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Senior Member/RVM #90
Monaco Owners Club
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Columbus, MS
Posts: 54,780
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The statue
Each year I am hired to go to Washington , DC , with the eighth grade
> class from Clinton , WI where I grew up,
> to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy
> visiting our Nation's Capital, and each year I
> take some special memories back with me.
This fall's trip was especially memorable.
>On the last night of our trip,
> we stopped at the Iwo Jima Memorial.
> This memorial is the largest bronze statue in
> the world and depicts one of the most
> famous photographs in history -- that of the six brave
> soldiers raising the American Flag at the top
> of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima ,
> Japan , during WW II.
>
> Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses
> and headed towards the memorial. I
> noticed a solitary figure at the base of the
> statue, and as I got closer he asked,
> 'Where are you guys from?
> I told him that we were from Wisconsin . 'Hey,
> I'm a cheese head, too! Come gather around,
> Cheese heads, and I will tell you a
> story.'
>
> (It was James Bradley who just happened to be in Washington ,
> DC , to speak at the memorial the following day.
> He was there that night to say good night to
> his dad, who had passed away. He was just
> about to leave when he saw the buses pull
> up. I videotaped him as he spoke to
> us, and received his permission to share what
> he said from my videotape.
>It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments
> filled with history in Washington , DC ,
> but it is quite another to get the kind of
> insight we received that night.)
>
> When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak.
> (Here are his words that night.)
>
> 'My name
> is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin .
> My dad is on that statue, and I wrote a book
> called 'Flags of Our Fathers'. It is the
> story of the six boys you see behind
> me.
>
> 'Six boys raised the
> flag. The first guy putting the pole in
> the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon
> was an all-state football player. He
> enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior
> members of his football team. They
> were off to play another type of game. A
> game called 'War.' But it didn't
> turn out to be a game. Harlon,
> at the age of 21, died with his intestines in
> his hands. I don't say that to
> gross you out, I say that because there are people
> who stand in front of this statue and talk about
> the glory of war. You guys
> need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were
> 17, 18, and 19 years old - and it was so hard that the
> ones who did make it home never even would
> talk to their families about it.
>
> (He
> pointed to the statue) 'You see this next
> guy? That's Rene Gagnon from New
> Hampshire . If you took Rene's helmet off at the
> moment this photo was taken and looked in
> the webbing of that helmet, you would find a
> photograph...a photograph of his girlfriend Rene put
> that in there for protection because he
> was scared. He was 18 years
> old. It was just boys who won the
> battle of Iwo Jima . Boys. Not
> old men.
>
> 'The next guy here, the
> third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike
> Strank. Mike is my hero.
> He was the hero of all these guys. They
> called him the 'old man' because he was
> so old. He was already
> 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in
> training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's
> go kill some Japanese' or 'Let's die
> for our country' He knew he was talking to
> little boys. Instead he would say,
> 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to
> your mothers.'
>
>
> 'The last guy on this side
> of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from
> Arizona . Ira Hayes was one of them
> who lived to walk off Iwo Jima . He
> went into the White House with my
> dad. President Truman told him,
> 'You're a hero'. He
> told reporters, 'How can I feel
> like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with
> me and only 27 of us walked off
> alive?'
> So
> you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a
> year together having fun, doing everything
> together. Then all 250 of you hit the
> beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk
> off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He
> had images of horror in his mind.
> Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and
> eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned
> in a very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten
> years after this picture was
> taken).
>
> 'The next guy, going
> around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop,
> Kentucky . A fun-lovin' hillbilly
> boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told
> me, 'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the
> porch of the Hilltop General
> Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs
> so the cows couldn't get
> down. Then we fed them Epsom
> salts. Those cows crapped all night. ' Yes,
> he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin
> died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19.
> When the telegram came to tell his mother
> that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General
> Store. A barefoot boy ran that
> telegram up to his mother's
> farm. The neighbors could hear her scream
> all night and into the morning.
> Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile
> away.
>
> 'The next guy, as we
> continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John
> Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin , where I was
> raised. My dad lived until 1994,
> but he would never give interviews.
> When Walter Cronkite's producers or the New
> York Times would call, we were trained as little
> kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my
> dad's not here. He is in Canada
> fishing. No, there is no phone
> there, sir. No, we
> don't know when he is coming
> back.' My dad never fished or
> even went to Canada . Usually, he
> was sitting there right at the table eating his
> Campbell 's soup. But we
> had to tell the press that he was out
> fishing. He didn't want to talk to
> the press.
>
> 'You see, like Ira
> Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a
> hero. Everyone thinks these guys are
> heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and on a
> monument. My dad knew
> better. He was a medic.
> John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat
> caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held
> over 200 boys as they died. And when
> boys died on Iwo Jima , they writhed and
> screamed, without any medication or help
> with the pain.
>
> 'When I was a little
> boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was
> a hero. When I went home and told my
> dad that, he looked at me and said, 'I want you
> always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima
> are the guys who did not come
> back. Did NOT come
> back.'
> 'So that's the
> story about six nice young boys... Three died on Iwo
> Jima , and three came back as
> national heroes. Overall,
> 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle
> in the history of the Marine Corps.
> My voice is giving out, so I will end
> here. Thank you for your
> time.'
>
> Suddenly, the monument
> wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag
> sticking out of the top. It came to
> life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of
> a son who did indeed have a father who was a
> hero. Maybe not a hero for the
> reasons most people would believe, but a hero
> nonetheless.
>
> Let
> us never forget from the Revolutionary War to the
> current War on Terrorism and all the wars
> in-between that sacrifice was made for our
> freedom...please pray for our
> troops.
> Remember to pray praises
> for this great country of ours and also ....please
> pray for our troops still in murderous places
> around the world. REMINDER: Every day that
> you can wake up free, it's going to be a
> great day.
> One
> thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade
> students in DC that is not mentioned here is . .
> that if you look at the statue very closely and
> count the number of 'hands' raising the
> flag, there are 13. When the man who made the
> statue was asked why there were 13, he simply
> said the 13th hand was the hand of
> God
__________________
Joe & Annette
Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.....
2002 Monaco Windsor 40PBT, 2013 Honda CRV AWD
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Bob & Sandi, dogs Tasha a Frenchie and Tiki a Skipperkey
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