Iwo Jima’s Marines: still showing today’s “youth voters” what the real price of freedom is

Coach is Right ^ | 2/19/14 | Kevin "Coach" Collins

[Oldpuppymax]

In the summer of 1965 Marine Corps Boot camp training included the boast “If it weren’t for the Marine Corps you’d be speaking Japanese.” It was true then and it is still true today.

Sixty nine years ago waves and waves of eighteen and nineteen year old Marines, waded ashore on Iwo Jima to defeat the Japanese and help win the war in the Pacific on American terms. They fought to keep us from being the slaves of the Japanese and being forced to end up “speaking Japanese.”

By mid- February 1945 Franklin Roosevelt knew Americans were running out of patience and money for the war against a country thousands of miles away and on its last legs anyway.

Some thought we should make peace with the Japanese and cut our losses. The only resource America had left was a Marine Corps largely filled with...

[Forty-Niner]

At the local Marine Corps Birthday Balls here in Sacramento I met an Iwo veteran Marine that was 15 years old when he was discharged at the end of he war! He had lied and entered the Marines when he was just 12 years old. A really nice guy he was popular among the other WWII Marines.

[MSSC6644]

One of the very few “stories” Dad would tell us about his experience was that he lost all of the first group of corpsmen and writing those letters home was among the most difficult of duties he had.

[ken5050]

After 1944, The Marines had pretty much fixed on the standard 13 man squad, with one corpsman attached to it..althoguh of course once combat started, especially like the hell at Iwo, organization rapidly broke dow.n

Statistically, once could infer that thus that 1/14, or 7% of MoH awarded at Iwo would go to corpsmen; instead, it's 20%. That alone tells you something..

If you read the citations for the corpsmen here there's one common element..exposing themselves to enemy fire with absolute disregard for their own life. In some ways, they are deserving of a higher-order MoH, if such a thing were possible..

[MasterGunner01]

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon St. Crispin’s Day.

Henry V
act 4, scene 3