THIS...

Google images had these.

There are actually quite a few real color photo collections from the battle. I find the Iwo battle amazing because it was such a panoramic spectacle played out in clear weather, almost the entire battlefield could be observed, which is extremely rare.

A young Naval officer on an LST took some fantastic color photos of the battle. I remember seeing them a few years ago...I'll try to locate them again.
 
It's almost impossible to comprehend the scale: some 5,000 Americans, 20,000 Japanese dead on a rock only a few miles long over the course of just 29 days. Even if the US suffered 200-300 KIAs a month during the worst months of the Vietnam War, it was nothing compared to this.

A few of my Regimental and Division-level senior officers had been young platoon and company commanders at this battle.
 
5 miles long that rock is.

There is a docent at the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Frank Matthews, who was a Marine at Iwo (well, he was in many of the campaigns). He talked with us for hours. I told him he needed to write his memoirs. He told me, no one wants to listen to an old man's stories. I have a pic of my kids with him.
 
I have an envelope of black volcanic sand from Beach Yellow One. It was sent to me from an old friend who passed away a few years ago, "Poppa" Gene Gustad. Gene landed on Iwo with the 5th MARDIV...and back in 2006, a few years before he died, he had a chance to return to the island. He even raised a flag on Iwo:

gene gustad letter.jpeg


VA 27 333 copy 2.jpeg
 
@Gunz , your post reminded me of a story from a few years back, probably 20 years or so. I was at a Marine reunion representing my father, and I was listening to some of the Marines talking. One of them was talking about how an Iwo veteran was wearing a jacket with the chevrons, and some punk called him a liar because the chevrons didn't have the crossed swords. The story goes that some other Marines tore him a new a-hole, gave him a history lesson about Marines and World War II, and the change of insignia in the 50s. That Iwo Jima Marine if I recall was with the 5th Marine division.
 
That sand soaked up a lot of sacred Marine blood. So Poppa Gene gathered up a quart jar of it and carried it with him on the plane. And when he got home he made up a bunch of little packets of sand and printed out his letter of authenticity and the picture of himself on Suribachi. Then he sent out the packets to all his friends, most of us younger Marine/Corpsmen from the Vietnam era.
 
Gunz said:
It's almost impossible to comprehend the scale: some 5,000 Americans, 20,000 Japanese dead on a rock only a few miles long over the course of just 29 days. Even if the US suffered 200-300 KIAs a month during the worst months of the Vietnam War, it was nothing compared to this.
Click to expand...
Placing some additional context to this. The American casualty total in this one month of battle easily eclipses the U.S. casualty total for the nearly 20 years we've been at war in Afghanistan.

We can't even comprehend that with our cushy daily lives. The Greatest Generation? Hell yeah.
 
Blizzard said:
Placing some additional context to this. The American casualty total in this one month of battle easily eclipses the U.S. casualty total for the nearly 20 years we've been at war in Afghanistan.

We can't even comprehend that with our cushy daily lives. The Greatest Generation? Hell yeah.
Click to expand...

I like context; I also like scale. The battle of Antietam saw 23,000 killed and wounded in a single day. Almost a third of the totality of American losses in Vietnam, in a single day. Staggering.
 

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