Ol' Glory on Mount Suribachi There was a picture taken of Ol' Glory atop Mt. Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. The flag was raised by five Marines, Sgt. Michael Strank, Cpl. Harlon Block, Pvt. Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley and one Sailor, Naval Corpsman John Bradley.

The photo is the most displayed, published, duplicated, beloved and respected photo ever. It also won the Pulitzer Prize the same year it was taken. Two days after the picture was taken, it appeared on the front page of every major newspaper. Even today, 64 years after it appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in the spring of 1945, it still stops me dead in my tracks whenever I see it displayed. When my dad and mama got that Life Magazine, they cut off the cover and nailed it to our living room wall where it stayed `til it was worn out. (It was also used as the model for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.)

Of the six men depicted in the photo, Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block and Michael Strank did not survive the battle.

Sgt. Mike Strank was 24 years old. He was the `old man' of the outfit, everyone's hero. He died six days later by a "friendly fire" mortar shell from an offshore battleship. It tore his heart out.

Pvt. Franklin Sousley, 19, was killed a month later by a sniper. A telegram was sent to a little country store atop a mountain in the hills of Kentucky where a barefoot boy carried it across a holler to the Sousley farm. The neighbors a quarter of a mile away said that they heard his mama scream all night long.

When President Roosevelt saw the photo, he ordered the men in the photo brought home at the end of the battle. There were three survivors: Hayes, Bradley and Gagnon.

Rene Gagnon was shown an enlarged photo and asked to identify all the flag raisers. He misidentified Harlon Block as Sgt. Henry Hanson of Boston, MA.

Harlon Block, 21, had been an all-state football player at Weslaco High School in Harlingen, Texas. His class had an early graduation when all 13 members of his senior class football team joined the U.S. Marine Corps together. Harlon's mother, Belle saw the photo and immediately identified Harlon as the Marine with his back to the camera, guiding the flagpole into the ground. She said, "That's Harlon right there." His family, friends and neighbors all told her that it wasn't Harlon. The government said that it wasn't Harlon. She wouldn't listen. She repeatedly said, "That's Harlon. I know my boy." One week later, she was notified that Harlon had been killed in action while striking a Japanese pillbox as the squad attacked toward Nishi Ridge.

One week after they brought the three survivors home, they were summoned to the Whitehouse for a photo session. All were assigned a public relations officer. Pvt. Ira Hayes notified his PR man that Sgt. Hanson was not in the photo, but in fact the Marine was Cpl. Harlon Block. The PR man told him that the names had already been published and to keep quiet.

After the pictures were used in the most effective bond drive of the war ($23.3 billion was raised), Ira Hayes was discharged. After he told the news reporters, "I'm not a hero. They're all back on Iwo. Two hundred and fifty of my unit went ashore at Iwo and 27 of us walked off."

After he was discharged, he went back to the Pima Indian Reservation where he was already heavily into the alcoholism that would claim his life in a few years. In the song, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," the song notes that after the war:

"Then Ira started drinkin' hard

Jail was often his home. They'd let him raise the flag and lower it,

Like you'd throw a dog a bone!

He died drunk early one mornin'

Alone in the land he fought to save;

Two inches of water in a lonely ditch

Was a grave for Ira Hayes."

A year and a half later, Ira put on his old Marine uniform and hitchhiked all the way across the country to the South Texas town of Harlingen. Late one evening, he knocked on the door of Mrs. Belle Block and told her what she already knew, but the world had refused to believe, "That's Harlon right there."

They created an Iwo Jima Monument in Harlingen. In 1949, Harlon's body was brought home from Iwo Jima where over 6,000 Marines and 20,000 Japs died and re-interred, and in 1955 he was moved to a place next to the monument.

Note: I was stationed at Dyess AFB in Abilene, Texas from Sept. 1957 until Feb. 1960 with two Pima Indians named Shakespear and Gatewood who were cousins of Ira Hayes. One night they revealed to me how he died, long before it became public knowledge.