When I went in to see him, a mob of students, residents, and nurses in tow, he was sitting up in bed, sweating bullets from the pain. He could have put his uniform from 1945 back on, he was that fit. Haircut high and tight. He hadn't asked for any pain medicine all night, so the entourage was mystified that he was in so much pain.

But I knew why, so I asked him to tell 15 people why he hadn't rung for the nurse for pain medicine. His answer:

"Infantrymen only talk to infantrymen".

[Verginius Rufus]

Ironically, the book Flags of our Fathers was written by someone who believed that his father was one of the 6 men in Joe Rosenthal's photo...but the Marine Corps later determined that Bradley was not one of those in the photo.

My father was in the Sixth Marine Division and saw combat on Guam and Okinawa, but not on Iwo Jima. I once watched Sands of Iwo Jima with him--he thought it was pretty realistic.

[Verginius Rufus]

Ironically, the book Flags of our Fathers was written by someone who believed that his father was one of the 6 men in Joe Rosenthal's photo...but the Marine Corps later determined that Bradley was not one of those in the photo.

My father was in the Sixth Marine Division and saw combat on Guam and Okinawa, but not on Iwo Jima. I once watched Sands of Iwo Jima with him--he thought it was pretty realistic.

[laplata]

...but the Marine Corps later determined that Bradley was not one of those in the photo.

---

That is wrong. John Bradley was one of them.