ANNUAL MARINE MARATHON BEGINS AND FINISHES
AT WORLD-FAMOUS MARINE CORPS WAR MEMORIAL
(Revised and reprinted from Rosslyn Renaissance News)
The statue, portraying six servicemen who raised the American flag on the island,is inscribed, "In honor and in memory of the men of the United States Marine Corps who have given their lives to their country since November 10, 1775."
"The monument before us has been raised to provide a visible symbol of the immortality of those whom we honor," said General Lemuel Shepherd, Jr., the 20th Marine Commandant at the dedication. "To all who shall ever view this Memorial it will speak of the courage, the spirit, and the greatness of the American people, the people from whom these men and their ageless comrades came."
 Clint Eastwood, along with co-producer Steven Spielberg, is filming the Iwo Jima battle story, its heroics and its tragedies, based on the book "Flags of our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima," by James Bradley, whose father was one of the "flag raisers" that perilous day on Mt. Suribachi. The strain of what these men endured in the 36-day and night battle for Iwo Jima is vividly engraved in the marvelously detailed Marine sculpture.
Japanese forces are still only yards away as Corporal Harlon Block grasps the bottom of the 100-pound galvanized drainage pipe; just behind him, 19-year-old Private Rene Gagnon lends an elbow and his shoulder to the push; Private Sousle wraps both hands around the pole; Navy medical corpsman Pharmacists Mate John Bradley, having dropped a load of bandages, manages to grasp the pipe. Sergeant Mike Strank maneuvers the pipe into position. And the searing image of Pima Indian Private Ira Hayes, forever remembered for his outstretched hands, at first not quite reaching the pole, but signifying to this day the intense struggle for victory.
Of these men, three, Strank, Block and Sousley, would die within hours or days. The surviving trio, with severely wounded Bradley on a stretcher, would be evacuated from the island into a world in which some would face the psychological equivalent of battle.
 The flag-raisers are all dead now. But in spirit, there is a seventh serviceman, a Marine, present. Larry Ward wasn’t at Surabachi that day, but the 31-year-Marine veteran has fought and been wounded in Marine battles in Korea, three tours in Vietnam and Granada. Larry’s retired now, and he’s become something of an institution at the monument, readily identifiable with his Marine drill instructor’s hat. Larry is the monument’s official volunteer monitor and factotum.
Larry is loaded with fascinating lore. Did you know that on this single day, Easy Company won a Medal of Honor, four Navy Crosses, two Silver Stars, plus a smattering of Purple Hearts? “Iwo Jima is the only battle in Marine history where the Marines suffered more casualties (25,851) (7,000 dead) than the Japanese (22,000),” says Larry. The flag-raising Easy Company started the 33-day fight with 310 men and only 50 survivors boarded the homeward bound ships.
 Larry knows all about sculptor Felix de Welden, who was so taken by the world-famous flag-raising photograph by Joe Rosenthal that within 72 hours he’d fashioned a three-foot high model of floor and ceiling waxes.
De Weldon’s genius was to sculpt the figures naked, concentrating first on bone structure and then adding muscles and skin. Only then did he add clothes, which explains his striking success in sculpting the marines’ internal body structure.
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 For the genuinely interested Larry explains the central role Iwo Jima played for both Japanese and Americans in the closing months of the war. The small island is located only 660 miles south of Tokyo. Japanese aircraft flying off Iwo Jima were causing havoc with the US B-29 raids on the Japanese mainland. From the American perspective, Iwo Jima was judged critical both to protect the B-29's and prepare for the anticipated invasion of Japan. “The top military brass,” notes Larry, “saw Iwo Jima as the ‘must win’ key to the entire Pacific campaign at that point.”
The Japanese entrusted Iwo Jima’s defense to their best military officer, Lt. General Tapamichi Kuribayashi. His tactics: fight underground. There were more than 1,500 rooms carved into the rock and connected by16 miles of tunnel. Kuribayashi explained his broader strategy in a letter to his wife: If American casualties are high enough, Washington will think twice before launching an attack on Japan.” This was a widely shared view among top Japanese military and civilian leaders, including Emperor Hirohito. And it was not entirely fatuous. In Washington, President Truman and General George Marshall were deeply apprehensive about an invasion projected to cost 200,000 American lives.
In the early hours of 19 February, 1945, 70,000 marines of the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions landed on the black coral sand beaches. A major objective was to take Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano, which dominated the entire island. On the morning of 23 February, elements of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, gained provisional control over the summit, and a small flag was raised. Mike Strank was not satisfied: “Get a bigger one so that every Marine on this cruddy island can see it.” His men located a larger flag on a landing ship. That afternoon, with Japanese troops still active in the area, the six men raised the new flag. Photographer Joe Rosenthal caught the scene with a single exposure, and won a Pulitzer Prize for what is now among the most famous photographs in history. Navy Secretary James Forrestal, who was on a ship watching the flag raising that day, put it best: “The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years.”
Tradition has it that there’s no such thing as an “ex” Marine and Larry embodies this continuing love of the Marine Corps. Recently, the young widow of Marine Cpl. Joseph McCarthy, killed in Iraq, visited the monument. She was wearing a black metal armband in memory of her husband. After talking to Larry, she gave him the armband to keep alive the memory of her husband. Larry always wears it when serving his Marine duty at the memorial. It’s this sort of devotion that Eastwood and Spielberg will have to evoke in their film.
Semper Fi
Bruce van Voorst
Former Time Magazine Military Correspondent
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