POWERGRAMS

5 Jasper's Charles Gilliland had a great seat for one of the most famous scenes in American history. But he didn't get to see it for long. The World War II Navy radioman was just below Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945, when six Marines raised the American flag. A Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the moment was used to design the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. "I was sitting on a hill down from them and I glanced up and saw it," Gilliland recalled. "But I didn't get to see it but just for a few seconds. We were in the middle of a battle." Gilliland has an interesting perspective many haven't heard. "It wasn't the first flag they raised on Mt. Suribachi. A Navy corpsman had already put one up." Gilliland, 91, a retired Alabama Power Distribution employee for 41 years, is sitting in his quiet Jasper home on a late summer day. The one-level home he shares with his wife, Jackie, is offset with bright blue shutters. His well-manicured yard looks like a botanical garden. "I'm certainly not the one doing it. Not at 91," Gilliland said, chuckling. "We have some friends who we have kind of adopted as children who come over here and tend to the yard." He saunters over to his large dining room table and starts recollecting what happened more than 70 years ago. "I don't like to talk about a lot of this," he said. "You can't imagine what war is like; the sounds, the smells, the screams. Nobody can scream like somebody in agony." Gilliland was in the thick of things. He was one of the first to spring out of the LCVP (landing craft, vehicle, personnel) boats when they lowered their front-mounted doors down to the water near a beach. Gilliland's job was to rush on the beach, get his radio set up (and dig a foxhole if necessary) and start broadcasting navigational coordinates so cruisers, destroyers and battleships at sea could start shelling Japanese positions, and American Hellcat, Corsair and P-51 planes could drop fiery napalm bombs. The Japanese would, in turn, send planes to strafe Gilliland and his unit on the beach. "You didn't dodge them. You were lucky if you didn't get hit," he said. "You would hear it coming. It made a whistling sound. By the time you heard it, it was too late to duck." Once a foothold was established, Gilliland SALUTING GI LLI L A ND SE RVE D I N THE PACI FIC THEATE R DUR I NG W W I I 'You can't imagine what war is like' The iconic photograph of the flag-raising at the Battle of Iwo Jima. Gilliland served on the USS Belle Grove. Gilliland during the war.

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