A 'divine' wind guided flag as Saddam fell
NYer relives iconic moment 15 yrs. later
When Cpl. Edward Chin and the rest of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines rolled into Baghdad 15 years ago Monday, the winds of change were blowing — and, in doing so, helped create one of the most enduring images of the War on Terror.
Chin — the Brooklyn-bred leatherneck famously photographed holding an American flag over the face of a soon-tobe-toppled statue of Saddam Hussein during the April 9, 2003, fall of the Iraqi capital — says the Stars & Stripes ended up in the despot’s face thanks to a chance gust of wind.
“As I was heading up there, my captain with Bravo Company handed me the flag,” Chin told The Post Sunday. “He said, ‘When you get up there, show the boys the colors.’ ”
The tank mechanic, then 23, replied, “Will do, sir,” and scaled the crane of his M88A2 Hercules tank recovery vehicle toward the head of the 39foot monument in the center of Baghdad’s Firdos Square.
Chin first wrapped the statue’s neck with the length of rope that would bring it down minutes later — a dark bit of foreshadowing in light of the actual Saddam’s demise at the end of a hangman’s noose in December 2006.
Chin then pulled Old Glory out from under his flak jacket, and, before he knew it, “the wind blew the flag onto [the statue’s] head,” Chin recalled. “I said, ‘That works for me,’ so I left it there for a few seconds.”
“It was almost kind of divine,” said Chin, now a 38year-old architect living on Staten Island with his wife, 4year-old daughter and 5month-old son.
A civilian held aloft an Iraqi flag, which Chin quickly substituted for the Stars & Stripes so as not to inflame tensions on the emotional day.
“I didn’t want people to be mad at me,” he explained.
Minutes later, the M88A2 surged forward, dragging down the statue and sending Baghdadis scrambling to chip off a shard as a keepsake.
“I never got a piece of it myself. I wish I did,” Chin said with a chuckle. “[Brass] told us we couldn’t bring any war trophies home. It wasn’t [like] Vietnam.”
As Saddam’s statue fell, the feeling among Marines and civilians alike was that Iraq’s long era of dictatorship and strife was soon to follow.
“That was definitely the feeling,” said Chin. “When we finally got to Baghdad, I felt like we were welcomed at that moment. They were tired of Saddam Hussein.”
But the war dragged on through the years, past the fall of Baghdad, past official admissions that no weapons of mass destruction could be found in the country, and past the cap- ture and execution of Saddam.
Chin left the corps as a sergeant at the end of his first tour in June 2003.
Although the months after his return often felt like a hero’s welcome — he threw out the first pitch at a Mets game and met with then-President George W. Bush — Chin reserves that title for others.
“I’ve been called a hero, but I don’t feel that way,” he said. “[With] the guys who laid down their lives, who came back with limbs lost . . . it’s hard to feel like a hero.”