Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
He turned 19, digging a foxhole in the black sand. Many of his fellow Marines never lived to see their 19th or 20th birthdays. Tuesday marks the 80th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps assault on the Japanese bastion of Iwo Jima.
It’s been one of the privileges of my life to call many Marines my friend. From former students and athletes to men of my father’s generation they’ve been an inspiration, and a testament to all that is good about America.
I never met the 19-year-old Marine I introduced this piece with. He was the father of my friend Mike Yowell and what an ignominious birthday it must have been for him.
We think of 19-year-olds today as confused, unreliable, untested and largely clueless. The teenagers of the Greatest Generation were made of tougher mettle.
President Bill Clinton, speaking at Normandy on the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994, said, “Let us never forget, when they were young, these men saved the world.”
Clinton was speaking of sailors, soldiers and airmen; there were no Marines (or very few) on Omaha, Utah, Sword or Gold Beaches. The Marines had a special dose of hell, fighting the relentless, unmerciful, fanatical Japanese, island by island.
Iwo Jima was the second-to-last island conquered by the American Navy and Marine Corps, only the horrors of Okinawa remained after the flag was raised on Mount Suribachi.
We don’t have military men leading our nation anymore. The greatest two presidents of the modern era in my opinion were Theodore Roosevelt, and my favorite, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Neither of these great men would be electable today. Though they were both Republicans, they would be painted as cowardly liberals by the Russian-manipulated right-wing media.
Oh well. For a while America stood for something, and the brave boys, for boys most of them were, gave their lives to prove the point.
There were 24,053 casualties on Iwo Jima. The highest single-action losses in Marine Corps history. Of these, a total of 6,140 men were killed in action.
Much maligned as a president, but in reality, one of the most experienced and practical men to ever hold the office, George Herbert Walker Bush was a Naval aviator.
On September 2, 1944, as part of the reconnaissance operations prior to the Iwo Jima invasion, Bush, newly promoted to Lieutenant JG took off from the USS San Jacinto in a Grumman TBM Avenger along with three other Avengers.
Chi Chi Jima is 150 miles north of Iwo Jima and had radar and radio installations used to defend the larger island to the south.
Bush’s Avenger took a hit in the engine and started to smoke, he delivered his bombs on target and headed back towards the San Jacinto. He didn’t make it, neither did the other three air crews.
Many of the men in his squadron were killed in the attack, but a few survived and were captured by the Japanese. They were tortured, beheaded and their livers were eaten by drunken Japanese officers.
Bush escaped that fate, floating in a rubber raft, while Japanese patrols circled nearby.
He was rescued hours later by the U.S.S. Finback, an American submarine and returned to duty on the San Jacinto.
Bush was chided by his fellow pilots as a “Japanese Ace.” To become an ace, you had to shoot down five enemy aircraft. Bush either crash-landed or was shot down five times while serving on the San Jacinto, hence his nickname.
The man was a war hero, winning the Navy Cross for his gallantry.
We don’t see that much in the White House these days.
On another level was the just-turned-22-year-old Marine Ira Hayes from the Gila River Reservation in Arizona.
Ira was a member of the Pima tribe, a small band of Arizona Native Americans.
He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 1942 and was in the battle for Bougainville before finding himself on Iwo Jima just four weeks after his birthday.
Hayes, and five other Marines, Harold Schultz, Michael Strank, Franklin Sousley, Harold Keller, and Harlon Block are forever memorialized in the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Virginia in a bronze statue of them raising the flag on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. The photograph used to create the statue was taken by Joe Rosenthal.
If you haven’t seen the statue in person, you should. It will make your heart swell with pride. While you’re there, you should visit the Vietnam Memorial, it will illicit many opposite emotions.
Ira Hayes died 10 years later near his birthplace in Bapchule, Arizona. He was a raging alcoholic, a man who was never able to come to terms with the horrors he had witnessed on the volcanic crag of Iwo Jima.
Johnny Cash immortalized Ira Hayes in his song, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”
There they battled up Iwo Jima hill
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived
To walk back down again
And when the fight was over
And Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won’t answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinking Indian
Or the marine that went to war
I think of Brian Chavez, and Preston Warren, two former students and athletes I coached who served with honor. I think of the late Don Ryan, a silver star medal winner in Korea, and my friends Paul Voss and Fred Nolting, who are now well into their 80s, but still Marines at heart.
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz had this to say on March 16, 1945, when Iwo Jima was declared an American victory. “Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
Admiral Nimitz was right.
Only four veterans of the Battle of Iwo Jima are still with us, and the youngest is 98 years old.
We are about to lose our physical connection to the men and boys who fought so bravely against an entrenched, unforgiving enemy so long ago.
But as long as our memories last, we should remember the sacrifice they made so long ago.
Oorah Marines.