Sands Of Iwo Jima Quotes

The average life of a machine gunner in action was in the six- to twenty-minute range. Open fire with a machine gun and the entire Japanese defenses in that area would focus their attention on shortening your life span.

As anyone who has ever walked the red carpet will tell you, it is a crowded and chaotic affair, the most important rule of which is to keep things moving. In spite of this, for a few minutes, as Chuck recounted his story of heroism and loss, reliving every moment, the red carpet at the Chinese Theatre ground to a halt. Nobody asked us to move. Nobody interrupted. Everybody waited. Even the Hollywood PR machine knew to pay the moment and the man the proper respect.

While so much of what we portrayed in The Pacific reflects everything that young men stand to lose in times of war, Red Blood, Black Sand shows us what it is possible for them to retain. The boy who pestered his mother to join the Marines is still with us, and we are better for it. Chuck: For your heroism, your service to your country, and for your personal friendship, I will always be grateful. Semper Fi Semper, Your friend, Ben

It was February 19, 1945. The amphibious assault on Iwo Jima was beginning and I was eighteen years old.

Survivors like me have a responsibility to pass on to the next generation an account of what is required to defeat our enemies until the days when war is no more.

When the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I had to fight back tears of pride. I have never been so proud of myself and my country, before or since. We were no longer boots; we were authentic United States Marines.

December 1944. The last Christmas for too many young boys. Then off for the forty-day sail to Iwo Jima. The boys of Spearhead had been expertly trained for ten months. They were proficient in the techniques of war. But more important, they were a team, ready to fight for one another. These boys were bonded by feelings stronger than they would have for any other humans in their life. The vast, specialized city of men — boys, really, but a functioning society of experts now, trained and coordinated and interdependent and ready for its mission — will move out upon the Pacific. Behind them, in safe America, Bing Crosby sang of a white Christmas, just like the ones he used to know. Ahead lay a hot island of black sand, where many of them would ensure a long future of Christmases in America by laying down their lives.