Posted on 05/26/2019 12:40:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
It is impossible for us to imagine what it was really like to have been locked in a desperate fight on that small island in the Pacific. When they mustered out as Marines, they were young and idealistic. When they hit the beaches at Iwo Jima, most were still in their teens. After the guns finally went silent, the survivors were men. Men as hard as diamonds. They had seen and done unimaginable things. They changed the course of the war and were themselves, forever changed.
We are left to wonder if the War Department understood the enormous price that would be paid to take that small island. Most of the names of those boys have been lost to history. The Marine Corp War Memorial is a monument to their courage and sacrifice. Just north of Arlington Cemetery stands the sculpture created by artist Felix de Weldon, himself a Navy man. It features six Marines raising the flag over Mount Suribachi. They represent all the Marines who have sacrificed for us.
It is appropriate that we pause and reflect on that sacrifice this Memorial weekend. Our thanks to James Bradley of Antigo, Wisconsin. In Bradley’s book, Flags of our Fathers he tells the stories of those young men. For decades, it was reported that his father John was one of the six flag raisers. The Brass pulled the rug out, concluding that his father was not among the six in the iconic photo well after his book became a best seller.
His father, John Bradley was a Navy Corpsman (medic). He probably went up Suribachi with the others in the event someone took a hit. He likely was a part of the first flag raising which was not photographed. During the fighting, he held and comforted scores of young men as they took their last breath. John eschewed his celebrity. He refused interviews saying that the real heroes were the ones who didn’t come back.
Harlon Block is one of the six. He was an all-state football player. When his nation called, he enlisted along with several teammates. He learned that war was no game. Harlon helped lift the flag over Iwo Jima. But, he died in later fighting with his intestines in his hands. He was twenty-one.
Then there is Sergeant Mike Strank. He was called the “old man” because he was older than the kids in his unit. Mike wasn’t some gung ho, “lets go kill the bastards,” He motivated his boys by telling them, “You do what I say, and I’ll get you home to your mothers.” He survived Iwo Jima and the war. He was twenty-four when he helped raise the flag.
Rene Gagnon was from New Hampshire. Inside the webbing of Rene’s helmet, he carried a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put it in there for protection. He believed she was good luck and he was scared. He survived to return home to Mom and his good luck charm. He was only eighteen when he raised the flag.
Next, is a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was immortalized, not just in sculpture, but also in a song by Johnny Cash. He survived Iwo Jima and the war. After the war he was invited to the White House by President Truman where he was recognized as a hero. He later told reporters, “How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only twenty-seven of us walked off alive?” The flashbacks and nightmares of the horrors proved to be too much for Ira. He took to the bottle and drowned in a puddle of rainwater ten years after the war. He was twenty-two when he waded ashore.
The last figure is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky, a “fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy.” He was a prankster. After raising the flag, Franklin gave his life on Iwo Jima. Neighbors reported that they could hear his mother’s screams all through the night when the telegram arrived with the tragic news. Franklin’s body was returned to Kentucky for burial. He was nineteen.
The surviving boys came back as men and as national heroes. 7,000 of their comrades died on that island. The heaviest casualties in the history of the Corps.
There remains mystery about another legend surrounding the monument. A story has circulated about a group of school children that was visiting the Memorial. One child counted the hands raising the flag and asked why there were thirteen hands? The tour guide is reported to have answered, “The thirteenth hand is the hand of God.” Snopes now says that legend is mostly urban. Maybe the girl did not see the thirteenth hand. Perhaps she did.
Either way, the Memorial should cause every American to be thankful to all those brave boys who sacrificed so much, securing liberty around the globe. Especially on Memorial Day, we should say a special prayer for them and give thanks to Almighty God for the freedom we enjoy today. Our freedoms will be secure as long as we remain, like those Marines, ever faithful. Semper Fidelis.
I’m sure the War Department appreciated the sacrifices of these Marines, but they were part of the Navy Department.
and aren’t they still part of the Navy department?
May Divine Providence continue to protect our servicemen and women.
No amount of gratitude can repay the sacrifices of so many.
To truly repay them we must live on in freedom and liberty at ANY cost.
God bless them every one.
A bit overwrought. While an important battle, it didn’t change the course of the war.
The men’s department! At least that is what my former Marine friends tell me.
Exactly how many more Marines needed to die there for you to consider it worthy of remembrance on Memorial Day?
Only three men originally cited as being on the Iwo flag raising detail survived the battle; John Bradley, Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes. The article incorrectly states that Sgt. Michael Strank survived the battle. Sergeant Strank was killed-in-action one week later.
“The men’s department! At least that is what my former Marine friends tell me.”
“Men’s Department?” Perhaps in a brotherly manner, but all kidding goes aside when the call for “CORPSMAN UP!” is heard. In the field, Marines & Sailors are some original “brothers of different mothers”.
In this light I watch waters world where he hit the beaches asking young people about the civil war, cold war and ww2, shameful what the left has done to indoctrinate them and erase what made this county great. Not a one had the right answers yet these are voting age young adults
Yes they were - the Men's Department.
“A bit overwrought. While an important battle, it didn’t change the course of the war.”
A USNA graduate, Hanson Baldwin’s dispatch’s from Iwo Jima, were written in the reality of battle. I respectfully suggest reading a bit of his accounts of the battle. Documented history unequivocally validates the roll Iwo Jima performed in the course of the war. In my mind he summed up the essence of being a U.S. Marine.
February 22, 1945
Marines’ Hardest Fight
They Enrich Traditions of Our Forces Despite Grievous Losses on Tiny Iwo!
New York Times
By Hanson W. Baldwin
Marines were dying yesterday in the toughest battle of the Corps’ long history of valor, but the flag was firmly planted on the volcanic sands of Iwo, gateway to Tokyo
The Marine Corps needs no accolade; its deeds speak in triumphant, rolling phrases - Belleau Wood and Tarawa, Saipan and Iwo. The Marine Corps needs no historian to write with blood-dipped pen of battles past and present and battles still to come; the battle ‘ streamers and the crosses - France and North Africa, China and Bataan. Kwajalein and Guam - tell its tale of courage. The flag flying over the islands of the Pacific is the Corps’ accomplishment and its accolade.
Now the Marines have come to their hardest battle - a battle still unwon. Our first waves on Iwo were almost wiped out: 3,650 Marines were dead, wounded or missing after only two days of fighting on the most heavily defended island in the world, more than the total casualties of Tarawa, about as many as all the Marine casualties on Guadalcanal in five months of jungle combat.
Our losses have been grievous and the greater toll is still ahead, yet the Marines are undaunted: still they come on. To the south, a living wave of men is lapping slowly up the ugly, pocked crater of Mount Suribachi, whose guns and mortars dominate the sand where our beaches lie.
.....
25,000 wounded and dead American within a month, over 6,000 of them dead and you, who almost certainly never saw combat are not emotionally affected?
What the heck are you?
The War Department was the former name of the current Department of Defense, of which the Department on the Navy is a Branch.
My Dad helped build the Memorial. I was 6 or7 years old at the time. He took my sister & I over to visit the site while all of the cast bronze parts were lying around. We never counted the hands, but we were able to crawl inside the legs and write our names in chalk.
Dad told us there was a 'trap door' panel that bolts to the seat of one of the Marines' trousers. This allows a maintenance worker to crawl up inside the statue annually to ensure that all the bolts are still tight. I've wanted to ask him if those names are still there!
(I hope that this little anecdote does nothing to trivialize the solemnity of this great remembrance)
Semper Fi!
From War department to Defense department. That tells you a lot.
Bttt.
5.56mm
In this light I watch waters world where he hit the beaches asking young people about the civil war, cold war and ww2, shameful what the left has done to indoctrinate them and erase what made this county great. Not a one had the right answers yet these are voting age young adults
................................................
You’re alluding here to an enormously dangerous problem, a whole generation of Americans, maybe two or three generations, most of whom do not know or care why their country was and is worth fighting and dying for. Somehow we who do know and care must find a way to deal with this existential threat before it’s too late. Sadly, it may already be too late.
Yes.
“My Dad helped build the Memorial. I was 6 or7 years old at the time.”
When I was a child a favorite Saturday morning outing with my Dad was an occasional trip down two-lane Route 1 (Number 1) from Alexandria to Quantico. Once there I’d get a glimpse of the Iwo statue outside the main gate of the base. That statue had served as the model for the larger U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial.
Sea story or not, casual reading years later told a story of the model going to ruin in a warehouse at Washington Navy Yard. That got someone’s attention and a young Marine officer was subsequently detailed to get it to Quantico - quickly if not sooner. That young officer was LT. John Warner - future Secretary of the Navy and US senator from Virginia.
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