Why make war, why not settle our differences peacefully?
mstrywmn asked the question:
A Tale of Six Boys
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.
As 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.”
(James Bradley 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 has since passed away
He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up and I videotaped
him as he spoke to us.
I 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, D.C, 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 that 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.
(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.
Boys 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 walked 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 died
dead drunk, face down 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. The 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, 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 caregiver. In
Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died in
Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed in 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
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 freedom.
Remember to pray praises for this great country of ours and also pray for
those still in murderous unrest around the world.
STOP and thank God for being alive and being free at someone else’s
sacrifice.
God Bless You and God Bless America.
REMINDER: Everyday that you can wake up free, it’s going to be a great day.
Great story - worth your time Please pass it along
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Filed Under Military |
Tagged With Brave Soldiers, Cheese Head, Cheese Heads
Comments
16 Responses to “Why make war, why not settle our differences peacefully?”
We tried peace, it doesn’t work with some people
Radical Islamists for example, violence is the only language they understand
Peace doesn’t seem to work when another country attacks you.
War is big business, and good for the contractors, Haliburton Cheney, Carlyle Group Bush.
Terrorists want us “infidel” Westerners dead. All of us. They will settle for nothing less. They only want peace after we’re wiped from the face of the earth. We have no choice but to fight them like our forefathers fought our enemies in the past.
God Bless America and those who have served to earn our freedom!
How do you sit down and talk to people who teach uneducated people to pack their cars with explosives and who strap bombs to children?
Get out of your fantasy world and realize that you are not safe. Understand that there are people in this world who want Americans dead simply because we have different social values and because we attempt to treat women and minorities with equality and because we have the right to choose our god.
“Good people sleep peacefully in their beds only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” - George Orwell
that was a very touching story…..
peace is not as profitable as war…of course we’ve never really tried peace, we like to flaunt our muscles when there is no reason to do so…war will never result in peace.
That would work if both sides were interested in what is actually good for EVERYONE, not just their side. You bring up God. I would like to remind you that if you are talking about a Jewish concept of God, a Christian concept of God, or an Islamic concept of God, there is such a thing as a “Just War”. Sometimes evil must be confronted and destroyed. Evil by its very definition is NOT looking out for the best interests of all sides, merely its own side. Evil such as Hitler could not be made peace with. It was tried, and millions died under lands that had been given to Hitler trying to make him happy. The same was true with Japan. They could not be negotiated with for peace. Even if none of the conspiracy theories surrounding Pearl Harbor are true, Japan was clearly unwilling to exist with the US. They had every intention of taking all of the Pacific, and then moving on to the US mainland. What the Japanese did in China, Korea, and the Philippine Islands clearly showed they wanted nothing more than an empire at anyone’s expense.
If a nation is bent on taking you over and subjugating you, there is no way to make them stop without showing that you are more willing to not be subjugated.
As long as there are those that wish to steal our freedom we will have Marines who are willing to give all so we can continue to share our opinions in a free society.
S/F for my friends in C.A.P. Ba
Do you think it would have worked back in the seventeen hundreds, if we sent a letter to England saying, ” Please don’t tax us so much “, that it would have prevented war ?
When creeps trained and financed by Saddam bombed the Twin Towers, we could have said, ” That was nasty, please don’t do it again “.
War could have been prevented, but at what price ?
Everyone is not peaceful.
Because if we stop, everyone else will still fight and we will be over run and shoved into war again. People are stupid, even psychotic at times. There is no way to stop war, only to prevent it. These are bad times.
the cost of freedom is the fight for it … if people offer kids lazinessness and ingnorance and nudity and profanity and market share and tax money and armor and weapons and alcohol and parades, instead of spankings without fair trials: the world will become an intolerable place … people were not meant to dance get well soon bouquet group songs all over the front pages and the trails, they were put here by the gods to dance get sick soon bomb group songs in honor of ethics and peace and prosperity and huvanity … hiking naked and dancing dressed, dancing naked and hiking dressed, hiking dressed and dancing dressed, dancing naked and hiking naked: it’s all disgusting and should not be allowed … without caution and perseverance: the bleeding hearts who’ve no guns or scruples will plaster all the telephones with free food buttons and free medicine buttons and rewire all the free dare and free shock and awe buttons to some lonely s & m department at some porn studio … why war instead of peace? because death and tax and dress and strip and shock and awe and dare and drug and cuff and cage and rough and stuff and freak and famine and spank and nuke and stick and stone and rant and rave and cop and troop and rage and slave is just plain sensible, cute, smart, funny, and everlasting … nobody wants to hold hands and weave bouquets and song dance skit kit get well soon, you are here, and why why why and recycle garbage and garden into educational props with accents, dances with jingles, arts and crafts, and knicks and knacks, and nobody wants to hikenswim and nerfbus and bumpcar and camp and nap the spore bloom weed dragon trail fickle first aid lunch farm cottage studio trails dotted with homed sheltets, speckled with drip compost fertilizet and drip water irrigatet, and decorated with folk playing zero resistance tai chi aikido yogaerobic inkblot sport and puzzle for life and lunch the musical epic quest to cure the common death, and the wondet supet flora poet ballot ballet bowl, and the lusty forge your own epic karaoke little boy and little girl feed the world veggie taco and veggie tea party with free food and free medicine for each and all forever and ever more … that’s just silly … no one would ever feed the world without first investing all money in those who make everyone pay for lunch and noone would ever end slavery without first investing all votes in those who tax everyone at gunpoint
Peace is a great concept unfortunately Mikey in Iran wants to be the guy who brings about the end of the world. The way for him to accomplish this is simple kill all Americans. How do you make peace with someone like that? Commit suicide and make it easy for him?
I do not think so!
Those who have been in these God forsaken situations know that in those circumstances your not a hero fighting for glory, your a scared young man fighting for your life, and the life of your friends. It’s a great story and if every one read it there might be less war.
Remember this, for all of of you have nothing good to say about out Military. No one wants peace more than the ones who protect it.
Freedom is not Free. There are far too many in our country today that do not understand that. Those serving in our military understand, that is why they are there.
God Bless them and God Bless the USA
War is a definite waste of human lives, human suffering, and human accomplishment. War is costly, not only in the money spent, but in what it does to those who fight it and those who flee from it. War destroys civilizations, culture, art, literature, all the things that are noble to mankind. War is the worst thing in the world, except one; the only thing worse than fighting a war is losing one.
I doubt that many of the adversaries the US has faced in its history would be as kind to us as we were to them if we had lost.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Japanese in World War 2 would have defeated us and made the world a Heaven on Earth. Maybe the Germans would have brought us the greatest civilization the world has ever known. I seriously doubt it, but we’ll never know.
One thing that I do know is that we would have to live our lives THEIR way. We would have to follow THEIR rules. We would have to learn THEIR language. As you read about life in conquered territories or, in this modern world, about life under the Taliban, I think you should ask yourself, is that the life that you want to live?
If that’s what you want, if that’s what you don’t mind, then we can certainly lay down our arms and never have anyone die in battle again. They’d be too busy getting their heads chopped off in bad-guy concentration camps.