This personal account by Alvin B. Orsland of the fighting on Iwo Jima originally appeared in the November 2006 issue of Armchair General magazine. We reproduce it here to supplement the stories of other Marines whose World War II experiences will be the focus of The Pacific, an HBO miniseries that premiers March 14.

I’ll never forget a major who was speaking to us midway through our US Marine Corps basic training in California in the summer of 1944 saying. “You might think this is child’s play, but you better be prepared because it won’t be many months and you’ll be over there doing the real thing.” We all laughed at that. A few months later, we found ourselves in “the real thing” on Iwo Jima and the laughing stopped.

I was 18 when I enlisted in the Marines on June 15, 1944, two weeks after graduating from high school. Earlier, a whole group from our football team went to Seattle and saw the movie Tarawa [the Marine Corps documentary on the bloody 1943 invasion]. Oh boy, we were “gung ho.” Three of us joined up and were sent to San Diego for boot camp. The training was fantastic, we just didn’t have enough of it. There was such a hurry to start the men—the boys, really—to the war.

In November, we were sent to Hilo, Hawaii, for more training at Camp Tarawa. Then, on January 7, 1945, we shipped out to the invasion staging area at Saipan. On February 17, we left for Iwo and arrived on D-Day, February 19. The 28th Marine Regiment on our ship was sent in immediately, but we stayed aboard. We were held back as the island couldn’t take three full divisions at once.

The top brass told us it would be “all over in 72 hours.” Sure enough, at D+4 at 10:35 a.m., as I looked anxiously from our ship to the barren, heavily shelled island, we saw Old Glory being raised on the highest point, Mt. Suribachi. “That’s it!” we thought, “We’ve done it! Got those bastards licked!”

Everybody started screaming and whooping it up, thinking the battle was over, just like the brass had promised. A fellow next to me gushed, “Boy, we’re going in and sightsee!” I never saw him again after we landed.

We landed on D+5, February 24, and the beach was a mess of wreckage. There was still a lot of Japanese shelling but it wasn’t accurate. We spent several days on the beach, unloading ammunition and pulling guard duty. Then, some of us were “volunteered” to replace the 5th Marine Division Graves Registration unit whose personnel had nearly all been killed. This was one of the most horrendous things I ever faced. We placed the corpses of dead Marines into body bags and put them into trenches dug by big bulldozers. We would pick up fellows by the arms and, suddenly, you’d be left holding only an arm. We’d try to pick them up by their legs, and you’d be left holding only a leg. It wasn’t much fun.

On March 9, things were so bad at the front that they sent us up to the 5th Marine Division and I joined H Company, 26th Regiment. I spent 30 days on Iwo Jima, 15 of them in combat with H Company. There are so many memorable and moving, sad and horrific experiences that my H Company buddies and I had in that awesome battle. One thing that had a profound effect on me was the unrelenting, nauseating smell of putrid sulfur permeating the island. The sulfur smell was everywhere, a bad omen and constant reminder that this stark place was a waiting graveyard on the road to Hell.

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