Trevor's+WWII+Narrative+Essay

__**Raising the Flag **__ I remember playing toy soldiers with my action figures and friends as a kid. You would just fight the bad guys and then all would be good. So when i got old enough I signed up for the Marines, but when I got deployed to the island of Iwo Jima, I realized this was nothing like toy soldiers in my backyard.

My name is Clayton Richert, I am in the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines. It is about two hours until I am deployed to Iwo Jima. I am having this weird mixed feeling of nervousness and excitement. I am unsure of what the war will be like. The one thing that is calming me down is the guys in my unit, they keep everything loose and easygoing which helps me feel more at home. Then all of a sudden the mood changes from having a good time to scared to death. Our Lieutenant Harold G. Schrier told us that we were boarding the plane to Iwo Jima .

The date is February 19, 1945. We are about 15 minutes from landing in Iwo Jima. It is dead silent on our plane the only thing you can hear is the anti-aircraft guns in the distance. I look at the guys faces and I cannot read any of them, I have never seen a group of people this serious. Then the next thing I know the plane jolts and we have landed. I have this huge feeling of nausea and starting to wonder why I signed up for the Marines. then our Lieutenant Schrier shouts over the gunfire. “ Remember your training your training and I will see you on the flight back!”

I rush out of the plane having a vice like grip on my M1 Carbine and then a bullet whizzes by my head and I think to myself. “This is not training, the targets shoot back.” Our goal is to take Mount Suribachi and raise the U.S flag. We walked about a half-mile to the bottom of the mountain, for the brief hour I have been here I have not relaxed once, I feel that as soon as I relax, that might be the end of me. When we did get to the bottom of the mountain and look up at the Big Dipper, when all of a sudden I get a pit in my stomach missing home already. I had enough food rations for one week, the rations make me think of Mamma’s homemade meals. The spam I have compares nothing to it.

I woke up when I heard gunshots, and I have to say that is not very pleasant. I grabbed my gun faster than a horse jumps out of the gate and started shooting. I realized how real this war was when the guy next to me screamed because he had taken a piece of shrapnel in the arm. We had little progress the first day which was very frustrating. I was already starting to hate the war and this island. For one the smell of burning and rotting flesh is driving me crazy, this island is so hot especially in my mixed cotton nylon uniform. Two the feeling that you could die any second has me feeling insecure. Three I was missing my family and especially my mother’s amazing hot cooking. On day two our Lieutenant told us that we were climbing the hill today. I thought the man lost his marbles. Yesterday we had faced heavy resistance, and we would be sitting ducks climbing up that hill, but I did not have the guts to question him, I had one goal and one goal only, to make it out of here alive. As we started climbing the hill I was looking around like a hungry hawk looking for prey. I’m looking but, no one but the men in our unit were around us. Everybody has that bad feeling in our stomach’s of an ambush around us but we did not see anything. We neared no enemy resistance as we climbed the rest of the hill. Next our goal is to raise the flag. We put down the base and then as we started raising the flag, I started to feel a certain sense of pride. I was representing our country, in just raising that flag, I felt truly American. One of the guys in our unit caught us raising the flag on camera, which looking at it later was truly inspiring. Right as he took the picture though, an enemy popped out and hurled a grenade, and I turned around with my carbine and put two in his chest, the grenade exploded and I looked for the guy who took the picture but could not find him. I looked down the hill and saw him about fifty below the hill, but he still kept the picture.

Our lieutenant had just alerted us that their were other battalions that needed our help and that their was a northeast beach that we had to help a battalion take. I thought to myself “ You have got to bee kidding me, I just want to leave this misery island.” The only thing that was helping me keep my head was the guys in my unit, we joked around, played cards, and most importantly helped each other survive.

When we got to the other battalion, it was one of the hardest things to look at I have ever seen in my life. They had about ten men out of about what used to be thirty men. You could hear the desperate cries of the wounded that were barely alive. The guys that were alive looked half dead. When I talked to some of the guys they said that they had little ammo, and were out of food rations. The guys looked like they had not eaten in days, I quickly gave some to them. I thought “ I am going to everything I can do to help them get through this. The guys then explained to us the plan about taking the northeast beach, and then the Japanese defenses would be cut in two. I was inspired by their optimism after all they had been through. The next day we were going to start fighting.

We were about two miles from the northeast beach when we first encountered enemy resistance. The Japanese fought very fierce and hard for the beach and I could tell that we were not going to take the beach as easily as I had first thought.. We only lost about six men during the first day of fighting. It sickens me how used I am to saying that and especially only six. The war has hardened me and I am starting to feel less emotion as I go along. It is better for me to feel no emotion in this war, otherwise I would never survive.

On day two of the fighting on the way to the beach we progressed about one mile, I was starting to run low on food rations, I was feeling the pit in my stomach and also feeling dizzy. I was not thinking straight and all of sudden I started hallucinating, seeing my family back home, but quickly snapped out of it. On day three of fighting we took the northeast beach, but right before we took it, a Japanese soldier shot me in the right thigh. I all of a sudden felt a piercing pain in my thigh. I felt lifeless just lying there blood rushing from my thigh, I would go periods without seeing anything, but when I did something it was all blurry.

The next thing I know I wake in a mobile hospital. Something felt weird, I did not know what. Then I looked down and I almost fainted my left leg was gone. The good news was that they told me that the mission was over and that I was going home. I was overfilled with joy and my eyes got all teary. The next thing I know I am on the flight home.

The moment I saw my family was great, I had missed them so much. The war had given me a sense of pride and after serving I felt truly American. I also have scars from the war mentally and physically. It also made me realize how good my mom’s cooking is. The one thing I will never forget is raising the flag.
 * Bibliography**

Operation Detachment: The Battle for Iwo JimaFebruary - March 1945." //Military History Encyclopedia on the Web//. Web. 28 Mar. 2012. .

"Raising the Flag Over Iwo Jima, 1945." //EyeWitness to History//. Web. 28 Mar. 2012. [].