Iwo Jima battle veteran John Moon of Macomb, Ill., meets a young Marine before Friday's ceremony at Quantico. (Joe Gromelski / S&S)
Posted on 02/19/2005 7:43:08 PM PST by Former Military Chick
QUANTICO, Va. — Arthur Gavlock looked on in horror as the amphibious assault craft in front of him moved out of its berth inside the tossing Navy warship and sunk straight to the bottom of the Pacific.
Iwo Jima battle veteran John Moon of Macomb, Ill., meets a young Marine before Friday's ceremony at Quantico. (Joe Gromelski / S&S)
Staff Sgt. Jason Steadman and his son, Jason Jr., look at a Marine Corps historical display in the lobby of Little Hall. (Joe Gromelski / S&S )
Iwo Jima veteran Arthur Gavlock of Renova, Pa., at Friday's 60th anniversary ceremony. (Joe Gromelski / S&S)
Iwo Jima veteran and former Navy corpsman Greg Emery, left, tells Petty Officer Second Class Neath Williams about how he snuck out of a field hospital and made it back to his unit to finish out the battle for the Japanese island. (Jon R. Anderson / S&S )
Now it was his turn. Turning to grab his rifle, Gavlock couldn’t believe it. Someone had swiped it.
And so it was, 60 years ago this week, that a 19-year-old Marine private found himself wading ashore onto a strange island called Iwo Jima without a gun in what would become the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history.
Gavlock, now 79, was among about 100 veterans of the campaign gathered at Marine Corps headquarters in Quantico, Va., Friday morning. It was among the first events to kick off the 60th anniversary commemorations of the attack on Iwo Jima.
A wreath-laying ceremony is slated at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington on Saturday, under the bronze feet of the five Marines and one corpsman sailor, immortalized by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s image of the raising of the Stars and Stripes atop Mount Suribachi.
Across the globe, Marine commandant Gen. Michael Hagee is to oversee ceremonies on the black, volcanic island itself.
A linchpin in the Allied campaign to Japan, Iwo Jima served as an early warning station against American bombers. Taking the island would add three critical airfields for fighter escorts, placing them within easy striking distance of the Japanese homeland.
At Quantico, with most of the veterans of that grueling battle now well into their 70s and 80s, many shook from age instead of the fear they had to master as they stepped off their assault craft and into the chaos and carnage.
For Gavlock, now hard of hearing and wearing a red Marine Corps jacket and baseball cap emblazoned with the words “I survived Iwo Jima,” it was the gruesome images of those first few hours on the island that remain his most vivid memories.
“Coming on the beach, the dead were everywhere, the young faces of those beautiful kids,” said Gavlock, who managed to grab a rifle from among the bodies as he came ashore. “As a kid I was afraid of dead people, but it didn’t take long to get over that.”
Indeed, 22,000 deeply entrenched Japanese defenders would make taking the island one of the costliest battles of the war. It become the first — and still the only — battle in history to see more Marines wounded than enemy. One out of every four Medals of Honor earned by Marines during the war were given to veterans of Iwo Jima.
Through the 36-day assault, which began Feb. 19, 1945, some 6,800 Marines and corpsmen would die, with another 19,000 wounded.
“Think about that,” retired Gen. Chuck Krulak, the Corps’ 31st commandant, told those gathered in Quantico. “A Marine fell to fire every two minutes of every hour of every day for 36 days.”
“Truly, you represent the greatest generation,” Krulak told the veterans, “and the greatest of our Marine Corps.
An artilleryman with the 13th Marines, Gavlock said he feels lucky to have come out Iwo Jima without a scratch. “I guess 13 was my lucky number,” he said.
Greg Emery wasn’t so fortunate. But he didn’t mind.
A Navy corpsman, Emery was wounded on day 12 of the invasion.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Neath Williams, a current corpsman, stood enraptured as Newman told how he snuck out of the field hospital he was taken to after getting hit and rejoined his unit.
Williams' eyes grew wide as Emery pointed to a picture of a young medic tending the wounded — part of a display of Iwo Jima battle photos and artifacts.
“That’s me,” he said, explaining that he stayed with his unit for 37 days on the island before leaving once Iwo Jima was captured.
“Man, it’s amazing to meet someone like that,” said Williams, a veteran of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “The things he’s seen and done, he really had me floored hearing those stories.”
Herb Newman was just glad to make it out alive. Already a veteran of the Marshall Island and Saipan campaigns where he’d already earned his first Purple Heart, Newman had few illusions about what he’d face on Iwo Jima.
Newman spent the first three days of the invasion trying to take the high ground of an area of the island called the Sun Quarry. “Once I got up over the top of the ridge, I got shot in the leg,” he said.
It took hours for eight musicians from the 24th Marine Band — tasked with tending to the wounded — to carry Newman down to the beachhead on a stretcher.
“Of course, that was the most dangerous place on the island,” he says, recalling the gut wrenching trip out to a hospital ship as the Japanese peppered his craft with gunfire. “I remember thinking, ‘Here I am, about to get my second Purple Heart, and I’m not even going to make it off the beach.’ ”
Following the ceremony, the Iwo Jima veterans visited the site of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, under construction at Quantico and scheduled for completion in 2006. Click here for more about the museum.
Semper Fi forever!
It was a great day to celebrate the fine men who were in this horrendous battle.
My God....
What was it that they said about that battle?
Uncommon Valor was an act shared by all...?
Uncommon valor was a common virtue.
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