Posted on 06/24/2016 9:01:21 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
The Marine Corps acknowledged Thursday it had misidentified one of the six men in the iconic 1945 World War II photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.
The investigation solved one mystery but raised another. The Marine Corps investigation identified a man who has never been officially linked to the famous photo: Pvt. 1st Class Harold Schultz, who died in 1995 and went through life without publicly talking about his role.
"Why doesn't he say anything to anyone," asked Charles Neimeyer, a Marine Corps historian who was on the panel that investigated the identities of the flag raisers. "That's the mystery."
"I think he took his secret to the grave," Neimeyer said.
The Marine Corps investigation concluded with near certainty that Schultz was one of the Marines raising the flag in the photo.
The investigation also determined that John Bradley, a Navy corpsman from Wisconsin, was not in the photograph taken on Mount Suribachi by Joe Rosenthal, a photographer for The Associated Press. The Feb. 23, 1945, photo that has been reproduced over seven decades actually depicts the second flag-raising of the day.
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
It's war. I have no idea what I would do to an enemy that butchered and maimed my brothers in arms. But I'm sure that I wouldn't want to explain it 1000's of miles away and years after the event.
Men do things in war that are horrible and unspeakable in any other place that is not in the theater of war. Do you really want to know what men do in war? My father fought in Latin America, Lebanon, Indonesian and Vietnam. He never spoke about combat except one time when someone mentioned that a "young boy" had been killed I think in El Salvador or Vietnam.. and he just said, "young boys can kill you just as easily as young men. They can shine your shoes and blow you up." If you don't kill them, your men can die.
He said that there was a difference between killing in war and murder. Each man has to answer to his maker for what is in his heart at the time he kills the enemy.
I am fairly certain that men being men, we had men that mutilated enemies, killed civilians and all the horrible things that we can imagine. But I can't put myself in the mindset of being in combat for years and watching my best friends turned to dog meat and mutilated. I am glad that I haven't had to make those choices and I pray for the men that have been put in these situations.
I don't think that American men have a monopoly on altruistic behavior in combat. I think Americans scare the crap out of most other men in combat because of our aggressive nature , discipline and tactics. We also tend to allow men to surrender. That's a huge thing in combat.
I hated Brady’s book because he spent the first 1/3rd of that book alleging American atrocities in prior wars. Liberals love to try to smear us and our warriors and cast us as as cruel and criminal as our enemies.
I am a combat veteran of the Vietnam War and I am very proud of us and how we came through everything and how we conducted ourselves in really tough situations and lousy conditions. We were good with our prisoners and the enemy knew that they would be treated humanely if they surrendered - or even if we captured them when they were wounded.
We have standards that set us apart. That doesn’t mean that we always live up to them but we are far and away the most ethical combatants in history.
It paid off for me. I had a VC prisoner who I had captured with a wounded hand. I handed him a lit cigarette after I had ensured that he didn’t have any weapons left on him and that let him know I wasn’t going to kill him. A couple of hours later, I was hit by a machine gun in the right thigh and my prisoner helped carry me to the medevac bird. I still remembering him waving at me when I lifted off.
Writers like Brady who have never been in combat - or people like Kerry who was on the rivers but not in infantry combat have no idea how good we are as a people. I do.
Thank you for your post and for your service. I had classmates that served in Vietnam. Not all of them survived.
To this day, I burn with distaste at all the draft dodging, hippy, draft card burning idiots that plagued the country then and ever since.
Thank you. I have mostly forgiven the men of my generation who let us take the whole thing on just us. Mostly.
You are a good person, then. I still can not get over the demonstrations, and every time I see or hear John Kerry, I just feel like - well, I have no words to describe it really - loathing is close though.
I think we burned a few cities and have done our fair share of dealing death and destruction to our enemies.
We do seem to prosecute our armed forces for varying from the ROE more than some. I agree that if I was fighting Americans, I'd think about surrender... If I was an American getting over run with muslims. I don't think I'd surrender and would probably fight to the end.
That's the upside of treating prisoners well. Of course the Mongols were my favorite in dealing with muslims. They didn't "treat" any prisoners, any women and any children taller than the axle of a cart. They just asked them if they give up and if not....well then you never got a second chance. We somehow are under the impression that putting men in prison for a couple of years will change their ideology... and that's where I think we fail.
But I think all sides in war are capable of acts that would make me puke. As a veteran I'm sure that you've met men that were capable and possibly did some violent and deadly things to the enemy. I never served and only have fathers, uncles and cousins that I speak to about such things. I read a lot and know that we might have done things in the distant and not so distant past that involved civilian carnage and was chalked up to "cost of war". I agree with them, that civilian casualties are a "cost of war" and if my father or relatives are saved by their deaths...oh well. Light them up. But that's just me. Your mileage may differ.
Burning cities might have its time and place but for the most part, it has little effect in winning a war. You win a war when you run our flag up their flagpole and bombing alone can’t do that. In most modern fights you have to protect the folks caught in the middle while killing the bad guys.
We are quite good at that and have been for a while. And while we are engaged in destroying them, we also do a wonderful job protecting the civilians. It’s hard to do but it’s critical for mission success. A real professional, fully-trained and disciplined force makes it look easy.
We most assuredly killed the enemy. Day after day. It doesn’t take long to overcome qualms (if you had any) and hunt. The really hard part is getting your experienced, tough guys to stop once they get going.
War is brutal, miserable, and takes a toll on everyone, no matter who. No one who has served in direct combat is ever the same again.
It’s just the way it is.
After a long while, we adjusted and later yet, we realized that the decisions that 18 or 19 year olds make are just that. Those who chose to take a different path and avoid our war for whatever excuse, made that decision a lot of years ago and that's the path they must live with.
Our path, the path of serving our country in a foreign war was a hard one but in the process, we learned what we were made of and what we could endure for the sake of our people. I am proud of us and always will be. My fellow Vietnam veterans are still my closest friends but at least now I understand better the rest of my generation and try not to hold their choices against them.
Thanks for that. In my small rural town, there were no peaceniks. I am just as proud of our generation that served as I am of my Dad’s generation.
I consider people like him and you to be the backbone of our nation. Thanks again for your service.
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