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thedrifter
02-03-07, 08:31 AM
Letters from Iwo Jima
Stories about deadly Marine battle at Newfane library
By BOB AUDETTE, Reformer Staff
Brattleboro Reformer

Saturday, February 3
NEWFANE -- The opening line of the letter brings the harsh truth of battle into quick perspective.

"I am still here although a few more of the boys aren't," wrote Col. Chester "Bim" Graham, on Feb. 27, 1945.

Just eight days before, Graham and the 3,300 troops of the 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division had stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima, a 34-day battle that took the lives of more than 6,800 Americans and an estimated 20,000 Japanese.

Of the 70,000 Marines who landed on the island, 23,000 were either killed, wounded or suffered battle fatigue.

For most, Iwo Jima is most remembered for one of the most iconic images to come out of wartime -- a handful of ragged Marines raising a flag on the high point of the Pacific island.

But reading through the letters and reports written by Graham, on display at the Moore Free Library starting today, the horrors of Iwo Jima seep through the statistical details of his official papers and the elegant prose of his correspondence with his wife.

"I had a particularly bad day yesterday," he wrote in one of his 11 letters to his wife Isabelle from Iwo Jima. "Lost a lot of officers and men, some of whom you know."

On Feb. 19, Marines stormed the heavily fortified island.

"Although no direct contact with the enemy was made, sporadic artillery and mortar fire was received," wrote Graham in his after-action report dated April 20, 1945. On that day, Graham lists 146 officers and 3,110 enlisted men under his command.

By the end of the second day, Graham already had 58 men killed or wounded.

"We fight all day and maybe gain only 200 or 300 yards," he wrote on Feb. 23.

Japanese Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi had ordered his soldiers to fight to the death, and most of them did. As Graham's men moved out across the island, often moving only yards each day, casualties began to mount.

By the time nearly every Japanese defender had been killed by the Americans, more than 2,000 of Graham's troops were wounded. Almost 700 took their last breaths after being commanded into battle by Graham, a responsibility he took heavily.

"This is really a pretty terrible battle and I try not to think about what we have lost," he wrote. "I am so used to hearing about men being killed and wounded that it seems like a lot of statistics until I let myself really think about it when it almost makes me sick. I have seen some awful sights."

In his Feb. 27 letter, Graham relates to his wife the fate of men she met during their pre-deployment training at Camp Pendleton in California.

"Johnson was killed yesterday," he wrote, eight days into the battle. "Jones, our cook, was killed. Louis Plain was wounded almost as soon as he got ashore. Shattered the bone in his arm. Gardner was wounded today. Also others too numerous to mention, in fact about half of my officers. In other words, we aren't playing for marbles."

In the margins of the letter, Graham wrote "P.S. Chevigny, Tom's lieutenant with all the Hollywood contacts was killed."

"My regiment is literally shot to hell," he continued. "It is heartbreaking. I am losing more men every day and they can't be replaced."

His admiration for his troops is paired with the awful truth of being a commander during wartime.

"The regiment is full of heroes including a hell of a lot of dead ones," he wrote. "According to normal doctrine, the regiment would have been considered wiped out two weeks ago but we are still going. On what, I don't know."

Despite the losses, Graham wrote that it appeared his troops were pushing well against the Japanese. A few days later though, in a letter dated March 6, he wrote "this is a tough scrap and it keeps getting tougher everyday. There is a Jap behind every rock and in caves and pillboxes. You have to kill everyone of them."

In his next pair of letters, Graham tells his wife that though the battle for the island is winding down, his troops still have a handful of Japanese soldiers to confront.

On March 16, Graham wrote that the island had been secured "however there is still plenty of tough fighting going on and my boys are still in it."

Just when he thought the battle might be winding down, even commenting in a letter that "the ships are waiting in the harbor but I don't know when we will be ready to get aboard," he and his troops were given the task of ridding the island of the last of its defenders who had dug into a patch of earth just 800 by 200 yards.

"You have to hand it to (them)," he wrote. "They never give up. Any white troops would have surrendered two weeks ago when the situation was obviously hopeless."

Graham's soldiers took less than 100 Japanese captives during their time on the island.

"We are still fighting," he wrote on March 19. "We worked on a concrete blockhouse all day with heavy explosives and flame thrower and haven't cracked it yet. I think all the big shots are in there. Maybe we will get them to come out."

By the end of March, Graham and the rest of the Marines had completely taken the island.

"I guess the battle of Iwo is finally over but it was tough right up until the end," he wrote on March 31. "I don't think anyone ever dreamed it would be like this."

Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com or (802) 254-2311, ext. 273.

Ellie