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Friday, May 29, 2020

#995 – THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA – Drive-By Truckers – 2/23/2020

On this day 75 years ago, the U.S. Marines’ invasion of Iwo Jima reached and secured 550-foot Mount Suribachi. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, recorded the raising of the Stars & Stripes, which showed five Marines and one Navy corpsman struggling to hoist the heavy flag pole. The picture became the most reproduced photograph in history and won Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize.

This song is a tribute to Patterson Hood’s grandfather’s call to duty in 1941, the same call my Dad and so many others heard and heeded in those dark days long ago. Although Hollywood sometimes glosses over the tremendous cost of war, the true cost is felt by the men & women who answered the call and are often reticent to speak of it in terms of glory, only pain.

If they speak of it at all.


2004 

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