Memories of Iwo Jima remain vivid for local veteran
From the Plainview Daily Herald 11/07/2006
By CRAIG CUMMINGS, Herald Staff Writer
With Veterans Day just around the corner, the nation is preparing to remember the sacrifices made and the lives lost in its defense.
For local World War II veteran R.C. Hyde, his memories of the historic battle of Iwo Jima remain clear.
The battle of Iwo Jima — currently featured on the silver screen in the recently-released movie “Flags of our Fathers” directed by Clint Eastwood and memorialized by the famous Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Joe Rosenthal — remains at the top of the list of the most hard-fought and deadly battles in history.
“Flags of our Fathers” is not showing locally but is currently playing at both Cinemark Movies 16 and Tinseltown USA theaters in Lubbock.
Hyde, 81, who retired after 36 years as service manager from Maggard-Nall Motor Co. here, said he has not yet watched the movie, but has plans to soon in order to see if it truly is accurate to the actual events that he witnessed first-hand as a Marine in the famous 5th division at Iwo Jima.
“I went into the service in June of ’44 and came home in March of ’46,” Hyde said. “Of course, I had a lot of things happen in between those dates.
“We hit Iwo Jima on Feb. 19 of ’45, and I was on the island for about 33 days and they secured it after I got hit.”
Hyde was injured on the morning of the 33rd day of the 36-day campaign, sustaining a gunshot wound that went completely through his hip.
“We were being pinned down constantly. We were trying to secure three different airfields,” Hyde recalled. “We were up on the third airfield trying to secure it when we got pinned down that morning.”
We knew where the snipers were at but we couldn’t get behind them. They were behind a big wall of rocks and had a hole about the size of a can shooting through it, and the only way we could find where they were at was from the flash from the guns.
“During training while I was in California, they kept telling us that all of the Japanese wore glasses and couldn’t see very good anyhow,” Hyde related. “But they were expert riflemen. If they sighted in and got a bead on you, they would either catch you right between the eyes or catch you in the back and shoot you in the heart.”
Hyde said he was carrying a walkie-talkie that day and the enemy had been trying to shoot the antenna off of it all morning as he struggled to work his way in behind the enemy.
“I had a bag full of hand grenades, and Phil out of Hawaii, he was a baseball pitcher, and he had an arm on him that wouldn’t quit. So what I was doing was taking the hand grenade and pulling the pin and letting the spoon fly off and pitching it down to him and then he would throw it,” Hyde said. “And that’s what we were doing when I got hit.”
Hyde said what actually hit him was a ricochet off one of the rocks that went through his jungle kit and into his hip, coming out the other side of his hip and through his canteen. The bullet went completely through him and luckily missed any bones or vital organs.
Hyde was one of only three men left of his original 42-man platoon at the time he was wounded. He was shipped out that evening to Guam on a DC-10 airplane for 10 days before being loaded aboard a British-manned American aircraft carrier bound for Pearl Harbor.
The capture of the volcanic island of Iwo Jima was considered vital by the U.S. military in establishing a key location for a base from which to mount bombing runs against the Japanese mainland.
Three days of bombardment by B-29 bombers across the island — the longest sustained aerial offensive of the war — was meant to clear the way for the ground troops to go in and overtake the island, which was determined by reconnaissance to be relatively unmanned.
What was not known was that the Japanese had built several miles of fortified tunnels below the island, and that some 21,000 Japanese soldiers had ridden out the bombardment underground.
In fact, the Japanese soldiers fought most of the battle from inside underground “pillboxes,” popping up to shoot at American soldiers after they passed overhead or from machine gun posts high above on the volcanic Mount Sirabachi.
The United States eventually brought a total of 110,000 troops to the table who had sailed out from Hawaii in a convoy containing 880 ships.
Hyde and his Marine division went in with the fifth wave during the initial day of the invasion.
“I watch the reports about what is going on right now (in Iraq) and they talk about the numbers of casualties and things like that, and no casualties are ever good, but we lost about 4,000 guys there just on that first day.”
Hyde was present to witness the moment when the famous Rosenthal photograph was taken.
“I was about 50 yards from where this flag went up, right below it,” recalled Hyde. “In fact, a little one went up first. That one was shot down by the Japanese and then the big one was put up.”
Hyde recalled the famous event actually took place early in the campaign, shortly after the first airfield was cleared. It was weeks more of some of the heaviest ground fighting of the war before the entire island was considered secured.
Hyde gave another account that occurred on the 16th day he was there where he found himself pinned down flat on his stomach while Japanese sniper bullets whizzed above him for several hours. Finally, after night fell, he was able to crawl away and make his way back behind friendly lines.
Hyde recounted several more harrowing stories that occurred during his involvement at the battle of Iwo Jima.
“I look back now and I give all the praise and glory to the Lord for helping bring me through those different segments of it.”
Hyde said he is anxious to watch the movie “Flags of our Fathers.”
“I’d like to see it because . . . old Eastwood . . . may have all the info that he really needed to do a show like that,” Hyde said. “I’m always interested in what their theory is and their idea of what really did happen and if they are telling it like it is. And they’ve told so many different tales about the flag raising.”
Hyde shared his eyewitness account of the event.
“My squad was supposed to go up there and try to protect the guys that were going up to put the flag up, so they (the Japanese) wouldn’t back-shoot them,” Hyde recalled. “And we were trying to keep our backs up against the wall, what little wall we had so we wouldn’t get shot, too, and yet we’d see any movement in between.
“And everything was real quiet. And they told all different kinds of stories. They told how many got killed going up there and so forth, and there wasn’t. “In fact, I don’t remember when the flag was going up itself there was even a shot fired up there by the flag.
“Those are the things that mean more to me, you know. If they tell it like it is and if it’s the way it is supposed to be, because if it’s not then it’s just talk.”
Hyde and his wife, Virginia, have four children: Rosemary Brown of Lubbock, Judy Isbell of Amarillo, Vickie Hyde of Quanah and Rick Hyde, who is serving as a missionary in Israel.
is the motto of the Corps. That Marines have lived up to this motto is proved by the fact that there has never been a mutiny, or even the thought of one, among U.S. Marines.
