Today is a hallowed date in the history of the US Marine Corps. On February 23rd, 1945, the US flag was raised atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima by a group of Marines, to be immortalized on film by Joe Rosenthal in a photograph he titled Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima.
It won the Pulitzer Prize, and would become the model for the USMC War Memorial in Washington DC.
It wasn't the first flag to be raised on Mount Suribachi. The first was too small to be readily visible, and was replaced by a second, larger flag. Rosenthal photographed the second flag-raising. This later became the subject of controversy. For those interested, details may be found here.
Be that as it may, the battle for Iwo Jima remains one of the toughest, bloodiest, and most hard-fought engagements of the Second World War. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz later wrote of the US Marines' performance there: "Uncommon valor was a common virtue."
As he watched the flag rise above Mount Suribachi, the Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, remarked to USMC General Holland 'Howlin' Mad' Smith: "Holland, the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years."
For the sake of the United States, let's hope he was right!
Peter
It WAS one hell of a fight against a highly motivated, fanatical and well dug in enemy.
ReplyDelete27 Americans earned the Congressional Medal of Honor on that dirty bit of volcanic rock, over half of them posthumously.
But as you so well wrote, they didn't fight for God, medals or country, they fought for their buddies.