Editor’s note: A review of the current film, “Flags of Our Fathers,” which ran in the Tuesday edition of The News Courier, stated that World War II Marine veteran Jesse Earl Long is Limestone County’s only “known” survivor of the Battle of Iwo Jima. However, this week we have been contacted by several U.S. Navy veterans who have told us they also participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima in late February 1945. In an armada of 800 ships amassed for the invasion, it is possible that more Limestone Countians were involved.



W.A. Hardiman

W.A. Hardiman, 82, of Limestone County was just 20 when his ship, the U.S.S. Pittsburgh, sailed to the Japanese black volcanic island of Iwo Jima. Their job: soften up the Japanese stronghold before 30,000 Marines landed.

“We bombarded them day and night,” said Hardiman, a former city of Athens firefighter. “Some of us were geared up for a landing, but when we got ready to go, they didn’t need us. We were relieved. They were killing everything on the island.”

The Pittsburgh several months later was severely damaged in a typhoon. Hardiman got out of the Navy in May 1946 and worked at a service station for a time before going to work for a contractor that provided guard services for NASA. When he left that job he worked for a time for Automatic Electric and then got hired as a firefighter by the city of Athens. He retired from the fire department in 1989.



Marvin Smith

William “Marvin” Smith was a 21-year-old aboard the U.S.S. Biloxi off the coast of Iwo Jima. He had been in the U.S. Navy nearly two years at that time, dropping out of high school to enlist in April 1943. He married his high school sweetheart, Annie Ruth, while home on furlough.

“We were off the island and shelled it before the Marines went in,” said Smith. “We even shelled it while the they were going ashore.”

Smith was discharged on Dec. 7, 1945, and farmed for a few years. Then he left for Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked for Ford Motor Co. for several years before returning to Decatur and going to work for Worthington Air-Conditioning. He retired from Goodyear in Decatur.



Robert Lindner

Robert Lindner joined the Navy on Nov. 5, 1942, one day after he turned 17.

Lindner was assigned to the U.S.S. Capps, a 21-ton destroyer that saw service in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theatres. Baltimore native Lindner, the son of a brewery worker, became a Machinist Mate 2nd Class at 17 1/2Lindner lost hearing in one ear from a misfiring accident of the U.S.S. Capps’ 5-inch guns during the shelling of Iwo Jima.

The Capps had five guns—two in front, and three in back. The front guns worked in synchronization, one firing then the other but never together, said Lindner.

Lindner’s job was to gather spent cartridges off the deck so they didn’t get jammed under gun turrets when they swung around.

“Both of the front guns went off at the same time and he concussion knocked me 30 feet,” he said. “The boson grabbed me or I would have gone into the drink.”

The vibration of both of the big guns firing simultaneously had blown open a hatch that had also struck Lindner in the head, contributing to his hearing loss.