SIX BOYS & 13 HANDS !!!

Subject: SIX BOYS & 13 HANDS !!!

> Worth reading again, even if you've seen this before.

John

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>
>
> Six Boys And Thirteen 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 freedoms.
> Remember to pray for this great country of ours, and also...please
> pray for our troops still in places around the world.
>
> STOP and thank God for being alive and being free due to someone
> else's sacrifice.
>
>
> God Bless You! God Bless America! God Bless the World!
>
>
> 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 said the 13th hand was the hand of God.
>
>
> Great story - worth your time - worth every American's time.
> Please pass it on.