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Another of the Greatest Generation Reports to St.Peter
Posted by: in American Heroes, History8:02 PM
On February 23, 1945 on the island of Iwo Jima a flag was raised, a photo taken, and history was made. Joe Rosenthal’s iconic image became the most famous photograph of all time and enshrined the Marine Corps in the pantheon of the worlds elite forces.
But that flag raising was almost inconsequential to the Marines fighting on “Sulfur Island”. You see, it was the second flag to go up atop Mt. Suribachi that day and went totally unnoticed by the grunts at it’s base. It had been ordered up to replace the actual first flag that went up, the one that had caused a cacophony of yelps and howls and ships claxons.
“…Marines on the ground, still engaged in combat, raised a spontaneous yell when they saw the flag. Screaming and cheering so loud and so prolonged that we could hear it quite clearly on top of Suribachi….”
When a platoon from E Company 2nd Bn, 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division was ordered to reconnoiter to the top of the mountain, the Platoon Leader, Lt.Shrier, had been given a flag that had flown on a US Navy ship just over three years earlier at Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941. They made it to the top and raised the flag, signifying to the rest of the Marines that the vital observation post that had allowed the Jap defenders to see their every move was now in US hands.
The words I quoted above are from PFC Raymond Jacobs. He was the radio man on that patrol, and one of the first flag raisers. That is him standing to the right of the flag in the above picture, with the radio on his back. PFC Jacobs passed away today. He was 83 years old.
“And when he gets to Heaven, to St. Peter he will tell, ‘Another Marine reporting Sir! I served my time in Hell’.”
Requiescat in Pacem
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Rest In Peace PFC. Jacobs….Welcome to Heaven. Go in with a glad heart for a job well done. :em69:
January 31st, 2008 at 8:06 PMUsing
Semper Fi, Mac. You done good.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:30 PMUsing
I know he’ll see my brother who left us January 4, 2008, at age 86. They can swap stories because my brother was in the Guadalcanal campaign as well as Peleliu and Okinawa.
http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/
Bless them all.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:36 PMUsing
Bless em all indeed. Have an Uncle, a Pacific Theater Marine, who feels the reminders every day (thanks to the wounds received via a Jap bayonet) of his time served in hell. Damn, I am proud of him … of all of them.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:15 PMUsing
We’re losing far too many of these heroes far too often. It’s a terrible shame, but our loss is Heaven’s gain.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:46 PMUsing
On a somewhat different topic, seems Brother Phreddy Phelps is at it again.
He wasnt satisfied with picketing funerals of our fallen heroes, now he’s sinking even lower in the bad taste department.
Saturday, a special funeral is being held. The President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) died at the age of 97 this last Monday. Mormons from all over, in the tens of thousands, are going to his funeral Saturday in Salt Lake City.
Guess who is going to picket even his funeral?
You guessed it.
Here’s the degenerate’s flyer
Would I roast in Hell for hoping some Mormon there might take offense and clean this scumbag’s clock?
I’ll say it here and now .. if someone there decides to thump the asshat, I will contribute to their legal defense fund against Phreddy.
And yes, I’m Mormon, and yes I said ‘asshat’. Being Mormon has only marginally softened my lethal dislike of THAT kind of stupidity.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:09 PMUsing
In one sense you are right. I weep every time I heard of the bravery of these men and am amazed at how they went through that hell and came home and built the country they left my generation. To often I feel my generation has let them down.
But I know there are heroes of my age who carried on the honor and courage of my Father’s generation, but we won’t hear about you until you’ve passed on. You won the battles and the country deserted you. Neither side wants to talk about it. For too long they only wanted one of two things, let us cross the 17th parallel, or bring us home.
The generation behind me, all I can say is I’m amazed. The kids, now really adult as they are just over 18, that I know all love their country. There are so many that volunteer for military service in a time of war it astounds me.
So Wyatt, while I mourn the passing of the old guard, I revel in the knowledge that what they did was not wasted. They made possible the a country that, what I consider children, are willing to fight for what their Grandfather’s fought for.
I am sure now, there will always be heroes.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:51 PMUsing
Indeed, Crunchie-
“If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven’s scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.”
-United States Marine Corps Hymn
Carry on PFC Jacobs.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:51 PMUsing
Rest in peace oh ye good and faithful servant. You have earned your place among the heroes in Valhalla. The world today needs more men like these.
As for phreddy phelps :em72: … my blood pressure rises to the point of popping the top of my head off every time I hear about him picketing a funeral, but this one really takes the cake. :em12: Read the flier, and it just shows his complete lack of understanding of Church doctrine, to the point of damn near making my head explode. I almost wish I still lived in Utah so I could declare open season on a few worthless sacks of oxygen thieves. It blows my mind that they would protest the funeral of a religious leader, of ANY faith, that they chose MINE pisses me off to no end. I do hope that the Salt Lake Police keep these…. people (and I use the term people VERY loosely) away from the family of President Hinkley.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:10 PMUsing
Are you a Mormon, Rain? You seem to have some familiarity with it ..
I imagined myself having a conversation with my Bishop asking him ‘Sir, would I get excommunicated for cleaning that little prick’s clock?’ … and my Bishop rolling his eyes skyward … I seem to make the Bishop do that quite frequently :em93:
January 31st, 2008 at 11:16 PMUsing
“If tears could build a stairway
And memories were a lane
We would walk right up to Heaven
And bring you back again.”
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Rest well old timer. You earned it and you deserve it.
Joe D
January 31st, 2008 at 11:19 PMUsing
OK I misread .. you ARE LDS .. Very good ….
I’d join you on a little hunting expedition .. :em96:
January 31st, 2008 at 11:23 PMUsing
My dearest Grandpa John died A few years back, another of the greatest gen. gone, to all who served to defeat nazism, faschism and THE REAL IMPERIALISM, I say HOORAH.
GOD rest your souls, and tip one back back for these true AMERICAN HEROES. :em03:
Save me a seat in Heaven Grandpa John.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:35 PMUsing
Rain, people like Phelps make the fatal mistake of thinking all of us Mormons are nice little pacifists who are into polygamy etc ….
Two things, Phreddy ..
1. As for the polygamy thing, what SANE man would want more than one wife’s melodrama? :em95:
2. As for the pacifism thing, Phreddy … you, me, head to head … choose your weapons … you WILL lose.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:36 PMUsing
I’d been told that the last survivor of that first flag-raising was Chuck Lindbergh, who’d been living in suburban Minneapolis & died within the past year. He lived long enough to see a statue of himself unveiled as part of a veterans’ memorial in our town, where he used to summer in his youth.
Since persona non grata Ph. Phelps’s phoul name has shown up, I just wanted to add that I hope someone’s planning to picket his phreaking phuneral when he croaks/gets whacked.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:28 AMUsing
I often pause to think when I read stories about the passing of another of this generation of men how young they were. War is a place of young men and this brave man was the same age as my father, now sadly gone. Born in 1920, he watched the world go from biplanes to spaceships and crystal set radios to sat nav. What a debt we owe them. And how strong and decent they were. Not that today’s soldiers aren’t as brave but the sheer number of men that fought in that war and the conditions under which they did it are amazing to me. My father was 21 when captured at Singapore. He spent 3 and a half years on the Burma Railway as slave labour to a brutal Japanese captor. Every ANZAC Day as a kid, I’d hear yet another story of his unsung heroism when a few drinks loosened his reticence. Came back, got some shock treatment and went on with building a life, a fifty year marriage and a family and never once felt sorry for himself. With some notable exceptions, take a 21 year old today and forget 3 and a 1/2 years. Three and a 1/2 HOURS and he’d be complaining that his iPod battery was flat. I turn 50 in a few weeks and I pride myself on not being a crusty old bastard, but it’s hard not to sound like one when I comment on the bravery and sacrifice of my parents’ generation. Kids today don’t know the half of it.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:06 AMUsing
Intellectual Conservative:
Pacifist? Me? not bloody likely. My new hobby is Archery, and I’m a damned good shot too. Was/am damned good too with both my .45 (rest in peice little friend, had to sell it when I moved to the great nanny state of New yuck) and my .223. I imagined myself taking my new bow on it’s first hunting expedition this fall for some bambi, but I’m thinking that a moron hunting expedition could be great amounts of fun too. I figure if this baby has the power to take down a deer, I should have no problems with a gaseous bag of shit like the members of the wesboro baptist church.
February 1st, 2008 at 6:26 AMUsing
Regarding this topic-I so admire these men, especially after reading flags of our fathers. They went through a lot, and I admire them for it. I know we will always have heroes, and I admire the new ones just as much. As for fred phelps, I would like to let him loose in a lab filled with ebola ridden monkeys with rabies and see what happens. :em12:
February 1st, 2008 at 7:30 AMUsing
this is too funny. green beret on trial for use of insufficient caliber. :em01:
February 1st, 2008 at 8:10 AMUsing
Thank you for the post crunchie! There was a generation of men who did what needed to be done, despite the horrors, the suffering, the loss of their lives and freedom at the hands of a brutal, merciless ennemy. He was well-received by his peers of generations past, of that I am certain!
Strange thing about the Japanese of WW2. They could display incredible bravery and courage, yet perform atrocities and horrors all in the same breath.
To all of you WW2 Veterans of all Nations, an eternal Thank You. But I also beg forgiveness for allowing the freedom so dearly paid for to be so misused…
February 1st, 2008 at 8:54 AMUsing
BOTH Iwo Jima flags are located at the Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico. The Museum keeps them in a darkened room, but just seeing those flags, and remembering the sacrifice of thousands of Marines, everything comes together.
The Museum is awesome in scope and majesty; so much so this Beached Chief would go again and again.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:44 AMUsing
“Shai Dorsai!!!”
We’re diminished by his passing.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:48 PMUsing
SeniorD
I know that the first one is, I have a photo of it that Crumb Crunchie took. But I had always heard that the second one was left up there and was blown to tatters by the wind.
There was some controversy over the first flag. I had read that the SecNavy said he wanted it, ad when the CO of the 28th Marines heard that, he said “No way! That damn flag belongs to this regiment!” Part of the reason for sending the second, larger flag up. It wasn’t just because it was to small to be seen well.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:37 PMUsing
My dad was in the Pacific theater in WWII. Also, a Marine in the Marine Air Wing he trained bombardiers on the Norden bomb site.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:42 PMSemper Fidelis boys, say hi to the Big Guy for me.
Using
My Dad drove LCVP’s for these guys, Bouganville and points south.
‘Said that with all the lead rattling across his craft,, he couldn’t imagine how so many could survive.
February 1st, 2008 at 2:43 PMUsing
LC Intellectual Conservative:
“Would I roast in Hell for hoping some Mormon there might take offense and clean this scum bag’s clock?”
No, you wouldn’t. Consider, also, that Utah is a big state, and there are plenty of deserted, out of the way places, where a body might never be discovered. And, also considering how popular Fred “Closet Queen” Phelps is throughout this country, someone could take the demonspawn out in plain view of the public, and there is a good chance no one would have seen a thing.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:35 PMUsing
…and in the meantime, “militants” send retarded women off to market with remote controlled bombs. Oh, how our enemies have changed.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:42 PMUsing
“Rain, people like Phelps make the fatal mistake of thinking all of us Mormons are nice little pacifists…”
Blame the hilarious, yet inaccurate, spaghetti western spoof THEY CALL ME TRINITY for that. :em93:
“who are into polygamy etc ….”
Well, if gays can get married…
February 1st, 2008 at 10:42 PMUsing
The WWII stories of The Pied Piper of Saipan and the Conscientious Objector with a pretty pink ribbon around his neck make for interesting and inspirational reading, as well.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:19 PMUsing
Googling the names Desmond T. Doss and Guy Gabaldon is instructive, as well.
(I’ve tried posting links, unsuccessfully)
February 1st, 2008 at 11:22 PMUsing
That should be “the Conscientious Objector with a pretty -blue- ribbon around his neck.” :em98:
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:29 AMUsing
RIP in heaven, Marine, you deserve it.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:21 AMUsing