The FReeper Foxhole Revisits Iwo Jima - February 18th, 2005

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/redwoodsigns/iwojima.html ^

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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The FReeper Foxhole Revisits

The Costliest Operation
in Marine Corps History

On Monday, February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines hit the sands of Iwo Jima.

The battle for Iwo Jima can be described in many ways.

Most simply, 70,000 Marines routed 22,000 Japanese in a 36 day battle. It bore little resemblance to today's modern warfare. It was a fight of gladiators. Gladiators in the catacombs of the Coliseum fighting among trap doors and hidden tunnels. Above ground gladiators using liquid gasoline to burn the underground gladiators out of their lethal hiding places.



The Marines had overwhelming force and controlled the sea and air. The Japanese had the most ingenious and deadly fortress in military history.

The Marines had Esprit de Corps and felt they could not lose. The Japanese fought for their god-Emperor and felt they had to die fighting.



The Marines were projecting American offensive power thousands of miles from home shores with a momentum that would carry on to create the Century of the Pacific. The Japanese were fighting a tenacious defensive battle protecting the front door to their ancient land.

The geography, topography and geology of the island guaranteed a deadly and bizarre battle. The large numbers of men and small size of the island ensured the fighting would be up close and vicious.

Almost one hundred thousand men would fight on a tiny island just eight square miles. Four miles by two miles. If you're driving 60 miles an hour in your car, it takes you four minutes to drive four miles. It took the Marines 36 days to slog that four miles. Iwo Jima would be the most densely populated battlefield of the war with one hundred thousand combatants embraced in a death dance over an area smaller than one third the size of Manhattan island.



From the air the island looked like a bald slice of black moonscape shaped like a porkchop. All its foliage had been blown off by bombs. The only "life" visible on the island were puffs of "rotten egg" stinking sulphur fumes coming from vents that seemed connected to hell. Correspondents in airplanes could see tens of thousands of Marines on one side of the island fighting against a completely barren side of stone.

On foot it was a morass of soft volcanic sand or a jumble of jagged rock. The Marines sought protection in shell holes blasted by the bombardment. Foxholes were impossible to dig, either the sand collapsed in on you or your shovel failed to dent the hard obsidian floor.

Bullets and mortars would come from nowhere to kill. The Marines would come across a cave or blockhouse and shoot and burn all its defenders to death. They would peer into the cavern and assure themselves no one was left there to hurt them. They'd move on only to be shocked when that "dead" position came alive again behind them. The Marines thought they were fighting men in isolated caves and had no idea of the extensive tunnels below.



A surgeon would establish an operating theater in a safe place. With sandbags and tarp he'd build a little hospital and treat his patients away from the battle. Then at night when he lay down exhausted to sleep he'd hear foreign voices below him. Only when his frantic fingers clawed through the sand and hit the wooden roof of an underground cavern would he realize he had been living atop the enemy all along.

The days were full of fear and nights offered terror. The Marines were sleeping on ground that the Japanese had practiced how to crawl over in the darkness, they knew every inch. Imagine sleeping in a haunted man- sion where the owner is a serial murderer who knows the rooms and stairways and trapdoors by touch and you are new. Then you can imagine the tortured sleep of the Marines.

Experienced naval doctors had never seen such carnage. Japanese tanks and high caliber anti-aircraft guns hidden behind walls of rock and concrete ensured that the Marines would not just be cut down, but cut in half or blown to bits.

A seventy five year old veteran of Iwo Jima would still reflexively open his bedroom window in 1999 after dreaming of the battle once again. Fifty four years after the battle the stench of death still filled his nostrils.



The bodies lay everywhere. Young boys who had never been to a funeral became accustomed to rolling another dead buddy aside. Kids full of life worked on burial duty unloading bodies from trucks stacked with death.

Mothers back home would tear open the ominous telegrams with trembling fingers. The survivors would remember sailing away and seeing the rows and rows of white crosses and stars of Davids. Almost seven thousand. Today there are still over six thousand Japanese dead still entombed under the island, dead where they fell in their tunnels and caves. Recently two hundred sixty were excavated, some mummified by the sulphur gases, their glasses sitting straight atop preserved noses, hair still on their heads.

Military geniuses predicted a three day battle, an "easy time." Some of the nicest boys America would ever produce slogged on for thirty six days in what would be the worst battle in the history of the US Marine Corps.

Generals conferred over maps while tanks, airplanes, naval bombs and artillery pounded the island. But it was the individual Marine on the ground with a gun that won the battle. Marines without gladiator's armor who would advance into withering fire. Marines who would not give up simply because they were Marines. A mint in Washington would cast more medals for these Iwo Jima heroes than for any group of fighters in America's history.



America would embrace these heroes, but they were enthralled by an image of heroism, by a photo. Millions of words would be written in the US about 1/400th of a second no one on Iwo Jima thought worthy of remark at the time. Thousands would seek autographs from three survivors who felt "we hadn't done much." Battles would be fought over that image, some dying early because of their inclusion, some living bitterly because of their exclusion.

But that would all come later. After two battles were fought on Iwo Jima, one for Mt. Suribachi and the southern part of the island the other for the northern part. And after one hundred thousand individual battles, personal battles of valor and fear, of determination and dirt.

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[SAMWolf]

1857 Max Klinger German graphic artist/painter/sculptor/actor

I liked him in M*A*S*H. :-)

[Professional Engineer]

Were you able to read the name above the building entry?

[Valin]

Shameless Plug
Happy Birthday-Lewis Addison Armistead (Brig. General C.S.A.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1346019/posts
/Shameless Plug

[E.G.C.]

Well, we have a little bit of rain in the forecast here as well. Forecast high lower 50's.

[Valin]

AHHHH, I don't know how to break this too you. So I guess the best way is just to come right out witth it (steel yourself)....(ready?)
That's not the original Max Klinger.
I hate to be the one to break this to you but someone has to do it, and it should come from a friend.

SUCK IT UP big guy! It's not the end of the world...it'll be all right...trust me.

[stand watie]

GM, snippy, et.al.

free dixie,sw

[Professional Engineer]

1878 Lincoln County War began with the murder of Billy the Kid's mentor, Englishman rancher John Tunstall.

Lincoln County still looks as it did in this 1912 image.

[Professional Engineer]

2004 Scientists reported that X-rays form galaxy RX J1242-11 indicated a black hole tearing apart a star and gobbling up a share of its gaseous mass

Durn, we let the IRS get off the planet. Now it's gone intergalactic.

[skeeter]

Thanks for the ping, SAI.

Frannie, theres a resource link at the bottom you might be interested in.

[Aeronaut]

Hi Sam.

[alfa6]

Have to work the weekend?

Nope, am off till 0600 Tuesday, makes for a 31/2 day weekend.YIPPEE

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Iris7]

"Durn, we let the IRS get off the planet. Now it's gone intergalactic."

Go a laugh out of that one!

Maybe a little nerdish for the rest of the crew.

Take care. Fortune and health to you and yours.

[SAMWolf]

IRS. That's why it was so Funny. :-)

[SAMWolf]

What!?!??! There goes my weekend. I'll need a lot of TLC to get over this one. :-(

[SAMWolf]

Free Dixie!

[SAMWolf]

Durn, we let the IRS get off the planet.

LOL!

[SAMWolf]

makes for a 31/2 day weekend.

:-)

[colorado tanker]

Nice to have a thread to memorialize this battle. What a horribly bloody, tough fight.

I can just imagine what today's whiny, military hating press would have said about Iwo.

[Professional Engineer]

I wasn't sure if it would be readable.