Good book (so far) on the men who fought

[Doug Beman]

My father bought me Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. It's the story of the six Marines who raised the flag on Mt Suribachi in the famous photo. Each of the six men is followed through childhood, the decision to enlist, and the battles that led up to the historic moment.

I've reached the time just before the 6 were sent off for training for the invasion, and so far I've read some incredible stuff:

(all told in the prologue to the book)

of the 6, 3 died on the island

of the 3 who survived, 1 drank himself to death, 1 tried, unsuccessfully, to cash in on his role, and 1 (the author's father) sealed up that area of his life and NEVER told anybody about it, not even about being in the photo. It wasn't until after the death of the author's father that the family found all the uniforms, badges, ribbons, letters (one, written right after VJ day, called the flag-raising "the proudest moment of my life) and learned about their father's service.

I'm intensely interested to learn why the author's father made a complete 180^ turn in his attitude toward his military service.

Anybody else read it? DON'T SPOIL IT please.

[vcents]

I finished this book around the middle of December. I was so impressed by it that I bought it for my father for Christmas.

Another angle to this book is that is dispells a lot of the rumors that were associated with the flag raising.

Get this book..it is a great read.

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The only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them. - Churchill

[This message has been edited by vcents (edited 01-09-2001).]

[Guest Michael emrys]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Doug Beman:

...the six Marines who raised the flag on Mt Suribachi in the famous photo....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I thought one of them was a Navy corpsman (medic).

Michael

[dumrox]

One of them was a Navy corpsman. It was the author's father. I got the book for Christmas and finished it in no time. Enjoyed it very much.

[Jeff Heidman]

I hate to be a wet blanket, but I thought the book was mediocre, at the very best.

The story it told was extemely interesting, the way the author told it was horrible. The book would have been ten time better if it was a third the length.

By the end of the book I thought the dad was heroic, and his son... tedious.

Jeff Heidman

[Warmaker]

About the Marine who downplayed his role: You've heard of humble people right? I haven't read the book but I've come across war veterans who NEVER bring up their combat experiences unless you pry it from them. Who knows, they remember buddies long gone, survivor's guilt, etc. Any number of factors come up. I haven't seen combat so I can't say for certain.

As for the flag raising, that battle and picture is considered among us Marines to so far be the crowning moment of our history and we're also pointed out in boot camp that one of them was a Navy Corpsman and further symbolizes the inter-relationship between the USN/USMC. God bless those Corpsmen. They keep us jarheads in one piece!

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"Uncommon valor was a common virtue"-Adm.Chester Nimitz of the Marines on Iwo Jima

[Doug Beman]

Yes, John Bradley was a Corpsman, but (IIRC, don't have book in hand) Dan Severance, his company CO, paid him the ultimate compliment by labeling him a Marine.

I think that John Bradley's silence about his role is more than humility. I've skimmed through the later chapters and it looks like what he experienced changed him in a very fundamental way.

I actually like the writing, although I'm only in the chapter detailing the construction of the 5th Marine Div, so it still has the chance to get overlong.

DjB

[Terence]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Warmaker:

About the Marine who downplayed his role: You've heard of humble people right? I haven't read the book but I've come across war veterans who NEVER bring up their combat experiences unless you pry it from them.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

All combat veterans who I've talked to (WW2- Persian Gulf) are really unwilling to discuss their combat experiences. Either they just refuse to talk about it, or they just give short answers and change the subject.

My godfather, for example, drove a Sherman for Her Majesty in WW2, took on a KT and won. I only found out about it cause I was reading the Time Life WW2 series and asked directly if he ever faced one. He said yes, but when I asked him what happened, he said "it caught on fire." And changed the subject.

They talk about anything else, but not the shooting. Which seems fair enough, really.

And I stopped asking years ago when I kept seeing the same unhappy look on their faces.

[scoop88]

All the vets I've met have the same reaction: They don't want to talk about it. One guy who was on Guadalcanal and won a Bronze or Silver Star on Iwo Jima simply said that he saw too many good people die, and that was it. I have an uncle who was an Army bazookaman during the invasion of southern France and was captured by the Germans, spent the rest of the war as a POW. Another uncle got shrapnel in the legs from artillery when he was advancing up a hill in Germany in early 1945 ... his best friend next to him was killed by the same explosion. Neither uncle wanted to say much. After seeing the Omaha beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan, it's easy to understand why.

[Jeff Heidman]

One of the compelling things I got from Flags of Our Fathers was the impression that guilt played a large part in many combat vets silence.

Not guilt for what they had done, but guilt that they survived when so many of their buddys did not.

When we want to talk to them we want to talk about what it was like, and the details of what being in combat was about. To them, all that stuff is probably so completely over-shadowed by the pain of losing friends, and the constant horror of killing others, that it seems trite and trivial, if not downright disrespectful.

I am thankful that I have never had to be in that kind of situation.

Jeff Heidman

[Terence]

I think you are probably right about that, Jeff.

Bill Mauldin, the guy who did the cartoons of Willy and Joe for Stars and Stripes, came to Carleton College (where I was in school) to talk about WW2.

When someone asked him what we learned from the second world war, he said "we learned how much blood could come out of a human body."

That pretty much ended the questions, as I recall.

[Doug Beman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I think that John Bradley's silence about his role is more than humility. I've skimmed through the later chapters and it looks like what he experienced changed him in a very fundamental way<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I could have said this better. War changes everybody fundamentally. This will be one of the first books I've read dealing with these changes in this way.

DjB

[Gremlin]

As a side note, you may want to study the literature of the interbellum years. That generation seemed to have a very real sense of the horror of war, after having lost almost an entire generation of young men in the Great War. When you read the literature of the day, particularly by those authors who fought, you get a pervading sense of tragedy and bitterness, and of the world as they knew it having irrevocably disintegrated. A lot of illusions about warfare were broken in WWI.

Look for works by Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Ivor Gurney, among others.

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War does not determine who is right--only who is left.

--Bertrand Russell