[The following takes place during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.]
Contact with the enemy was negligible, except in the case of one Marine from the 3rd Platoon, a blacksmith’s son and bona fide eccentric from Montana named Don Ruhl. Ruhl had become something of the company oddball during training; he hated wearing a helmet, lectured his buddies that brushing one’s teeth only wears them down, and made no secret that he’d had enough training; he was ready to fight.
On D-Day, Ruhl had shown everyone that he was not kidding. Spotting a cluster of eight Japanese who were fleeing their blown-up blockhouse, the boy charged them by himself, killing one with a bullet and another with a bayonet thrust.
Now, at around eleven-thirty of D+ 1, Ruhl came loping up to Easy Company’s First Sergeant, John Daskalakis, with an equally reckless notion: A Marine lay wounded about forty yards forward of Easy’s position, and Ruhl wanted permission to bring him in. Several other Marines and corpsmen had already tried this, and were driven off, many with wounds, by machine-gun fire. Sergeant Daskalakis pointed this out to Ruhl and then told him to go ahead. “He jumped out of the tank trap we were in,” Daskalakis recalled, “ran through a tremendous volley of mortar and machine-gun fire, and made it to the wounded man’s side. Then he half-dragged and half-carried him back.” Ruhl rounded up an assistant and a stretcher and bore the man off, again through heavy fire, to the Battalion Aid station three hundred yards away. Then he sprinted back to the platoon and took his place again.
Source:
Bradley, James, and Ron Powers. “D-Day Plus One.” Flags of Our Fathers. Bantam Dell, a Division of Random House, Inc., 2006. 173-74. Print.
If you enjoy this type of content, please consider donating to my Patreon!
No comments, yet...