Sunday is a day I devote to heroes.
Because February 19th is the anniversary of the invasion of the small South Pacific island, of Iwo Jima, I thought that it would be appropriate to recognize some of of the 70,000 who fought there.
Perhaps all of us are familiar of the iconic monument of five Marines and one Navy corpsman raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in WWII. The 78-foot-tall granite and bronze monument in Washington, honors the Marines who fought and died at Iwo Jima.
For those unfamiliar with what went on during the five week battle against the Japanese, the Battle for Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest ever fought by U.S. Marines. Nearly 7,000 Marines and other military personnel died in this fighting, and another 20,000 were wounded. We can honor them as well by remembering who they were and the hell they endured fighting for freedom.
The following is a capsule summary of four Marines from the Epoch Times:
When we think of the Marines who hit the beach at Iwo Jima, the sailors and airmen who supported them, and even most of the Americans in uniform during World War II, it behooves us to remember that they were civilian soldiers, not professionals. They left behind mothers and fathers, wives and children. And most of them could never be described, as some commentators are wont to do, as boys. These young men had lived their entire adolescence during the Great Depression, had often worked as teenagers to help support their families, and were made fit and tough by that hardscrabble labor and poverty. Today’s notion of adolescence extending into the mid-20s would have been as foreign to them as the Pacific islands they invaded.
Donald Ruhl (1923–1945) grew up in Joliet, Montana, and graduated high school in 1942. From 1937 until graduation, he worked on a 400-acre ranch as a farm hand for $15 a week plus his room and board. On D-Day of the Iwo Jima landing, Ruhl killed two Japanese, one with his bayonet. The following day, he saved the life of a wounded fellow Marine by carrying him to safety. And on D-Day plus two, he threw himself onto an enemy satchel charge and died in that explosion while protecting the lives of nearby Marines.
Texan First Lieutenant Jack Lummus (1915–1945) played baseball and football for Baylor University, left school before graduating, and was playing professional football for the New York Giants when the war came. He enlisted in the Marines, completed the then-called Officers Training School at Quantico, Virginia, commanded a platoon on Iwo Jima, and singlehandedly attacked enemy pillboxes, assaults that inspired his men to join his one-man charge. Wounded by shrapnel and a land mine, he died in a hospital just a few days after the charge.
Private First-Class Franklin Sigler (1924–1995) went straight from his New Jersey high school into the Marines, and then to Iwo Jima. There, he took command when his squad leader was wounded, launched a one-man attack and captured an enemy gun position, and fought back the Japanese who attempted to retake the post. Though he was wounded and under fire, he carried three other Marine casualties to safety.
North Carolinian Rufus Herring (1921–1996) had command of a Landing Craft Gunboat when his ship came under attack. When Japanese mortars and artillery set his ship on fire and knocked out the conning station, killing most of the other officers, the severely wounded Herring directed operations aboard ship, including the guns returning the Japanese barrage, and brought the vessel and most of its crew to safety. Later, he became mayor of his beloved hometown of Roseboro, North Carolina. Before his death, he declined burial in Arlington Cemetery, preferring to rest in his native soil.
These are but four of the myriad of heroes who fought, bled, and died at Iwo Jima.
2/25/24