Flags of Our Fathers (39 page)

BOOK: Flags of Our Fathers

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As Ira would write, in wonderment, in a letter to his parents: “It’s funny what a picture can do.”

The first day of their official “heroism” began early and accelerated rapidly. Up the White House stairs, past the saluting guards, down the historic halls lined with applauding government employees, and into the Oval Office at 9:15
A.M.
sharp. The new President already had risen from his desk to welcome them.

“I was very nervous before going in to meet the Commander in Chief,” John told the
Boston Globe
afterward. “But after I got in, I felt no different than going into an office in my own hometown to meet a local businessman.”

The boys presented Mr. Truman with the “first” copy of the official Bond Tour poster in a gold frame. Truman, smiling, asked the boys to point themselves out on the poster as photographers clicked off photo after photo—front-page news for the next day and publicity beyond value for the Seventh Bond Tour. The President thanked them for the important duty they were about to perform for their country. He grasped John’s hand and then Rene’s, calling them heroes. Then he turned to Ira and said, “You are a true American because you are an American Indian. And now, son, you are a true American hero.”

Next on their itinerary was the U.S. Senate. Senator A. B. “Happy” Chandler of Kentucky informed his colleagues that the heroes of “one of the great pictures of American history” waited outside the chamber: “I ask unanimous consent that the three young men be escorted into the Senate Chamber so that they may be honored.” The boys trooped in, the Senate stood in recess, and its august members rose and applauded, then lined up and jostled like so many Cub Scouts to meet John, Rene, and Ira. In the midst of these high good feelings, Ira Hayes briefly revealed his unvarnished side—the self-conscious outsider who could never quite learn to disguise his honest bluntness.

A Senator from a Western state hurried up to him, hand outstretched, babbling on in what he apparently believed to be the authentic Pima tongue. Ira stared stonily at him for a moment, then inquired, with a terrible directness, “What do you want?”

The moment passed, and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn swept the boys toward a luncheon in their honor at the Capitol.

That evening, Rayburn escorted them to Griffith Stadium for the Washington Senators’ season-opener against the Yankees. Spectators’ eyes turned to the three uniformed young men, one of them on crutches, as they settled into choice box seats not far from home plate.

The Speaker threw out the first ball. Then, before the first batter stepped in, a spotlight bathed the three boys in a silvery glow as the public-address announcer’s words echoed around the stadium:

“Ladies and gentlemen! You’ve all seen pictures of six Americans raising our flag on Iwo Jima! Three of them survive! These are the three—Marine Private Gagnon, Marine Private Hayes, and Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class Bradley!”

Some 24,000 fans rose and gave the boys an ovation.

As the three survivors came to terms with their unreal celebrity life, in Weslaco the Blocks were finally coming to terms with Harlon’s very real death. Belle had finally admitted to herself that Harlon wouldn’t come back. But she was as insistent about Harlon’s rightful place in The Photograph as Ira was desirous of escaping his.

Belle’s husband was imprisoned inside his stoic German grief. Harlon and Ed Sr. had become friends in the year they drove those oil trucks together. And Ed had lived vicariously through Harlon’s exploits on the football field.

Ed didn’t cry, didn’t express his grief in words. But a friend of his son Corky, Dale Collins, remembered noticing a sign of the pain Ed kept inside:

“In church there was a table in front with little U.S. flags representing the boys of the congregation that had gone off to war. If they were killed they got a gold flag. I’ll never forget that Mr. Block would sit in a far right pew, positioned so he couldn’t see Harlon’s flag.”

But life had to go on: the lives of the survivors, the life of the nation. The grieving Ed Block could never have imagined the great burden that Harlon’s three comrades carried with them as they prepared for the marathon of the Seventh Bond Tour. Quite likely, the boys themselves did not fully imagine it.

But others did. At the end of the boys’ meeting with Harry Truman, Treasury Secretary Morgenthau lingered with the new President—just long enough to present him with some dire numbers. The war had now devoured $88 billion out of a fiscal year budget of $99 billion. But government revenue receipts totaled only $46 billion.

It was critical that the Seventh Bond Tour bring in some big numbers.

Photo Insert 3

The posed “gung ho” shot, under the replacement flag. Ira Hayes is seated at the far left; Franklin Sousley is fourth from left, raised rifle in hand; Mike Strank is in front of Sousley, thumbs in pocket; and Doc Bradley is in shadow, to Strank’s left.

Left: Oval Office, April 20, 1945. Doc Bradley, Harry Truman, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes with the Seventh Bond Tour poster. Below: Iwo Jima three-cent stamp, issued July 11, 1945. More than 150 million were sold.

A smoke before raising the flag for 50,000 fans in Soldier Field, Chicago, May 20, 1945. From left to right: Ira Hayes, Jack Bradley, and Rene Gagnon.

Doc Bradley raises the flag as Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes look on in Times Square, New York City, May 11, 1945.

Wall Street, May 15, 1945. The flagraisers with the “Gold Star” mothers. From left to right: Madeline Evelley (mother of the misidentified Hank Hansen), Goldie Price (Franklin Sousley’s mother), Martha Strank (Mike Strank’s mother), Rene Gagnon, Doc Bradley, Ira Hayes, Emil Schram (president, New York Stock Exchange).