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8:59am first wave hit the beaches of Iwo Jima



Semper Fi

Beautiful pic!

OOORAH!!!

All I see are a bunch of jarheads.....

Seriously, Semper Fi to my Marine friends.

Old man that's done our taxes for years went in on the "B" wave at 10:30am, fought the entire campaign.

In the last battle on the island on March 26, 300 Japanese soldiers crawled out of caves and slaughtered nearly 100 P-51 pilots sleeping in their tents.

Pfc Ray Hudson at age 19 fought them all night along with his fellow Marines.

He can't remember that battle now, but maybe that is a blessing in disguise.

This is an actual pic of where Ray and his fellow Marines fought that last battle:

Thank you

Thank you.

To the "Greatest Generation" - my hat is off to you and my soul is humbled, for what you endured. For what you have entrusted to us, I pray that we would be good stewards to pass on to our children.

To all my fellow servicemen, veterans, patriots and those of you who support us, pray for us and anxiously await our return from "over there", I thank you.



Hooyah!

Another photo of the second flag raising taken by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. I knew a guy who worked with Rosenthal after the war in NYC. According to him, the photo below is the only good picture the myopic Rosenthal ever took, but became the most published photograph in the world. Also, this second raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima was staged for the camera. LOL. Without which we might not have this next to Arlington National Cemetery: http://journeyamerica.files.wordpress.c ... cture1.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thank you.

Our Marine Sergeant (son #2) called me yesterday while on his way to Afghanistan (again). Interesting coincidence of dates.

Best of luck to your son in Afghanistan, Old School.

casingpoint wrote:Best of luck to your son in Afghanistan, Old School.

Thanks, CP. This is his sixth deployment overseas! This time he gets the M4!

He also said he was jealous of our new Garands....

I'm envious of both kids: They have qualified Expert Marksman in everything they've used!

It is the prayer to dedicate the Fifth Marine Division cemetery at Iwo Jima on March 26, 1945...THE DAY OF THAT FINAL ATTACK.

http://jwv-md.us/Gittelsohn.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Prayer at the Fifth Marine Division Cemetery Iwo Jima,
March 26, 1945, by LT Roland Gittelsohn, CHC, USNR

_____This is perhaps the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the sides with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island. Men who fought with us and feared with us.

_____Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the man who could have discovered the cure for cancer. Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined to be a great prophet... to find the way, perhaps, for all to live in plenty, with poverty and hardship for none. Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to conse­crate this earth in their memory. It is not easy to do so. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their places. Indeed, some of us are alive and breathing at this very moment only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours. To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy. Of them, too, can it be said with utter truth: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. It can never forget what they did here.” No, our poor power of speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead of our division who are not here have already done. All that we can even hope to do is follow their ex­ample. To show the same selfless courage in peace that they did in war. To swear that, by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours shall never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. If that freedom be once again lost, as it was after the last war, the unforgivable blame will be ours, not theirs. So it is we, the living, who are here to be dedi­cated and conse­crated.

_____We dedicate ourselves, first to live together in peace the way they fought and are buried here in war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helps in her founding, and other men who loved here with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor... together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews... together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or de­spises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. Any man among us, the living, who fails to understand that will thereby betray those who lie here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it com­memorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this, then, as our solemn, sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves: to the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of white men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price.

_____To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars. We shall not foolishly sup­pose, as did the last generation of America’s fighting men, that victory on the battlefield will automatically guarantee the triumph of democracy at home. This war, with all its frightful heartache and suffering, is but the beginning of our generation’s struggle for democracy. When the last battle has been won, there will be those at home, as there were last time, who will want us to turn our backs in selfish isolation on the rest of organized human­ity, and thus to sabotage the very peace for which we fight. We promise you who lie here: we will not do that! We will join hands with Britain, China, Russia in peace, even as we have in war to build the kind of world for which you died. When the last shot has been fired, there will still be those whose eyes are turned backward, not forward, who will be satisfied with those wide extremes of poverty and wealth in which the seeds of another war can breed. We promise you, our departed comrades: This too we will not permit. This war has been fought by the common man; its fruits of peace must be enjoyed by the common man! We promise, by all that is sacred and holy, that your sons–the sons of miners and millers, the sons of farmers and workers, will inherit from your death the right to a living that is decent and secure.

_____When the final cross has been placed in the last cemetery, once again there will be those to whom profit is more important than peace, who will insist with the voice of sweet reasonableness and appeasement that it is better to trade with the enemies of mankind than, by crushing them, to lose their profit. To you who sleep here silently, we give our promise: We will not listen! We will not forget that some of you were burnt with oil that came from American wells, that many of you were killed by shells fashioned from American steel. We promise that when once again men seek profit at your expense, we shall remember how you looked when we placed you reverently, lovingly, in the ground. Thus do we memorialize those who, having ceased living with us, now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle they began. Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: this shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come we promise the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere. Amen.