Tomorrow, 23 Feb., is the anniversary of the day Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photo of the US flag being raised on Iwo Jima, at one time at least, the most reproduced photo in the world. It was a staged photo, and actually shows the raising of the second, larger, flag at the same point on the same day.
The subjects of the photo are commonly believed to be six US Marines raising the flag on Mr. Suribachi but that is not true; the subjects are actually five US Marines and one US Navy Corpsman. As the US Marines does not have 'medics', they use Navy Corpsmen, and while serving in that capacity, the corpsmen wear the standard issue marine uniform; camouflaged fatigues in that photo. The Navy corpsman's name was John Bradley, and he was actually the last surviving member of that six- man group, passing away in 1994.
The interesting part, at least to me, is how he got to be in that place with those Marines. The book 'Flags of our fathers' was written by one of his sons and details what brought Mr. Bradley along that particular journey. It seems his father was in WWI, fighting in the trenches, and strongly suggest his son join the Navy rather than the Army or Marines (there was no Air Force at that time) as he would have a bunk and clean sheets to sleep on each night rather than ending up as a 'ground pounder', stuck in the filth and elements of the battlefield. He took his father's advice, joined the Navy but after the usual aptitude tests, was chosen to be a pharmacists mate and was assigned to the Marines as a corpsman. So by purposely avoiding anything that could lead him into ground combat, he ended up in active ground combat, some of the roughest, most gruesome fighting and conditions the Pacific theater of WWII.
John Bradley survived the war, married and had eight children, and spent the rest of his career as a funeral director and owner of a funeral parlor. He shunned all publicity about the events of WWII, and even his children were not aware of his being awarded the Navy Cross until after his death, when the found the medal in a shoe box in the closet. Unfortunately, Mr. Bradley suffered from what we now know as P.T.S.D. for the rest of his life.
So here is to all of them, all those who landed on those islands and fought their way forward in the face of people absolutely dedicated to die at that place, with their only goal being to take 10 Marines with them. But a special acknowledgement to Mr. Bradley who found himself in the middle of a mud Marine's fight after doing what he could to avoid such circumstance and yet did his job anyway, in spite of the risk, and when he was done desired nothing more than to be left alone and live a quiet and successful (by his measure: a family and a productive place in society, not wealth) life.
Brian
