Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Bantam; Reissue edition (October 2, 2001)
ISBN: 055338029X
Price: $11.20
I read With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge a few years ago, after my dad’s passing. Dad had served on Okinawa, but after he’d gotten out of the service, married, and I came along, he was mum about his eight years in the service.
Here, in Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley, son of John Bradley, who served on Iwo Jima as a corpsman and who was awarded the Navy Cross for his service, recounts a story not so unlike my own, and many other sons born of this generation of leathernecks.
Unlike With the Old Breed, which was told by one of the surviving Marines of Okinawa, Flags is the result of James Bradley’s research and interviews with many survivors of the battle for Iwo Jima, after his father’s own passing. At times Flags reads like an action thriller, its battle sequences, authentic not only in their depiction of all the clichés Hollywood made famous in the 1950s, but in its realism of the true horrors of war, and the impact it had on the survivors. But Flags is more.
Flags follows the lives of six boys, providing a brief bio of each prior to enlisting in the service – five in the Marine Corps, one in the Navy, through their service years, including their participation in the flag-raising on Iwo, the war bond tour in which three of them participated – the other three were killed on Iwo – up to the death of each one, the first, a Pima Indian from Arizona who’s drinking likely contributed to his death at the age of 31, the second, an east coast lad who always lamented the celebrity status that being a flag-raiser promised but never quite delivered, who died of a heart attack in his mid 50s, and John Bradley, the only one who managed to create a life of normalcy, although for years, like my own father and many others who served in the South Pacific campaign, he suffered nightmares.
The Photograph, which is how James Bradley refers to it, of the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima taken by Joe Rosenthal is today one of the most recognizable photographs ever taken, and it has become an icon of America’s determination, valor and dogma. Yet to the three boys who raised it, it was merely a task, one of the many they performed in the line of duty, perhaps the easiest, and none of them could ever quite come to terms with what the government, the media and the marketing people conspired to create from it. As Ira, the doomed Pima Indian said: “It’s funny what a picture can do.”
Told with great love and admiration, and a fitting tribute to his father and all those from the “Greatest Generation” who served, Flags is a must read for all generations, to understand that there is no glory in war, despite the propaganda the government and admen feed us. There is duty and there is love, but when the bullets fly, no boy fights for their country. They fight for survival and they fight for their brothers. No one should have to ever endure what these kids endured in the South Pacific, or in any war, which is why no one man, with the flourish of his signature, should ever be granted the responsibility of sending young men and women into harm’s way, especially if that man has never walked into hell and back.
Flags is also a motion picture, directed by Clint Eastwood, one which I hope yet to see. I’m sure Mr. Eastwood’s treatment will be true to Bradley’s text, but I’m equally sure that a motion picture will be unable to capture all of what the book relates.
Publisher: Bantam; Reissue edition (October 2, 2001)
ISBN: 055338029X
Price: $11.20
I read With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge a few years ago, after my dad’s passing. Dad had served on Okinawa, but after he’d gotten out of the service, married, and I came along, he was mum about his eight years in the service.
Here, in Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley, son of John Bradley, who served on Iwo Jima as a corpsman and who was awarded the Navy Cross for his service, recounts a story not so unlike my own, and many other sons born of this generation of leathernecks.
Unlike With the Old Breed, which was told by one of the surviving Marines of Okinawa, Flags is the result of James Bradley’s research and interviews with many survivors of the battle for Iwo Jima, after his father’s own passing. At times Flags reads like an action thriller, its battle sequences, authentic not only in their depiction of all the clichés Hollywood made famous in the 1950s, but in its realism of the true horrors of war, and the impact it had on the survivors. But Flags is more.
Flags follows the lives of six boys, providing a brief bio of each prior to enlisting in the service – five in the Marine Corps, one in the Navy, through their service years, including their participation in the flag-raising on Iwo, the war bond tour in which three of them participated – the other three were killed on Iwo – up to the death of each one, the first, a Pima Indian from Arizona who’s drinking likely contributed to his death at the age of 31, the second, an east coast lad who always lamented the celebrity status that being a flag-raiser promised but never quite delivered, who died of a heart attack in his mid 50s, and John Bradley, the only one who managed to create a life of normalcy, although for years, like my own father and many others who served in the South Pacific campaign, he suffered nightmares.
The Photograph, which is how James Bradley refers to it, of the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima taken by Joe Rosenthal is today one of the most recognizable photographs ever taken, and it has become an icon of America’s determination, valor and dogma. Yet to the three boys who raised it, it was merely a task, one of the many they performed in the line of duty, perhaps the easiest, and none of them could ever quite come to terms with what the government, the media and the marketing people conspired to create from it. As Ira, the doomed Pima Indian said: “It’s funny what a picture can do.”
Told with great love and admiration, and a fitting tribute to his father and all those from the “Greatest Generation” who served, Flags is a must read for all generations, to understand that there is no glory in war, despite the propaganda the government and admen feed us. There is duty and there is love, but when the bullets fly, no boy fights for their country. They fight for survival and they fight for their brothers. No one should have to ever endure what these kids endured in the South Pacific, or in any war, which is why no one man, with the flourish of his signature, should ever be granted the responsibility of sending young men and women into harm’s way, especially if that man has never walked into hell and back.
Flags is also a motion picture, directed by Clint Eastwood, one which I hope yet to see. I’m sure Mr. Eastwood’s treatment will be true to Bradley’s text, but I’m equally sure that a motion picture will be unable to capture all of what the book relates.
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