Mark Patinkin: The real Iwo Jima

11:51 AM EDT on Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Above, The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

Joseph Narcisi displays the Purple Heart he was awarded for being wounded on Iwo Jima as an 18-year-old Marine. The battle is the subject of a film that explores the iconic image of U.S. Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima , on Feb. 23, 1945.

ap / JOE ROSENTHAL

A Japanese flag, a sword and a Purple Heart certificate are some of Joseph Narcisis souvenirs from the Battle of Iwo Jima. The sword was taken off the body of a dead Japanese officer.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

CRANSTON -- He showed me a photo taken of him 61 years ago after the battle of Iwo Jima . If you look closely, you can see the hole in the front of his helmet, and the jagged exit in the back. Joe Narcisi said the bullet took off a four-inch square piece of his scalp. It creased his skull. By then, all the medics in his unit were dead, and he was unable to go behind the lines for help. There were no lines, really. The Japanese were hiding all around them. The wound soon got infected, but Narcisi had to fight on for 10 days more. That, he said, was Iwo Jima .

Some say that the movie Flags of Our Fathers is to Iwo Jima as Saving Private Ryan was to D-Day. Its a graphic reminder of World War IIs turning point in the Pacific. I had not realized the two battles had similarities. In both, on the first day, 2,500 Americans were killed.

About a dozen living Rhode Islanders are veterans of that fight. I picked one, Joe Narcisi, and asked if he would tell me what it was like.

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I met him at his Cranston home. He is now 80. At the time, early 1945, he was 18.

Narcisi was one of 110,000 Marines who set sail from Hawaii aboard 880 ships, which steamed for over a month to a small volcanic island 2 miles wide by 5 miles long and dotted with mountain peaks. Most of the Marines had never heard of Iwo Jima . But it had three critical airfields the Allies needed to launch attacks on the Japanese mainland. A foothold there was deemed as important as the foothold at Normandy .

Feb. 19th was D-day. At 8:30 a.m., Narcisi climbed down webbing from his big transport ship into a landing craft. He hunched down with 30 other Marines as dozens of landing craft powered toward the beach on the first of many deliveries. Japanese shells began to come down around them. Some were direct hits. Each Marine was carrying over 100 pounds of equipment and many who were blown into the water sank instantly.

Narcisi was carrying a Browning automatic rifle, 25 hand grenades and 200 rounds of ammunition. As he ran onto the black ash beach, his boots sank up to the ankles. It happened to everyone. It was like running through quicksand. Jeeps were stuck up to their axles within a few minutes of coming ashore.

Mostly, Narcisi remembers the bodies. Already, there were hundreds of dead. Marines stumbled over them as they tried to move forward. A few of the bodies were intact, but most were in pieces, having been blown apart by shells or land mines. Narcisi still vividly remembers seeing severed heads. Everyone knew they might trigger a mine at any moment, but had no choice but to push forward.

Every step, Narcisi says, your heart was in your throat.

Unlike Normandy , there was no visible line of enemy defenses, just hidden artillery and 21,000 Japanese soldiers in holes and tunnels they had been digging for months in the jagged landscape. Rifles did little to root them out. The Americans, says Narcisi, began to rely more on flamethrowers and hand grenades.

Midafternoon of the first day, the enemy stepped up its barrage. It was as if they were waiting for enough Americans to be ashore for maximum impact. The island, recalls Narcisi, literally shook.

Soon, his ear grew tuned to the sound of incoming shells. Those that came close were like a screech. If one landed near a group of Marines, a dozen more shells followed. It made the Americans realize that unseen spotters were watching them all the time.

Since it was open terrain, the best protection was in holes gouged by explosions. Whenever Narcisi heard incoming fire, hed flatten into one. If even a small part of you was above surface level, he says, the shrapnel would rip into you.

Once, he heard an unusual shrapnel sound and hit the ground. A radio man nearby was unaware of it and remained standing. Suddenly, a long piece of metal spun by like a propeller blade and sliced the radio man in half at the torso. Narcisi still remembers seeing the mans lower body crumple to the ground, and blood coming out of arteries.

The Marines fought their way up Mount Suribachi and, on the fourth day, raised the flag in the moment captured in the famous photograph. Narcisi wasnt far away and caught a brief glimpse. But most Marines had to be so constantly on guard that the flag seemed an incidental moment.

Today, he finds that many Americans think the flag raising marked the end of the battle. Even the new film, Narcisi says, implied as much. He saw the movie with fellow veterans, and liked it, but feels it didnt capture the whole Iwo Jima battle.

After the flag raising, he told me, the fight was only beginning.

The Americans knew the enemy was there to resist to the death, and history records that just about all 21,000 Japanese defenders did. It would not be over until the whole island was captured a yard at a time. That would take another month.

Narcisi and his unit, or what was left of it, pushed on.

Every day, he says, we learned there was a new way to die.

At one point, his unit came under heavy shelling for 20 minutes.

We thought this was it, he says. I would have bet everything I had I was never going to get out of that place alive. Then the barrage fell silent. Hed made it. As he stood, he saw three Marines lying face down in a shell hole. There wasnt a mark on them; they just seemed to want to stay dug in.

You guys, lets go, Narcisi said. Then he looked closer. They were dead. Shrapnel had missed them, but a shell had exploded so close the blast wave destroyed their insides.

Staying supplied was a constant problem. The priority was ammunition, so they were often short on food. Marines like Narcisi had to take water from fallen comrades.

In a way, he says today, they kept us alive.

One day, the men in Narcisis unit were moving, as they usually did, 20 feet apart to keep from being targeted as a group. Suddenly he heard a noise. He began to turn, having learned to react before he got a full look. His peripheral vision told him something wasnt right and he began firing. The bullets hit a Japanese soldier in the face. The attacker was only feet away from Narcisi and ready to stab him in the back with a bayonet. The enemy, he explains, often used bayonets instead of bullets so they could then sneak up on the rest of a squad.

It was routine to pass by camouflaged holes and be attacked from behind. It was also routine for dead Japanese to suddenly sit up and start shooting. It happened a few times, says Narcisi. It didnt happen anymore. They bayoneted every enemy body to make sure, avoiding the use of bullets so as not to draw the attention of snipers.

The days were broiling hot and there was little escape from the sun. Sometimes, Marines like Narcisi spent hours baking in open shell holes while the enemy had them pinned down.

Nights were worse. They would lie in foxholes that radiated heat from underground volcanic activity, staying awake so they could hear the sound of the enemy creeping toward them. But they couldnt use lights or even fire their guns or theyd reveal their position. If they heard something nearby, theyd toss a hand grenade that way. On the worst nights, dozens of grenades would be tossed from various foxholes at sounds sometimes only yards away. They would hear cries after the explosions. When light came up in the morning, they would see Japanese lying about, some still alive. The Marines would go up to each and end it. Narcisi never heard of a single enemy soldier who surrendered.

He was on his stomach one day, crawling to see what lay over a sight line. The island was like that you often couldnt see more than a few yards ahead and had to keep peeking over things.

This time, a sniper was waiting. Narcisi does not recall hearing a gunshot. Instead, it was as if someone struck the top of his forehead with a hot poker. He briefly blacked out. When he came to, his face felt sticky. He realized blood was streaming down from his head. The bullet went through his helmet and took part of his scalp off. He only had a little water in his canteen. He decided to keep it for drinking instead of washing the wound.

Finally, after 36 days, they took the island. Almost 7,000 Americans were killed in the fight, 33 from Rhode Island .

I had talked with Narcisi for over an hour. He said he was only concerned about one thing.

This storys not about just me, he said. Its about every Marine and soldier who was on that island. We all went through the same thing.

His wife, Gilda, and daughter, Diane, had been listening from nearby. They said that many of these stories were new to them. Almost none of the Iwo Jima veterans, they said, go out of their way to talk about it.

I watched as both put a hand on Joe Narcisis shoulders.

His eyes were far away.

Such demands made of men so young.

Bless him.

Brooke