I got to visit Iwo Jima and Mt Suribachi four months ago. As a former Marine, it was definitely a moving experience.
Posted on 10/13/2006 5:53:36 PM PDT by concentric circles
The former coach has never seen a war movie. When you've seen the real thing, why would you want to?
He doesn't need to sit in a darkened movie theater to be reminded of the buddies he lost in World War II and Korea, Jack McCaffrey says.
Guys who never got to raise a family, have a career, retire and go fishing. Guys who never got the chance to grow old.
No, when you've seen the real thing, you don't need to see a war movie.
"But I'm thinking about going to see this one," the 83-year-old Woodland Hills resident said Wednesday. "I've read excerpts from the book. This one is different."
The movie he's talking about is "Flags of Our Fathers," a best-selling book that has been made into a movie directed by Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood.
It depicts the lives of the six Marines who raised the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, a moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal and recorded forever in history.
From what he's read, the movie is not so much about death and war as it is about life and the curse of forced fame, McCaffrey says.
Not exactly a war movie. More a human tragedy.
He was there that day in 1945 - a 21-year-old 2nd lieutenant sitting in a foxhole, a quarter-mile from where Easy Company erected the flag on Mount Suribachi.
"You could feel everyone's spirits rise, and a surge of pride come out of every foxhole," says McCaffrey, who coached football and track at Van Nuys, Canoga Park and Taft High schools before he retired in 1980.
"Everyone cheered, and the battleships at sea blew their horns. We were all filled with pride, but none of us thought it would be such a monumental moment in history."
During his 30-year career as an educator, he never talked about war with the boys he coached, McCaffrey said. He just couldn't.
"What was to talk about?" McCaffrey asked. "How you survived and your friends didn't? How you got lucky, and they didn't? A lot of us have carried that guilt around."
The history books say that more than 6,800 Americans died in the 36-day battle for that eight-square-mile island in February and March 1945.
In less than a week on Iwo Jima, McCaffrey went from a rookie replacement officer to commander of Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines. It wasn't that he was so good. It was that he was still alive.
"There were nine or 10 officers in the company," he says. "I was the last one who hadn't been killed or wounded. My command lasted exactly one day."
With his gunnery sergeant standing next to him, company commander McCaffrey looked through a pair of binoculars on a dark night when a shell exploded in the sky above, silhouetting his body to a sniper.
"The bullet went through my hand, shattered the binoculars, and it went into my left eye," McCaffrey says.
At dawn, he was airlifted to a hospital on Guam before being sent home to a naval hospital in Long Beach. World War II was over for McCaffrey, but he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves and was later sent to Korea for a year.
Two wars in a span of eight years. McCaffrey had seen enough of the real thing. He didn't need to see the movie.
Be careful what you say. I got nailed on a thread yesterday for saying that some Koreans are still angry about earlier Japanese atrocities. "Kill the messenger' is very much alive and well around here.
I found it interesting because at least one of the freepers lives in Japan. If he doesn't know about the animosity, God bless and save him.
I would have to disagree with you. I have a different opinion. And it isn't about the realism or the lack of it in the movie (IMHO) that I think is right about the movie, it is what the movie is trying to portray that made it special. It is the emotion-I never thought it was overdone in gore respect.
For example, I just do not understand how anyone could even think they could make a movie about Iwo Jima that portrayed reality. How could they even attempt it? Could you even make a move that approached the carnage that was Iwo Jima? Or D-Day?
That is what I always felt.
So, in that respect, I always thought Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan not only were NOT excessively gory, but spared us (the audience) much.
If what you write in your post is correct regarding the sentiments of the actual men in who served, then I am at odds with them, and will defer to them in all cases.
I don't want to be controversial, but isn't it true that there ARE many countries still nervous about a militarized Japan? And for good reason? If anything, I thought I made the point rather neutrally or towards those who are concerned?
Did I not come across that way?
I got to visit Iwo Jima and Mt Suribachi four months ago. As a former Marine, it was definitely a moving experience.
Thanks for your service, and...I'll bet it was an experience. As a Marine, even more so.
I doubt that, too. From what I can tell by what little my father was able to even talk about the war, there was an unwritten code among enlisted men . . that it was almost a point of honor NOT to kill the enemy IF he had been wounded and was not going to get up and fight you again (and it sounded like it went both ways). He was always down on the German officers because they did not honor this unwritten code. One officer shot an American officer and then walked up, took his time and then shot the American with his own gun. This was Daddy's commanding officer who was shot. Daddy said that the regular German soldiers didn't want to be there as a general rule, were there pretty much at the point of a gun - but the German officers were a different breed.
Oddly enough, a survivor of the Japanese labor camps building the railroad through Burma and Thailand said that their Korean guards were far more brutal then their Japanese guards.
You are absolutely correct. A lot of people are very nervous about a militarized Japan.
The thread yesterday was about the North Korean terror threat and I made the point that many Koreans were still angry at Japan over WWII atrocities. It very much upset some freepers. It was strange.
And yes, you did come across in a very civilized way!
Very interesting.
By WWII there were plenty of Koreans serving their new masters.
That incident was related to Ambrose by some of the Easy Company soldiers as the truth. What actually happened that day is still unclear, and Spiers, the only man who really knows, has never talked about it. But that scene wasn't made up for dramatic license. It was in the book, and later the miniseries, because some of the Easy Company veterans believed it to be true and told Ambrose about it.
My great uncle was in WWI, coming up from Africa, through Italy and ultimately into Germany.
In the last part of the war they found a wounded German soldier hiding in a barn. He was called to tend to his wounds. The kid was very young, maybe 16, and quite wounded. My uncle who spoke German was able to talk to him as he gave him a transfusion. The kid wanted to know what he was doing and my uncle told him: "This is a blood transfusion. You need it. It's good New York Jewish blood." The kid replied, (I don't know how to spell it), "Mox Nichs."
Okay...good. I wasn't sure...:)
Thanks.
Hershel (Woody) Williams USMC (MOH) is from my hometown of Fairmont, WV. He was the sole survivor of his 18 man flamethrower squad on Iwo Jima. I have met him on a two occassions.
I have also seen him interviewed on TV about his experiences on Iwo. It is hard to grasp what they went through. At some point in the last couple of years I can't read or hear these things without crying. I don't know how that happened but I can't do it anymore without the tears running down my face.
My Pappy (combat medic, Peliliu) loved to critique war movies. Few things tickled him more than the cheesy action.
Right after I read your remark, I suddenly realized I had been ignoring that aspect of things on FR, and had no idea what the general groundswell was like out there.
So I immediately went and checked out a few threads, and yes, this is a hot, emotional issue.
Interesting how the world has turned in 60 years.
Ambrose writes about this in his book Citizen Soldiers. Bottom line, it did happen on occasion, but it wasn't rampant. The most dangerous time was in the first moments after surrendering. The further a prisoner got back from the front line, the safer he was.
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