Six Boys And Thirteen Hands…

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 fromNew Hamfont-size: 10pt;”>

‘The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from 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 freedom…please
pray for our troops.

Remember to pray praises for this great country of ours and also …please
pray for our troops still in murderous places around the world.

STOP and thank God for being alive and being free due to 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.

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 simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God.

Great story – worth your time – worth every American’s time. Please pass it
on.