Alan Wood dies at 90
Several of you have sent us the link to the sad news that Alan Wood, the man who provided the flag for the iconic raising on Iwo Jima has passed on ahead April 18, 2013;
Wood happened to have a 37-square-foot flag he had found months before in a Pearl Harbor Navy depot.
Five Marines and a Navy Corpsman later raised that flag in a stirring moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.
Steven Wood says his father was always humbled by his small role in the historic moment.
In a 1945 letter to a Marine general who asked for details about the flag, Wood wrote: “The fact that there were men among us who were able to face a situation like Iwo where human life is so cheap, is something to make humble those of us who were so very fortunate not to be called upon to endure such hell.”
Category: Blue Skies
Little things are more important than we think.
Rest in peace, Alan Wood.
RIP. He certainly deserves better than to be sandwiched in between the two specimens of humanity posted before and after him here…
“Wood had recovered the famous Iwo Jima flag from a salvage depot at Pearl Harbor, and brought it aboard the Navy vessel LST-779, where he was a communications officer, according to the Pasadena Star News. His ship was among some 450 that had amassed for the 1945 US assault on the key Pacific island.”
Here is the full article for those who like to learn when they don’t know (like me): http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/0427/Alan-Wood-dies-leaves-legacy-of-Iwo-Jima-flag
RIP
These types of stories always amaze the hell out of me. He picks up a flag at Pearl–for reasons unknown– and it later becomes the single most impotant display of Old Glory in the history of the USMC.
Rest in peace.