85-year-old ex-Marine remembers seeing flag go up on Iwo Jima

[thedrifter]

85-year-old ex-Marine remembers seeing flag go up on Iwo Jima
Sue Book
Sun Journal
November 8, 2007 - 8:41PM


As a young Marine, Francis E. Myers went ashore at Iwo Jima in World War II. He saw his fellow Marines raise the flag as a combat photographer caught the moment with picture that became famous.

He needs no picture to remember. The flag-raising, Myers says, was done under enemy fire, an act of courage.

Myers is 85 now. He was a guest Saturday at the Marine Corps Ball at the New Riverfront Convention Center. The Marine Corps’ 232nd birthday is Saturday, Nov. 10, and celebrations have been held throughout the week.

It is traditional at Marine celebrations for a cake to be cut and for the first slice to be served to the oldest Marine by the youngest present. But at the ball in New Bern, Maj. Gen. Robert Dickerson, commander Marine Corps Installations-East, and Col. Francis Bottorff, commander of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, hand-delivered the first slice to Francis E. Myers.

And 750 Marines in full dress blues gave Myers three standing ovations during his introduction.

He was officially a Marine just 3 1/2 years, “but as the saying goes, once a Marine, always a Marine,” he said in an interview later.

“I enlisted for World War II and the duration plus six months and they didn’t make me stay the extra six months,” said Myers.

In those years, when he was 19 to 23 years old, the Indianapolis native participated in four World War II landings in the Pacific Theater and was wounded twice.

One of them was on Iwo Jima, often considered one the Marine Corps’ worst battle as 7,000 Marines died in fierce fighting, even after the Navy had shelled the island for 13 hours before they landed.

“The division to the left took the mountain and I was on the right division, but everybody on the island could see that flag raised,” Myers said.

He said there are assorted stories that the flag-raising was staged, but the stories are wrong. “It was an act of courage,” he said. “There was firing going on. A Marine took a flag, found a pipe, and raised it. That guy put that flag up in the face of the enemy. They didn’t ‘OohRah’ then but at the time the flag was raised, everybody waved and yelled.”

“That island was no way secure,” he said. “On Iwo Jima I went ashore with 220 people; 20 of us walked off. The others were dead or seriously wounded.

“I caught some shrapnel in the back and got a Purple Heart at Iwo Jima and got shot in the leg,” Myers said. “They wanted to take me back to the hospital but I wouldn’t let them.”

“Don’t make me out to be a hero,” he said, his brow wrinkling, his tone adamant. “There were too many other people for one to be a hero. The heroes are over there yet.”

One was his best buddy.

“He knew he wasn’t going to get off that island alive when we got there,” Myers said. “He told me six days ahead he was going to die there and asked me to send his belongings home to his mother.

“I carried him back to the hospital in my jeep. The doctor told me, ‘This kid isn’t going to make it.’ I saw him die in my arms.”

When Myers deployed he had trained for six months in San Diego and had high praise for the experience: “Boot camp was pretty tough. In the Corps, they don’t horse around. It will always be that way.”

After boot camp he got a 72-hour pass and hopped on a fast train from LA to Chicago to Indianapolis. He was home seven hours and had to go back.

“They don’t tell you are shipping out,” he said. “Some people wouldn’t have to guts to come back, not many though. They all enlisted for the war and duration but it was a little more frightening when you knew you were getting orders for war.”

Myers boarded a ship in San Diego that steamed to Hawaii, refueled and resupplied, and steamed directly to the Marshall Islands. Just 18 days from home he was at war.

The scene changed quickly right down to the smell, “It smelled like the devil. It was hot, and we had to lay in the foxhole. There was no time for a shower. They told us to change socks from one foot to the other. First we were eating K-rations. As soon as they could, they set up chow lines. It took about two weeks to get the place set up.”

Official Marine decorum was put aside.

“Forget saluting, saying Sir,” he said. “You don’t have time to worry about that.”

Myers’ job was in the supply line, driving the jeep but carrying a Springfield .30-caliber rifle.

“We were all so green when we first got there that we were in a grove and a coconut fell out of a tree,” he said. “We shot at every lime and coconut, almost all at once.”

He recalled a tank holding one command at bay as he approached and they asked if they could use his jeep.

“I got out my rifle, fixed the sight on the tank’s periscope and fired,” he said. The first shot passed inches above but right in line, “but I hit the glass with the second shot. The tank was blind after that and turned and left.”

“I’m glad we dropped the bomb,” Myers said. “I’m sorry for the children, the innocent civilians. I hate that. But it ended the fighting. If they hadn’t dropped the atomic bomb we would have had another landing. The war in Europe was actually over and they knew that in a short time they could have all those armies.”

“I made sergeant when I came home,” Myers said. “I was told how I had done a good job and they would like to keep me and I was offered a lieutenant’s commission and a platoon.

“I would have been proud to be a Marine officer but I had had all the war I could take,” he said. “I had a choice to get out and I took it.”

“Marines today are in a small war but just as deadly and dangerous,” Myers said. “And the Marine Corps is the same today as it was then. I don’t see much change. They have more advantages but they are at war, same as I was.”

“I hate to see our Marines and soldiers being court-martialed and jailed,” he said. “You go into war now fighting an unknown. I knew who I was fighting. I wouldn’t join the service today knowing I would be locked up for shooting the enemy. They don’t wear uniforms. None of us know who they are. I wish we could put an atomic bomb on that place and leave our kids at home.”

Myers and his wife, Anita Myers, were in Craven County for the dedication ceremony for his 2-month-old great-great nephew and namesake, the son of Cpl. Laramey White of Havelock.

White said he learned from watching his great-uncle: “Don’t lose respect for the Marine Corps, other people, or yourself.”

“I was thankful and filled with joy for how my fellow Marines treated him,” White said. “It was testimony to how well-mannered and respectful Marines are of their history and the people who made it what it is for 232 years.”

Myers is retired now after spending most of his working career in Akron, Ohio, with Goodyear aerospace.

He is fit and stays healthy and busy as a volunteer, acting on an early Marine lesson.

“I can’t sit down and die; I’m not done yet.”

Ellie

[gwladgarwr]

85-year-old ex- (EX???!!!) Marine remembers seeing flag go up on Iwo Jima
Sue Book
Sun Journal
November 8, 2007 - 8:41PM

“I hate to see our Marines and soldiers being court-martialed and jailed,” he said. “You go into war now fighting an unknown. I knew who I was fighting. I wouldn’t join the service today knowing I would be locked up for shooting the enemy. They don’t wear uniforms. None of us know who they are. I wish we could put an atomic bomb on that place and leave our kids at home.”

Damn, talk about a "time-saver". The old-timer's right, though. Why p***y-foot around with diplomats, politicians, tribal sheikhs, and petty dictators with a Napoleon complex when you can cut to the chase and light up their world for the next 40,000 years with some plutonium-190?

Wish we had more old Marines around like this devildog. Happy Marine Corps Birthday.

Sgt gw