Oct 22, 2006 - 02:05:35 CDT
Bismarck Tribune
By TONY SPILDEBy TONY SPILDE
The sun broke on a crisp Saturday morning and, when an old hunter could still see his breath and smell the coffee on it, the frost along the creek beds west of Flasher slowly began to melt.
Down in one of the draws, 83-year-old Wally Uhlman strode through the grass with his trusty shotgun. Any water left in the creeks was stiff with cold, but the ground seemed poised for a burst of activity. Pheasant season had just opened, and Uhlman felt at home in his surroundings, his 12-gauge at his side.
The Peace Garden State is such a far cry from that rocky, war-torn island the Mandan man visited all those years ago.
Once, Wally Uhlman was a baby-faced 22-year-old with a machine gun in his hands and a terrible task in front of him. He had been among the first waves of Marines to land on Iwo Jima in February of 1945, and all around him the world and his friends were being torn apart by an unseen enemy.
Four days of horrible fighting went by before Uhlman saw something so powerful it gave him hope and the courage to continue.
A few hundred yards away from his position in a rocky crag, five Marines and one Navy corpsman raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi. The image - perhaps the most iconic from World War II - was captured by an Associated Press photographer. It buoyed this nation's spirits and eventually helped bolster a bond drive to aid in the war.
The new Clint Eastwood film, "Flags of Our Fathers," opened at theaters across the country Friday. The movie sheds renewed light on the flag raising and the men who were there that day. Half the GIs in Joe Rosenthal's photograph would die on Iwo Jima. The other half would become reluctant heroes. Five others, who raised the first flag on the mountain before a second, larger one could be found, would be nearly forgotten.
Hindsight allows one peripheral vision, in a sense. Look to the left of the day of the flag-raising on a historical timeline, and you'll see the Japanese were far too entrenched in the island for the battle to be over in four days. Look to the right and you'll see a month more of fighting, during which time nearly 7,000 Americans and more than 20,000 Japanese soldiers would die. Farther toward the present you see the event becoming a symbol and the battle marking a turning point in the war.
But the immediate impact of seeing the Stars and Stripes atop Suribachi was to give many of those present a real sense of relief.
"I had no idea of the symbolism that moment would have. I didn't even know they were taking pictures," Uhlman said. "I just thought I was coming home. Everybody was cheering and the ships were honking their horns. We thought the battle was over."
When the battle persisted, Uhlman fought with a rekindled passion. But a week and a half after the flags went up, a Japanese bullet ripped through his left biceps. The medic who tended to him in the field was killed shortly afterward. Death was everywhere.
Now, looking back at black-and-white photos of his days in the Marines, Uhlman points to the faces of his friends who died over there. His index finger hits the glossy pictures frequently. Iwo Jima accounted for almost a third of all the Marine Corps deaths in the war.
Uhlman said he's excited to see Eastwood's movie, which is based on the book written by James Bradley, son of flag-raiser John Bradley - the Navy corpsman there that day to lend a hand.
Also looking forward to the film is Richard Wood, another Mandan veteran of Iwo Jima who was injured in the battle.
Wood witnessed both flag raisings from a window aboard a cargo-assault ship, where he was laid up with a bullet wound in his foot and shrapnel from a mortar round in his back and leg. Despite being struck by enemy fire repeated times, Wood continued to provide first-aid for six other Marines before evacuating. He would earn a Silver Star for his efforts and, like Uhlman, receive the Purple Heart.
"The Seabees took me up topside to show me the flag,"Wood, 82, said. "I got up there and saw the first flag; with binoculars I could see it pretty plain. Then, while we were watching, the flag went down and we all thought 'Oh hell, the Japs took the mountain.'"
But a second, more famous flag went up in its place.
"When that thing went up the second time, everybody was tootin' their horns, guys were hollerin', a lot of them thought the war was over," Wood said. "Everybody was excited about that flag going up. When (the Japanese) had that mountain they could follow all our moves, could lay their mortars right on us. By knocking over that mountain, that changed everything."
Wood knew Bradley, had rubbed shoulders with him on the island. Uhlman knew Charles Lindberg, a Marine from Minnesota who'd helped raise the first flag. Iwo Jima was a small place, about three-quarters the size of Mandan. But it was an important location for the Allies, who could eventually land bombers and support planes on the island, some 650 miles from Tokyo.
"I could hit a 9-iron across the southern tip, where Suribachi is,"Uhlman said. "It was a small place and very hard going. Bodies were laying all over the place. You had to step over them. It was awful."
Wood said it took a long time for some of the memories from the battle to come back.
"When I look back on it, I must have been kind of numb (during the battle)," Wood said. "Most of it was the loss of lives, seeing all the injured and wounded. I was a corpsman; my job was to give first-aid. I remember on the first day Iwent back to the first-aid station for more supplies, and found out my buddy was killed just as he stepped off his landing craft. He never made it. That stuff is hard.
"After I got off the island, there were times I'd try to look back and couldn't remember a hell of a lot of it," Wood said. "It's come back at different times in all the years since then."
Cletus Schmidt, a classmate of Uhlman's from Mandan, also made it to Iwo Jima after his battalion of Seabees finished rebuilding Pearl Harbor. Schmidt's 90th Construction Battalion landed on the island on March 10, weeks before the fighting ended. They assisted the Marines and greatly expanded the island's infrastructure.
According to Peter Antill, author of "The Battle for Iwo Jima," roughly 2,400 B-29 Superfortresses - carrying more than 70,000 crew members - were able to land on the island, where they otherwise may have had to ditch in the ocean. Iwo Jima also provided a staging area where P51 Mustangs could escort the bombers on the final leg of their journey to Japan.
"In all the wars prior to World War II, there was something missing in the conduct of war," Schmidt, who now lives in Bismarck, said. "There was no one to build structures to help with the war effort. That's what we did."
Schmidt, an office worker in the battalion's commander's office, said his unit absorbed pot shots as they built additional airstrips. But the job was worthwhile.
"When it came close to the end of the war, I heard B-29s flying over, some of which couldn't have made it back to Guam,"Schmidt said. "The disabled ones made emergency landings on Iwo."
In two hours and 12 minutes, Eastwood will attempt to capture the importance of a miserably bloody battle and the meaning of a symbol to a nation and to the men who were there.
Meanwhile, some of those men still wonder about the meaning themselves.
Others, like Uhlman, Wood and Schmidt, know the answer. Between them, they have 19 children, 54 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren who grew up in a free country.
And on clear and crisp Saturday mornings, Wally Uhlman can stroll through the peaceful terrain of his home state, knowing he helped keep it that way.
(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@;bismarck tribune.com.)
whitley wrote on Oct 25, 2006 4:46 PM:
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