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"A WISCONSIN MAN!!

Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the eighth grade class from Clinton, WI, where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capitol, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially memorable.

On the last night of our trip we stopped at the Iwo Jima Memorial.
This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history-that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, during WW II.
Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial.
I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, "Where are you guys from?"

I told him that we were from Wisconsin.

"Hey, I'm a cheesehead, too! Come gather around Cheeseheads, and I will tell you a story."

(James Bradley just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who has since passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up.
I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape.
It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, D.C., but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night. When all had gathered around he reverently began to speak. Here are his words that night.)

"My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I just wrote a book called "Flags of Our Fathers" which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now.
It is the story of the six boys you see behind me.
Six boys raised the flag.

The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called "War."

But it didn't turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands.
I don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are generals who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old.

(He pointed to the statue) You see this next guy?
That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken, and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph---a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for protection, because he was scared. He was 18 years old.
Boys won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.

The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank.
Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the "old man" because he was so old. He was already 24.
When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, "Let's go kill some Japanese" or "Let's die for our country." He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say, "You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers."

The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona.
Ira Hayes walked off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, "You're a hero."
He told reporters, "How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?"
So you take your class at school. 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive.
That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes died dead drunk, face down at the age of 32...ten years after this picture was taken.

The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop kentucky.
A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, "Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night."
Yes he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy.
Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning.
The neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.

The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue is my dad, John Bradley from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised.
My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers, or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say, "No, I'm sorry sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing.
No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back."

My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press.

You see, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and a monument. My dad knew better.
He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a caregiver. In Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died.
And when boys died in Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed in pain.

When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero.
When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, "I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back."

So that's the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes.
Overall 7000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here.
Thank you for your time."

Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top.
It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero.
Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero none-the-less.

We need to remember that God created this vast and glorious world for us to live in, freely, but also at great sacrifice. Let us never forget from the revolutionary War to the Gulf War and all the wars in-between that sacrifice was made for our freedom.
Remember to pray praises for this great country of ours and also pray for those still in murderous unrest around the world.
STOP, and thank God for being alive at someone else's sacrifice. God Bless!"

Your story is beautiful. You are good to take those kids to DC. It's not an easy trip, and it can be frustrating for the chaperons, as for the kids its mostly vacation, and shopping malls are far more interesting than the monuments.

I'm a part-time DC City Guide. I do it for the love of it, and for the joy of inspiring a kid or two. The Marine Corps Memorial is my favorite among destinations. How wonderful for you to have fallen upon Mr. Bradley that night.

History is hard to convey to 8th graders. They lack proportion and time. 20 years ago is the same as 100 or 1,000. To bring is alive for them is an art. When it works, it's magic.

Last summer at our camp, my 10-year old son was leafing through a volume of Life Magazine pictures of WWII. As he came across a page of a Navy transport beached at Iwo Jima, my uncle happened to look over my son's shoulder. He exclaimed, "That's my boat!"

Right there, on a quarter of a page was two years of his life. He was a gunner. His only exercise was just that; he never shot at the enemy. It was always a possibility. His commander's job was to bring supplies in, and take mostly coffins back out. Now, we all gathered around. His brother was on a sub during the war. His other brother was in the Army. None had ever talked about their experiences, especially my submariner uncle. This night, my uncle spilled his stories.

This happened once before with another Uncle, a man who served in Korea and Vietnam. He was a flyer. Jets in Korea, helos in Vietnam. Some of us were trading speeding stories one night, a few years back, and he jumped in with a story of stalling at 20,000 feet over Alaska, and pulling out at 500 feet and as many miles an hour. Something froze, which, he said was common up there, and he was lucky to have escaped. His eyes lit -- forgive the cliche, but that's what happened -- and he proceeded to tell us of his war experiences. Vietnam was more vivid for him, and he told us of helocopter stalls and drops to get the rotars moving again (I forget what they call this). He told us of the soldiers he baled out, and the flyers he watched go down. During the conversation, I happened to look at my his son, who from across the room sat like the Medussa's snare, unbelieving -- he later told me his father had never once spoken of war.

Listening to his great-uncle's stories from the Pacific, my son leafed through the book. I watched him as he came across pages of the mangled dead. Aftewards he said to me, scared, "Daddy, I don't like war."

"That's the point," I told him.

Thanks for your story. I printed it out, and it's now at the top of my Iwo Jima file. Let me know next time you're in town. I give a killer talk at the base of the Washington Monument. That spot, Arlington, the Jefferson, and the Lincoln... all make me cry. I thank God I'm an American.