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By Matthew Chancey
Posted: June 1, 2005
Sixty years ago, a young tobacco farmer from North Carolina found himself on an eight square mile island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He wasn’t there on vacation. In fact, the particular island this young man visited was far from paradise. Iwo Jima was an active sulfur volcano that belched out hot, stinking fumes. Its beaches sported black sands that were worthless for building sand castles and which were heated by sulfur magma deep below the surface. That young tobacco farmer was my grandfather, Marvin Snead, and I recently took him and my eldest son back to Iwo Jima for the sixtieth anniversary of that appalling battle.
Iwo Jima was, as it is still today, a lonely Japanese outpost in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles southeast of Tokyo. This little island was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. In February, 1945, 70,000 Marines landed on this tiny rock in the Pacific. Over 22,000 Japanese soldiers were waiting to greet them.
After more than a month of brutal fighting, the Marines finally secured the island. Almost 7,000 Marines were killed, with another 20,000 wounded. The Japanese were nearly annihilated.
Iwo Jima became an important airbase for the Americans. Thousands of pilots were saved by landing their damaged aircraft on Iwo Jima instead of ditching in the Pacific Ocean. It was during these last few months of the war that my family became connected with Iwo Jima.
In 1940, my grandfather joined the North Carolina National Guard on a fifteen-month commitment. Like many National Guard units at the time, his was mobilized on the eve of the war. Nevertheless, the U.S. stayed out of the war through most of 1941, and my grandfather remembers his commitment coming to an end in early December, 1941. On December 7, he was packing his bags to head home when the news of Pearl Harbor reached his barracks. Without skipping a beat, he took his bags back to his bunk and waited for further orders. He knew he wasn’t going back to his old life on the farm. It would be nearly five years before that would happen.
Since my grandfather had fifteen months of service under his belt, he was a hardened veteran by 1941 standards. He was made into a drill instructor, training raw recruits. At one of the bases where he served, he watched new pilots practicing landing and fell in love with flying. He applied for flight training and was accepted. Flying came naturally to him, and the Army Air Corps decided to keep my grandfather as an instructor. Now he was teaching raw pilots fighter tactics, aerial gunnery, and dog fighting.
In the fall of 1944, my grandfather and his flight instructing buddies were organized into a new fighter squadron attached to the 20th Air Force. The instructors were given brand new P-47N Thunderbolts, an enormous single engine plane with the capability to fly high enough and long enough to cover the B-29 Superfortress bombers making raids over Japan.
Even though the war had raged for three years, my grandfather left the states for the first time in late 1944 — leaving behind a young wife of nineteen and a four-week-old baby boy.
My grandfather’s squadron served on Guam, Tinian, and, finally, Iwo Jima, before the Atomic Bomb ended the war. His last mission from Iwo Jima was flying top-cover over the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay while the surrender papers were being signed. Like most of his fly buddies, he was glad to be heading home.
My grandfather’s military career was far from glamorous. He didn’t shoot down any planes or kill anyone. His role as an instructor kept him stateside for most of the war. Yet he served faithfully in whatever he was asked to do. He didn’t shirk his duty and was relieved when the war ended.
As a grandson, I am the proud beneficiary of this heritage of faithfulness. The little island of Iwo Jima has an important claim on my family and has taught us all a lesson. It shows the sacrifice that is sometimes necessary to protect our freedom. There is little chance that a tobacco farmer in North Carolina would ever voluntarily visit a smelly rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But my grandfather was called to serve, even if that meant flying combat missions off an active volcano.
Walking on the black sand of Iwo Jima brought to my mind the enormous sacrifice of so many young men, who, like my grandfather, simply did what they were asked to do. Some did even more. I met Jack Lucas, who at seventeen years of age jumped on two grenades at Iwo to save his buddies. Miraculously, he survived and became the youngest Medal of Honor recipient in history.
There were many other examples of uncommon valor. But uncommon valor doesn’t win most wars. It certainly highlights and ornaments the character and pride of a people, but it doesn’t win the fight. What wins wars are the countless numbers of participants who simply do their jobs faithfully — ordinary people doing ordinary work (and doing it well). Many of the heroes of Iwo Jima never did anything “heroic.” Some died as soon as they hit the beaches. Some were wounded in the first few minutes and sat out the rest of the war. Some just ploughed through every day, praying they’d see the next.
It was the faithfulness of the common soldiers and civilians doing the grunt work that won World War II. In this sense, they were all heroes.
We live in an age of few heroes — but a lot of celebrities. We are told that, to be somebody, we have to do something exotic like play for the NFL, discover a cure for some disease, or become an important politician. We have to get the glamorous job or drive the fancy cars. Parents want their children to grow up and be doctors or lawyers — maybe even run for office. By this, they will “contribute” to society and do something “really important” with their lives. But did the eighteen-year-old boys on Iwo Jima who died on D-day accomplish anything less important? Were their lives wasted because they never graduated from college, discovered the cure for cancer, or were elected to the U.S. Senate?
There is an old-fashioned word that has fallen out of use in our post-modern world: duty. Duty is synonymous with responsibility, and ours is a generation that does not want to take responsibility for anything except success — even if that success has largely come from the investment of previous generations.
Each of us has a duty to perform. We have a responsibility. It doesn’t matter how unimportant our duty may seem at the time. What’s important is that we perform our duty to the best of our ability. It might not be glamorous work, but it’s how the world has turned for millennia.
For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart. These, Oh God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16-17)
God doesn’t want celebrities. He wants faithful servants. In the same way, children don’t want war heroes for daddies. They simply want Daddy to be Daddy. My grandfather is a hero to me not because he shot down ten Japanese aircraft — he didn’t. He’s not a hero to me because his life work made it on the cover of Time Magazine — it hasn’t. He’s a hero because he persevered in his duty. He was faithful in his duty as a husband. He was faithful in his duty as a father. He was faithful in his duty as a soldier. He was a faithful man.
The Marine Corps’ motto is Semper Fi, meaning “always faithful.” Notice that it does not mean “always successful” or “always a winner.” This is because faithfulness is itself success. When a man is faithful to fulfill his duties to God, family, and country, he obtains the very definition of victory.
General Robert E. Lee was a great man who did great things, yet one of his maxims is appropriate for the most ordinary of ordinary men:
“There is a true glory and a true honor. The glory of duty done; the honor of the integrity of principle.”
Going back to Iwo Jima with my grandfather was not a trip down memory lane. It was not done to “find closure” or anything like that. I took my grandfather back to Iwo Jima to show him my appreciation for what he has done for his family. I wanted him to see that his posterity acknowledges his sacrifice and honors his faithfulness in fulfilling his duties as a faithful man of God.
Our World War II veterans are dying all around us. I doubt if any of the veterans left will be strong enough to participate in the seventieth anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima. The fifth commandment admonishes us to “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Exodus 20:12).
While we still have these men with us, it’s important to honor their testimony and their commitment in risking all to faithfully discharge their duty. We must honor them now, so that our children can see an example of how they should honor their parents. If our children grow up feeling estranged from previous generations, they will forget all the sacrifice that made us a free and prosperous nation, and we will not dwell long in the land God has given us. We might not lose America to foreign conquest, but we are in serious danger of losing her memory — which is far worse.
Before you go, I want to say some things that you should hear.
Eulogies are always given a few days late it seems.
So while you’re with me on this earth I’ll share what’s on my heart,
And leave no words unspoken, though I might try to hide tears.