Gunny Sergeant Harris Moore pushing his men towards the airstrip. Harris would have known Basilone. Both were in the 27th Marines. He was killed on February 28th. He’s my grandfather’s cousin level relative.
My mother's brother was a Marine in the south Pacific. I think it was Guadalcanal, that he and one other man out of fifty marines survived during an initial beach landing.
He was a good man, took me hunting many times. He had some difficulty understanding why he was spared.
"By their victory, the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions and other units of the Fifth Amphibious Corps have made an accounting to their country which only history will be able to value fully. Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue."
My Uncle Paul was, according to my brutally honest granny, "the best and sweetest of the bunch"...my dad concurred. He returned from the Pacific campaign and was killed in an auto accident a couple of weeks later.
My buddy's dad was a marine in Tarawa and Saipan.
Had a purple heart. Took a Jap bullet to the chest and had his pocket bible in shirt pocket. The bible slowed the trajectory enough it didn't get into his lungs.
Attended his funeral and the bible with bullet hole and his medals were there on display.
He was a pretty serious church going man and I can understand why.
Amazing sacrifice! God bless the Marines. My great uncle was on Iwo Jima and survived. They called him Chip and the Tulsa World newspaper wrote an article about him in the mid 1990s. The Marine from Supula Oklahoma, Stanley Cupps. I remember reading it was like a hornet nest of bullets and artillery fire and to survive three days was a miracle as a Marine. My other great uncle was in the Army Air Corp as was Iwo post battle and Siapan (active battle) and I spent a ton of time with him as a kid and they went over in a open top troop carrier that was built out of concrete to reach Siapan and then Iwo. They had every intention of doing a land invasion on the mainland of Japan. They were a different of tough with no quitting sense.