alexpgp | Today's just a day to note the passage of time, apparently...

Today also happens to be the 56th anniversary of the invasion, by U.S. Marines, of Iwo Jima. In 36 days of desperate fighting, there were 25,851 US casualties; of these, 6,825 were killed in action. Virtually all of the 22,000 Japanese troops on the island perished.

The photo above has been described as the most reproduced photograph in the history of photography. I don't know about that, but the image is particular indelible in the mind of anyone who has worn the Marine uniform.

The image shows actually not the first, but the second flag-raising atop Mt. Suribachi. The photographer was Joe Rosenthal, who worked for the Associated Press. Of the six men in the photo (two are "in the back row" and are not very visible), three would die on Iwo Jima soon after the photograph was taken.

It is fashionable, in these enlightened times, to consider all participants in a war equally guilty of moral shortcoming. "War doesn't determine who's right," proclaims the e-mail signature of one of my correspondents, "only who's left." Sentiments such as that would have earned him a knuckle sandwich, at the very least, back in the early 40s.

Then again, being the one "left" is not a bad thing, either. Semper fidelis.

Cheers...