There

American Handgunner, Nov-Dec, 2008 by Mike "Duke" Venturino

Although I have studied the battle for Iwo Jima since a pre-teen, my first view of the island was still a surprise. The pilot of the Continental Airlines Boeing 737 took us low and slow, doing figure eights around the island so both sides of the airplane could look it over before landing. The surprise was the true smallness of Iwo Jima. It's a mere five miles from north to south where the volcano sits and perhaps 2 1/2 miles wide at the northern plateau where the airport is located. I knew the dimensions already but seeing it made it real.

There were about 150 of us aboard that 737 ranging from battle veterans to kinfolk of young Marines killed there in 1945 to history buffs such as myself. During those figure eights I don't recall heating a sound above a whisper. Although Iwo is just an ugly rock, a mere speck in the Pacific Ocean, we all knew we were about to land on a special place.

Immediately after the battle Admiral Chester Nimitiz, U.S. Navy commander in the Pacific was quoted as saying, "On Iwo Jima uncommon valor was a common virtue." To modern ears perhaps that sounds like political BS. After seeing and walking over some of the battlefield I know for sure it wasn't. When the marines landed on Iwo on February 19, 1945 their 4th and 5th Divisions reinforced to about 20,000 men each landed abreast on a two mile stretch, of the black sand beaches. (Actually it s volcanic ash.) This was on the island's east side. The 5th Division was on the left, or south, and their first job was to cut the island in two, one regiment, the 28th Marines was then to neutralize Suribachi while the rest of the division fought their way north. The 4th Division's job was to land, and then immediately swing north and both outfits Side by side were then to roll all the way to the north end of the island. Marine Corps planners felt the entire operation would last days, not weeks.

That was the plan. It didn't work. The Japanese were in hundreds of fortified and camouflaged positions and quickly inflicted so many casualties on the two marine divisions two of the three regiments of the reserve 3rd Division were called in to help. Their position was in the center, between the other two divisions.

Looking over the battlefield I could perhaps understand how a young marine faced a day of that fighting. What I can't understand, and never will understand, is how that same marine could climb out of his foxhole in the morning and face the same death and destruction again on the next day. And the next, and the next, until he was killed, wounded, or finally saw the ocean on the island's north shore.