Another suspect quote: Ira Hayes

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thousands of RGs for this quote about heroism and fame, attributed to Cpl.
Ira Hayes, one of the Iwo Jima flag-raisers.  Some recent sources claim that
Hayes said it "to reporters" shortly after he attended the dedication of the
Iwo Jima Memorial at Arlington in 1954:

“How could I feel like a hero when only five men in my platoon of 45
survived, when only 27 men in my company of 250 managed to escape death or
injury?”

Widely cited since, including at a DoD site
http://www.defense.gov/specials/nativeamerican01/flag.html   I can find no
evidence of the quote's existence (GB, NewspaperArchive, ProQuest, TIME)
before it appeared on p. 19 of the bestseller _Flags of Our Fathers_, by
James Bradley and Ron Powers (2000), written 45 years after Hayes's
premature death.

The book includes source notes, but no source is given for this quote.  The
context suggests that Bradley was innocently paraphrasing what
Hayes presumably thought about being acclaimed as a hero.

JL



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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