thedrifter
11-12-07, 08:17 AM
Posted on Sun, Nov. 11, 2007
North Texan recounts World War II experience
By PATRICK McGEE
pmcgee@star-telegram.com
With shrapnel in his foot and shoulder, Edward Finch hobbled on crutches onto the deck of his ship at just the right moment. He saw the Marines raise the flag at Iwo Jima.
The flag-raising was captured in a photograph that became part of Marine lore and a symbol of one of World War II's most famous battles. Iwo Jima is a small Japanese island where Americans clashed with Japanese forces in the final year of the war.
Finch was part of it, and he spent the Veterans Day holiday telling the Star-Telegram of his hours on the beach as a Navy corpsman.
The lifelong Texan, 96, lives in a Euless nursing home with his wife, Eva, who is 93.
He said he was drafted at age 34 and trained as a corpsman, which is a medic for Marines.
He landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945, on the second day of the battle.
The fighting was so intense that many Marines were shot before they got off their landing boats. Finch's job was to help the wounded make it off the boats. It was too deadly, too chaotic for him to even think about being scared.
"If you ever get into something like that, you can't be scared. You've got to do your job," he said. "You're there to help others. You're not thinking about yourself."
After 10 hours, Finch said, he was knocked out by an explosion so quickly that he does not remember falling. He woke up in a foxhole with shrapnel in his foot and shoulder. Another corpsman took off his boot. "He said, 'I can't see anything.' I said, 'Look on the bottom.' He said, 'Oh yeah,'" Finch said with a gentle laugh. There were two nickel-size pieces of shrapnel in his foot.
A bomb hit nearby and sent a massive sheet of dirt over the foxhole, and Finch said he suggested getting out of there fast. The other man asked, "Can you make it?" Finch said yes, and they raced back to the shore with bullets whistling over their heads.
Finch said the bottom half of his bunk later filled with blood from the wounds. But he was well enough to make his way out on the deck to see the flag-raising.
Finch enjoys retelling the story, but said he does not have overly proud feelings about serving.
"I don't feel good about it in a way, because there's too many men that got killed over there," he said. Finch said he saw unspeakable injuries and dead Marines stacked like firewood.
An officer standing near him on the ship was shot dead seconds after they saw the flag raised.
Nearly 6,000 Marines were killed in action at Iwo Jima, and more than 17,000 were wounded there, said Mark Gilderhus, a history professor at Texas Christian University.
"No one feels good about those kind of casualties, but on the other hand, it provided a vital step toward ultimate victory," he said. "The battle was important because it's a concluding step on closing the ring on the Japanese home islands."
Gilderhus said the Marine victory robbed the Japanese of an important landing strip and gave it to the Americans, who used it for landing damaged planes returning from bombing the Japanese islands.
Finch said he wants to revisit Iwo Jima, but only from the air -- and only if someone will buy him a plane ticket.
Ellie
North Texan recounts World War II experience
By PATRICK McGEE
pmcgee@star-telegram.com
With shrapnel in his foot and shoulder, Edward Finch hobbled on crutches onto the deck of his ship at just the right moment. He saw the Marines raise the flag at Iwo Jima.
The flag-raising was captured in a photograph that became part of Marine lore and a symbol of one of World War II's most famous battles. Iwo Jima is a small Japanese island where Americans clashed with Japanese forces in the final year of the war.
Finch was part of it, and he spent the Veterans Day holiday telling the Star-Telegram of his hours on the beach as a Navy corpsman.
The lifelong Texan, 96, lives in a Euless nursing home with his wife, Eva, who is 93.
He said he was drafted at age 34 and trained as a corpsman, which is a medic for Marines.
He landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945, on the second day of the battle.
The fighting was so intense that many Marines were shot before they got off their landing boats. Finch's job was to help the wounded make it off the boats. It was too deadly, too chaotic for him to even think about being scared.
"If you ever get into something like that, you can't be scared. You've got to do your job," he said. "You're there to help others. You're not thinking about yourself."
After 10 hours, Finch said, he was knocked out by an explosion so quickly that he does not remember falling. He woke up in a foxhole with shrapnel in his foot and shoulder. Another corpsman took off his boot. "He said, 'I can't see anything.' I said, 'Look on the bottom.' He said, 'Oh yeah,'" Finch said with a gentle laugh. There were two nickel-size pieces of shrapnel in his foot.
A bomb hit nearby and sent a massive sheet of dirt over the foxhole, and Finch said he suggested getting out of there fast. The other man asked, "Can you make it?" Finch said yes, and they raced back to the shore with bullets whistling over their heads.
Finch said the bottom half of his bunk later filled with blood from the wounds. But he was well enough to make his way out on the deck to see the flag-raising.
Finch enjoys retelling the story, but said he does not have overly proud feelings about serving.
"I don't feel good about it in a way, because there's too many men that got killed over there," he said. Finch said he saw unspeakable injuries and dead Marines stacked like firewood.
An officer standing near him on the ship was shot dead seconds after they saw the flag raised.
Nearly 6,000 Marines were killed in action at Iwo Jima, and more than 17,000 were wounded there, said Mark Gilderhus, a history professor at Texas Christian University.
"No one feels good about those kind of casualties, but on the other hand, it provided a vital step toward ultimate victory," he said. "The battle was important because it's a concluding step on closing the ring on the Japanese home islands."
Gilderhus said the Marine victory robbed the Japanese of an important landing strip and gave it to the Americans, who used it for landing damaged planes returning from bombing the Japanese islands.
Finch said he wants to revisit Iwo Jima, but only from the air -- and only if someone will buy him a plane ticket.
Ellie