Page 67 - The History of Veterans at Highland Springs

CLYDE WILLIAM JACKSON
HIGHLAND SPRINGS RESIDENT
MARINES
BY JODY JACKSON, WIDOW
On the day before his eighteenth birthday, Clyde Williams Jackson ate a bunch of bananas, got his weight up to a whopping 111 pounds, and joined the Marine Corps.
The year was 1943 and the Marine Corps Fifth Division was being formed as the war in the Pacific ramped up. Clyde went through Boot Camp at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, and when he reached 125 pounds the Marine Corps decided he weighed enough to fight on the island of Iwo Jima.
As a member of the Fifth Division, 2nd Battalion, 28th regiment, Company F, he was in the second wave to hit the beach. Their job, along with Company E, was to cut the island in two and then take Mt. Suribachi, the extinct volcano that dominated the island.
For four days, Companies E and F fought their way to the base of the mountain and on the fifth day made it to the top. And that is how Clyde found himself sitting six feet away from photographer Joe Rosenthal when he took the iconic Iwo Jima flag raising photograph.
The battle went on for another twenty-six days with so many casualties that at one time Clyde and another PFC were running Company F. Clyde was wounded on the twenty-second day of the fighting. He spent the next year in the hospital recovering from his wound and was mustered out as a Corporal. He was awarded the Purple Heart.
The photos above show Clyde Jackson in uniform in 1944 (on left) and at Iwo Jima in 2012 with Laura Leppert, president of Daughters of WWII.
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