|
 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
Posted on 02/19/2003 5:36:51 AM PST by SAMWolf
|
are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. We hope to provide an ongoing source of information about issues and problems that are specific to Veterans and resources that are available to Veterans and their families. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support.  To list previous Foxhole Threads or to add The Foxhole to your sidebar Click on the Logo
|
|
|
|
in Marine Corps History On Monday, February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines hit the sands of Iwo Jima.  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.
|
Today's graphic
Okay. I'll Freepmail it to you as long as you promise not to post it. Chad has seen it (or, I should say, "Chad has been exposed to it"). He will probably want to warn you about the dime-sized wart on my nose and my butchy haircut. (Am I forgetting anything, Chad?)
Unless of course you've changed your mind about wanting to see it at this point. : )
I had just finished a book about the battle at Iwo Jima and was moved by what I had read. I was particularly interested in the corpsmen, the soldiers whose responsibility it was to get the wounded off the battle field and back to safety, often being killed or badly injured themselves.
Julie Neidlinger
The Iwo Jima panel in the Western Military Memorial Chapel was dedicated to Frank M. Henderson, WMA'13, who retired as Commandant of Cadets in 1945. The central panel commemorates the spirit of the United States Marines in the battle of Iwo Jima on Mount Suribachi, Feb 23 1945, in the Pacific theatre of World War II.
Wednesday's weird warship, HMS Furious
Courageous class large light cruiser/aircraft carrier
Displacement. 19,100 t.
Lenght. 786'3"
Beam. 88'
Draft. 21'6"
Speed. 31.5 kt.
Complement. 880
Armament. 1 18", 11 5.5", 4 3", 4 3 pdr. (as originally completed)
HMS Furious, a 19,513-ton aircraft carrier, was built at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. Begun as a light battle cruiser (or "large light cruiser") of modified Courageous class (called the "Outrageous" class by the sailors of the day), she was modified in the latter stages of construction and completed in July 1917 with a single 18-inch gun aft and an aircraft launching platform forward. After several months' experience with the Grand Fleet, she was further modified, receiving an aircraft landing deck and hangar aft. With the completion of that work in March 1919, Furious returned to the North Sea, providing important experience in the operation of combat landplanes at sea. On 19 July 1918, she launched a historic air strike that destroyed two enemy airships and their support facilities at Tondern, in northern Germany. A month earlier, in another historic incident, she had used both anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft to thwart an attack by German seaplanes. Following the end of World War I, the carrier operated in the Baltic Sea.
Her wartime aircraft landing arrangements having proved very unsatisfactory (understandable, seeing as how the "island" was in the very center of the flight deck, with 11 foot wide ramps on each side of the funnel and bridgework to connect the aft flight deck with the forward flight deck), Furious was laid up in reserve in late 1919. After futher experience with other aircraft carriers, she was massively reconstructed, emerging in August 1925 as a 22,450-ton ship with upper and lower hangars, topped by a long flight deck clear of obstructions, with a shorter aircraft launching deck at the bow. This configuration established a pattern for other British and Japanese aircraft carriers of that era.
Furious operated actively through the inter-war years, continuing her pioneering work as a platform for developing seagoing aviation techniques and combat doctrine, as those applied to the situations confronting the Royal Navy. In the later 1930s, her small forward aircraft flying-off deck was converted to a gun platorm and she was refitted with a small "island" superstructure amidships on the starboard side of the upper flight deck.
Through the first five years of World War II, Furious served with the Home Fleet in the Atlantic area. By mid-war, she was quite elderly, limited in capabilities, and required continual maintenance. She took part in an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in April 1944, but was placed in reserve later in that year. After post-war employment in target trials, HMS Furious was sold for scrapping in January 1948.
Yeah, I feel guilty. I want to be here more. I have to go now. I gotta get ready for church tonight. Love you all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
