I'm a junior in high school and my US History teacher is well known for his outrageous stories and lies, so I've decided to start fact checking him.
Today we were talking about the Battle of Iwo Jima and he showed us this famous photograph. He started telling a story about how Lee Marvin was on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Carson. According to my teacher, Jimmy asked Lee if he was in the Iwo Jima picture and Lee said he was. My teacher then went on to say that Lee was the only person in the picture to make it out of the battle alive. This struck me odd since a previous teacher had told me that three of the people that raised the flag lived.
So was Lee Marvin really in that picture, or was my teacher wrong?
Your teacher must be mistaken or has fallen prey to this urban myth. Lee Marvin most certainly did not serve on Iwo Jima, contrary to what some people say. Marvin was seriously injured during the Battle of Saipan on June 18, 1944, while serving with Company I of the 24th Marine Regiment. 4th Marine Division. A bullet struck him in the buttock and severed his sciatic nerve, (an injury to this nerve most certainly would have disqualified Marvin from further combat service; it provides feeling to the back of the thigh, parts of the lower leg, and the sole of the foot, and can be quite painful if irritated, much less cut!) and he spent over a year in various hospitals before being medically discharged in the summer of 1945 with the rank of Private First Class.
Sources:
Marvin: The Story of Lee Marvin p. 38, by Donald Zec
Hi. Good for you for questioning stories and looking for proof. As /u/the_howling_cow mentioned, this story is not true. One place to check for the veracity of stories such as this is snopes.com. They investigate and debunk (or confirm) many rumors. Looking on snopes.com, you'll find details debunking this story. This is basically an instance of people taking a real person and attaching to him a few real factgs (like that he was a WWII veteran who served honorably and was wounded, and heightening the drama, first by placing him at a famous battle, then by placing him in one of the most famous photos of World War II. Then heighening the drama and tragedy of the photo itself by claiming that only one person got out alive. In reality, 3 of the 6 flag raisers were killed in the battle, and three survived. Those six men were Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, Michael Strank, Rene Gagnon, John Bradley, and Harlon Block. You can google to find out more about them.
In addition, there are a number of stories about the flag raising on Iwo Jima that you can read. CNN has a story you can read, but there are many others.
