Flags of Our Fathers

by James Bradley

  “It had been a long day,” Ed Pennel told me later.

  Soaked with blood, nearly immobilized by pain, Keith Wells continued to direct the 3rd Platoon’s attack through the late morning. But he grew weak. He fell once, dashing to elude gunfire, and reopened his festering wounds. Immediately Doc Bradley was at his side. Doc dosed him up with morphine again, meanwhile screaming, “Enough! Get out of here!”

  Wells willed himself to stay in the field another half hour, directing assault groups and rallying his men. Finally, half delirious with pain and confident of victory, he turned his command over to Platoon Sergeant Ernest Boots Thomas and made for an aid station in the rear. He got there by crawling. He was awarded a Navy Cross.

  As rainy morning wore into afternoon and the fighting bogged down, the Marines continued to take casualties. Often it was the corpsmen themselves who died as they tried to preserve life. William Hoopes of Chattanooga was crouching beside a medic named Kelly, who put his head above a protective ridge and placed binoculars to his eyes—just for an instant—to spot a sniper who was peppering his area. In that instant the sniper shot him through the Adam’s apple. Hoopes, a pharmacist’s mate himself, struggled frantically to save his friend. “I took my forceps and reached into his neck to grasp the artery and clinch it off,” Hoopes recalled. “His blood was spurting. He had no speech but his eyes were on me. He knew I was trying to save his life. I tried everything in the world. I couldn’t do it. I tried. The blood was so slippery. I couldn’t get the artery. I was trying so hard. And all the while he just looked at me, he looked directly into my face. The last thing he did as the blood spurts became less and less was to pat me on the arm as if to say, ‘That’s all right.’ Then he died.”

  The near-misses were nearly as ghastly, especially the ones that resulted in other deaths. Donald Howell’s buddy Walter Gust took a piece of shrapnel in the side of the head. It did not fracture his skull, but for a moment he was incoherent, flailing around. Howell and some buddies tackled him and were taking him to a corpsman when another round exploded, blowing Howell into the air and nearly taking Gust’s arm off. The Marines reloaded Gust onto a stretcher; then a machine-gun burst killed the stretcher-bearers and ripped apart Gust’s other arm. “I was watching this,” recalled Howell, “and there was nothing I could do about it. Walter survived. He lived near me for years. I was the best man at his wedding.”

  By late in the bloody afternoon, the conquest of the mountain seemed within the Americans’ grasp. Marine discipline and the sacrificial bonding of ardent young men was prevailing over concrete, steel, and thick volcanic rock. But the Japanese—even as their ingenious fortifications crumbled or were scorched hollow—were not quite done with their own desperate resolve. As the 28th continued to inch forward, Navy observation planes above the battle radioed that a swarm of Japanese had emerged from inside the mountain and was forming up for the dreaded banzai attack.

  Within minutes, American planes were swooping in low to strafe the area. Their tremendous roar, and the concussion of exploding rockets, reverberated among the close-by Marines.

  Finally the planes banked and vanished, and for a few moments the battlefield was silent, tense with expectation.

  It was Sergeant Mike Strank, with the 2nd Platoon now on the left side of the line, who broke the spell. Leaping to his feet, the Czech-born Marine bellowed: “Let’s show these bastards what a real banzai is like! Easy Company, charge!”

  With that, the bone-tired, battle-scarred Marines got to their feet and once again slogged forward into the line of fire. To the right of the 2nd Platoon, the 3rd, commanded now by Boots Thomas, joined the footrace to Suribachi.

  Boots Thomas was the next hero to shine. With rough terrain stalling the tanks some seventy-five yards to the rear, the twenty-year-old Floridian saw that his riddled unit was grievously exposed once again. In the thick of battle, a daring solution came to him. He sprinted back, through fire, to the nearest tank, and, still out in the open, directed its fire against the stubborn pillboxes. Then he dashed back to the front to exhort his men. A bit later he headed for the tanks again. He repeated this action several times.

  His example paid off. The 3rd Platoon virtually annihilated the very enemy that had been massing for devastation of its own. As darkness on this triumphant, bloody day was setting in, Thomas himself identified the weak spot in the defensive line and personally led the breakthrough to Suribachi’s steep flank, waving his knife aloft in victory. Boots was recommended for a Navy Cross, which was awarded.

  Suribachi had not fallen, not quite, not yet, but victory now seemed inevitable. The wet day ended with the 28th Regiment poised in a vast semicircle around the battered volcano’s base, gathering its strength for the finishing assault, expected to come the next morning. For Easy Company, it had been a day of grievous loss and historic valor: For its day’s work, the badly decimated unit would receive a Medal of Honor, four Navy Crosses, two Silver Stars, and a number of Purple Hearts—one of the most decorated engagements in the history of the United States Marine Corps. These honors were paid for in blood: Casualties for the day amounted to thirty percent of Easy’s strength.

  Easy Company had actually moved a little too far and too fast for its own nighttime protection. Dave Severance’s boys had penetrated past some active Japanese units, and spent the night isolated from the battalion. They huddled on a strip of jagged, rocky terrain at the southern base of Suribachi, the roaring surf of the Pacific below them on the opposite side. Dave Severance set his command post as close as possible to the mountain, so that he would have a line of sight up its flank. In the late evening, searchlights from the offshore destroyer-escort ships revealed something that looked like Japanese moving into view above Easy. As the ships began tattooing the volcano’s flanks with 40mm shells, Captain Severance moved his command post back thirty yards to the water’s edge, for a better view of the volcano’s slopes. It was a good thing he did: The next morning’s light would reveal that the original CP site lay buried under several tons of rocks from a bombardment-triggered slide.

  Low on ammunition and food, Easy’s troops munched what was left of their chocolate bars and waited for yet another dawn on Iwo Jima.

  The Marines had paid for their advances across all fronts on the island with heavy losses. Official casualties for the battle now stood at 644 killed, 4,168 wounded, and 560 unaccounted for. Howlin’ Mad Smith himself was sobered by what he had witnessed. “Watching the Marines cross that island,” he later told a newspaper reporter, “reminded me of the charge of Pickett at Gettysburg.”

  But the horrors of this day’s fighting did not end with the darkness.

  Just as dusk fell, an air raid signal alerted the ships offshore. To Don Mayer of Portland, nineteen then, it made a spectacular show: “Every ship was firing thousands of tracers,” he said. “It was more beautiful than any Fourth of July you’ve ever seen.”

  To the boys on board the task force ships, the sight was not quite so beautiful. Cecil Gentry, a radio operator on the USS Lawrence Taylor, could not move when the order to “Hit the deck!” came from his captain. “I was transfixed,” he said. “I just stood there. One plane flew right over my head. I could see the face of the Japanese pilot. You could see the fear of death on his face. His lips were pulled back over his teeth.”

  This pilot immolated himself against the USS Bismarck Sea, adjacent to the Lawrence Taylor. Four of the ship’s own torpedoes detonated in the concussion, and the great ship exploded in huge sheets of orange flame and rapidly sank, its bow turning straight down as it slid under the rough waves laced with rain. The men of the Taylor managed to rescue about 120 of the 800 crewmen from the water. Other rescuers managed to save hundreds more. Cecil Gentry recalled watching corpsmen amputating sailors’ legs with razor blades, saws, and meat-cutters from the galley. But more than 200 were lost as the Japanese planes strafed the waters.

  Back on land, the chilled, hungry, and exhausted Marines faced a different kind of n
octurnal menace. Fear of infiltrators—the fear of the dancing shadows—had preoccupied the Americans on each night since D-Day. On this night, the fear took on more justification than ever before. On this night, the madman in the haunted house unleashed all his ghouls.

  “Prowling wolves” was the name that General Kuribayashi had given his teams of stalking, crawling night-murderers; now, desperate to save their mountain fortress, they crept out in force.

  At around nine P.M., up north with the 26th Marines, Thomas Mayers of the Bronx was surveying the terrain from his foxhole when a flare exploded in the mist. It illuminated a horrible sight, accompanied now by screams: Two Japanese slashing two helpless boys in the next foxhole with bayonets. Their names were Crull and Dortsch. Mayers and his buddy leaped to their feet to take action. One of the “wolves” wheeled and hurled a grenade at them; it was a dud, but it struck the other Marine in the head and knocked him unconscious. Mayers squeezed off one round before his rifle jammed. The predators were now advancing on him. The twenty-year-old private groped for his hand grenades. The Japanese were so close that throwing the explosives was out of the question; Mayers ripped out their firing pins, scattered them at the edge of his foxhole, and ducked.

  The enemy soldiers howled and collapsed, their legs full of shrapnel. Mayers climbed from his foxhole, and with his knife cut their throats. Then he sprinted to the other foxhole. Crull was dead. Mayers shouted to the lacerated Dortsch: “Do you have any guns?” “Yes,” the boy murmured. “Crull has a .45 in his shirt.” Mayers snatched the weapon. It was slathered with Crull’s blood and would not fire.

  Two more Japanese were now upon Mayers. He rolled a few more grenades at them and ducked through the explosions, and then finished them off with his knife.

  Thomas Mayers received a Navy Cross for his actions. He has never forgotten the moment-to-moment sequence of that bloody episode. Crull, a freckle-faced Irish boy not more than eighteen years old, was screaming as he died. And his words would forever haunt Mayers: “Mom! Mom! He’s killing me! Mom, he’s killing me!”

  Ten

  D-DAY PLUS THREE

  It wasn’t a matter of living or dying or fighting. It was a matter of helping your friends.

  —CORPSMAN ROBERT DEGEUS

  A LULL AFTER THE HELL-STORM of the previous day. And a terrible day for capturing a mountain. The heaviest and coldest rains since D-Day lashed at the surviving Marines. The surf, whipped by twenty-knot winds, rolled in on nine-foot crests. The rain made a black stew of the volcanic ash underfoot and waterlogged many of the Americans’ weapons.

  Easy Company, clinging wetly to its isolated post, began D

  3 by nearly getting wiped out by friendly fire.

  “The Navy sent their carrier bombers in to bomb the volcano,” as Captain Severance recalled it. “The pilots must have seen us as ‘live Japanese targets,’ and started dropping hundred-pound bombs on our positions.”

  Severance ordered red flares fired to warn the bombers off. No one could find cartridges for the rifle grenade flares. The bombs fell nearer. Radio connections to battalion headquarters had gone dead. More explosions. Desperate for relief, Severance put in a call to Harry the Horse himself, on the colonel’s private radio frequency.

  “Redwing Six!” the captain shouted. “This is Bayonet Easy Six! Friendly planes are bombing the hell out of us! Over!”

  Back came the courteous reply from one of the colonel’s radiomen: “Bayonet Easy Six, this is Redwing Six. You are not authorized to come up on this frequency. Out!”

  Luckily for Easy Company, Lieutenant Colonel Chandler Johnson happened to be standing near the radio operator. He personally saw to it that the Navy planes were diverted before they caused any casualties.

  Now that it was wide-awake, Easy Company prepared for a day of consolidation as the American ground troops waited out the weather. Lieutenant Colonel Johnson ordered Severance to reorganize and resupply his unit. The captain sent a patrol around the southern base of Suribachi to seek a linkup with the 3rd Battalion and to probe for enemy soldiers in the caves along the base of the volcano.

  As the day progressed, sporadic firefights broke out around the volcano’s base on the west side. Easy’s peerless flamethrowers, clicking death in six-second bursts, scorched out some caves on the south and east sides.

  Suribachi was surrounded now by American troops, and the invaders’ heavy equipment operated almost without resistance. Tanks, howitzers, and other big-bore weapons slammed “Hot Rocks” as though it were a target on a firing range. Battalion officers moved their command posts up to the brush-line at the base of the slopes. Amphibious vehicles churned back and forth between the beaches and the front, bringing food and ammunition at will. Demolitions specialists converged on pillboxes and bunkers with a vengeance, relishing their payback for the volume of slaughter those emplacements had dealt out.

  Sometimes a concealed Japanese soldier, seeing that his position was overrun, would make a sudden desperate break through the Marines for safety. His fate would usually be an M1 rifle bullet. One Japanese officer brandished his samurai sword as he made his break for it: a bad mistake. A Marine, seething with four days’ worth of grief and terror, grabbed the blade out of the samurai’s hands and sliced its owner to death with it. The Marine’s hands were badly lacerated but he held on to the sword as a souvenir.

  Many of the enemy simply remained in the ground. Their muffled voices, and the sounds of their movement, added an eerie note to the mopping-up exercises. “We could hear them talking and moving right under our feet,” one Marine recalled. “Right under what we’d thought was solid rock. We’d dig down and find a rafter. Then we’d lower explosives or pour in gasoline. Then they made a lot more noise.”

  The combat-weary boys dealt in various ways with the memories of what they’d seen and done. Some talked to chaplains. Some lost themselves in their duties. For Ira Hayes, it was his edgy gallows humor that provided the shield against utter darkness. As Easy Company regathered itself at the base of Suribachi, Ira grew absorbed in shaping little mounds of earth with his hands. To Joe Rodriguez, they looked like fresh-dug graves, and in fact that seemed to be what Ira intended. When Franklin Sousley wandered past, Ira made a show of playing “Taps.” Then he said to the Kentuckian: “This is just in case I’m not around when you get it.”

  “Franklin just kicked the mounds over,” Rodriguez recalls.

  The impending conquest of Suribachi was far from the only action on Iwo Jima. To the north, the main force of Marines had been battling with equal valor and sustaining equally severe casualties.

  By the end of D3, the volcano known as Hot Rocks was surrounded, except for a four-hundred-yard gap on the western coast. Surrounded, but still dangerous: Some of the defenders who remained were still determined killers, and no one knew when or where one might emerge with a grenade or a machine gun. As night fell, however, the Japanese themselves greatly reduced that danger via a highly uncharacteristic action: voluntary abandonment.

  It involved only half the remaining force, but it amounted to an acknowledgment that the mountain fortress was finished. The order was given by Suribachi’s commanding officer, Colonel Kanehiko Atsuchi. As one hundred fifty soldiers burst from the mountain in a desperate race to join up with the forces to the north, they were cut to pieces by Marines only too happy to deal at last with a visible enemy. Only about twenty-five made it through the gauntlet. When they arrived at the headquarters of the Japanese navy guard, their reception was not much better. The captain in charge, Samaji Inouye, accused their lieutenant of being a traitor and unsheathed his sword to behead the man. The lieutenant meekly bowed his neck, but a junior officer stopped him before he could swing his blade. Captain Inouye then collapsed in uncontrollable sobs. “Suribachi’s fallen,” he moaned. “Suribachi’s fallen.”

  Earlier that afternoon, the American command had reached the same opinion, in a different frame of mind. Harry the Horse Liversedge received orders that the mountain
be seized. Harry paid a visit to Colonel Johnson at his 2nd Battalion headquarters and issued a terse command: “Tomorrow we climb.”

  Eleven

  “SO EVERY SON OF A BITCH

  ON THIS WHOLE CRUDDY

  ISLAND CAN SEE IT!”

  I saw some guys struggling with a pole and I just jumped in to lend them a hand. It’s as simple as that.

  —DOC BRADLEY

  IT HULKED ABOVE THEM STILL, before daybreak on the fifth morning, this primitive serpent’s head that had struck them down in swaths. Amputated from the body, bombed, blasted, bayoneted, burnt, Suribachi at last lay silent after four days of being killed. But was it dead? Was the grotesque head finally a carcass, or was there venom still inside, and strength to lash yet again? There was only one way for the Marines to find out. They would tread on the head, and see whether it writhed.

  February 23, 1945, dawned cold and stormy like the other days on Iwo Jima; but by midmorning the rain had stopped and the skies were clearing.

  Hot Rocks glowed early. Navy planes lit it up with napalm at dawn. “It was a sheet of flames,” remembered Donald Howell, who had relaxed with House Madam before the invasion. “An amazing pounding,” agreed Max Haefele. But around nine A.M. the pounding stopped. The serpent’s head lay mute and enigmatic. And the dangerous probing by foot began.

  The pugnacious Colonel Johnson, wearing his trademark soft cap with the visor flipped up, called for two four-man patrols to reconnoiter routes up the northern face of Suribachi. Only Fox Company’s patrol made it to the top. The leader was Sergeant Sherman B. Watson; the others were George Mercer from Iowa, Ted White from Kansas City, and Louis Charlo from Montana.