Six boys, thirteen hands

[Riverpigusmc]

*
SIX BOYS AND 13 HANDS
>
> Each year I am hired to go to Washington , DC , with the eighth grade
> class from Clinton, WI. Where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I
> greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capitol, and each year I take some
> special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially
> memorable.
>
> On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial.
> This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts
> one of the most famous photographs in history -- that of the six brave
> soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the
> island of Iwo Jima , Japan , during WW II.* Over one hundred students
> and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I
> noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got
> closer he asked, 'Where are you guys from?'
>
> I told him that we were from Wisconsin . 'Hey, I'm a cheese head, too!
> Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.'
>
> (It was James Bradley who just happened to be in Washington, DC, to
> speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to
> say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to
> leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to
> us, and received his permission to share what he said from my
> videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled
> with history in Washington , DC , but it is quite another to get the
> kind of insight we received that night.)
>
>
> When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are
> his words that night.)
>
> 'My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin . My dad is
> on that statue, and I just wrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers'
> which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is
> the story of the six boys you see behind me.
>
> 'Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the
> ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He
> enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his
> football team.. They were off to play another type of game. A game
> called 'War.' But it didn't turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age
> of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don't say that to
> gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front
> of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know
> that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and
> it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would
> talk to their families about it.
>
> (He pointed to the statue) 'You see this next guy? That's Rene Gagnon
> from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this
> photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would
> find a photograph...a photograph of his girlfriend Rene put that in
> there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It
> was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.
>
> 'The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike
> Strank.. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these
> Guys. They called him the 'old man' because he was so old. He was
> already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he
> didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese' or 'Let's die for our
> country' He knew he was talking to little boys.. Instead he would say,
> 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers.'
>
> 'The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian
> from Arizona . Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo
> Jima . He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told
> him, 'You're a hero' He told reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero
> when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked
> off alive?'
>
> So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together
> having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the
> beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira
> Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain
> home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a
> very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture
> was taken).
>
> 'The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from
> Hilltop, Kentucky . A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who
> is now 70, told me, 'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch
> of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so
> the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows
> crapped all night.' Yes, he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin
> died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his
> mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A
> barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The neighbors
> could hear her scream all night and into the morning. Those neighbors
> lived a quarter of a mile away.
>
> 'The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John
> Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin , where I was raised. My dad lived
> until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's
> producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little
> kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada
> fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he
> is coming back..' My dad never fished or even went to Canada ..
> Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell
> 's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He
> didn't want to talk to the press.
>
> 'You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a hero.
> Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and
> on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from
> Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over
> 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima , they writhed
> and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain.
>
> 'When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad
> was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and
> said, 'I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are
> the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back. ''So that's the
> story about six nice young boys.. Three died on Iwo Jima , and three
> came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in
> the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is
> giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.'
>
> Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a
> flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the
> heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero.
> Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero
> nonetheless.
>
> We need to remember that God created this vast and glorious world for
> us to live in, freely, but also at great sacrifice
>
> Let us never forget from the Revolutionary War to the current War on
> Terrorism and all the wars in-between that sacrifice was made for our
> freedom...please pray for our troops.
>
> Remember to pray praises for this great country of ours and also
> .....please pray for our troops still in murderous places around the
> world.
>
> STOP and thank God for being alive and being free due to someone
> else's sacrifice.
>*
> God Bless You and God Bless America ...
>
> REMINDER: Everyday that you can wake up free, it's going to be a great day.
>
> > One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC
> that is not mentioned here is . . that if you look at the statue very
> closely and count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are
> 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he
> simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God