Dave Severance
US Marine whose troops raising the Stars and Stripes over Iwo Jima became a potent image of war
COLONEL DAVE SEVERANCE, who has died aged 102, was the US Marines officer who in February 1945 ordered a platoon to climb Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima, then defended by the Japanese; the subsequent raising of the American flag on the peak became one of the most emblematic images of the Second World War.
Lying 750 miles south of Tokyo, Iwo Jima is just eight square miles in area but had strategic importance for the US advance across the Pacific because of its airstrips. Much of its volcanic terrain had been hollowed out to build tunnels and bunkers, in which were ensconced a 20,000-strong garrison willing to fight to the last.
On February 19 1945 70,000 Marines landed on Iwo Jima, among them Severance, a captain in command of Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines.
After four days of fierce fighting the Americans had captured the base of the island’s dominant feature, the 554ft Mount Suribachi, an active volcano. The battalion’s CO, Lt-col Chandler Johnson, told Severance to send a patrol up the peak. Severance chose several men from his 3rd Platoon, commanded by 1st Lt Harold Schrier. Johnson handed him a US flag and told Schrier to raise it as a signal if he reached the top.
Severance said that he expected that the soldiers would only get about halfway up the mountain before they would be pinned down, but they only encountered light opposition, and after a brief fire fight seized the summit. When the Stars and Stripes was seen fluttering over the island, loud cheering broke out from the weary troops below, although Severance himself missed the event.
Shortly afterwards, James Forrestal, the Secretary of the Navy (with responsibility for the Marines), landed on Iwo Jima. Turning to the task force’s commander, Holland Smith, he told him that the sight of the flag had secured the future of the Marine Corps for the next 500 years. He then decided to take the flag for himself as a memento.
“Hell, no!” Severance recalled Johnson saying, and he ordered that the flag be taken down and stowed in the battalion safe. A party was running a telephone line to the peak and they were told to take up a second, larger flag with them. It was the raising of this which was captured by an Associated Press photographer, Jim Rosenthal.
A photographer for the Marines’ Leatherneck magazine, Lou Lowery, had preserved the moment when the first flag was set up. Yet it was Rosenthal’s more potent image which became iconic, symbolising as it did the struggle to raise freedom’s flag high over Japanese territory. It won the Pulitzer Prize and served as the inspiration for the Marines war memorial at Arlington, Virginia.
Severance believed that the picture’s popularity stemmed in part from people thinking that it marked the end of the war. In fact, there was still much hard fighting to be done on Iwo Jima to winkle out the defenders. Three of the six Marines who had raised the second flag were killed over the next few days, as was Johnson by a mortar round.
A bullet passed between Severance’s legs and hit a lieutenant behind him. Of the 247 soldiers under his command, 84 per cent became casualties on Iwo Jima, a figure comparable to most of the other companies in the regiment. Only 216 Japanese soldiers – 1 per cent of the garrison – were taken alive. Severance remained the only officer in his company who was not wounded.
Severance was awarded the Silver Star, the third-highest Marine honour. It was not until the release of the John Wayne film
Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949 that he realised the impact on the American public of the flag-raising. As it was, his version differed in some respects from the official one, which in recent years has changed several times as the identities of those holding the flag has been revised.
Severance would say only that he had not been invited to contribute to any of the inquiries.
David Elliott Severance was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on February 4 1919. He grew up in Greeley, Colorado, where his father had a coal business. He attended the University of Washington in Seattle, but when his family could no longer afford the fees he enlisted in the Marine Corps, intending to learn to fly.
Instead he was trained as a parachutist, and by the outbreak of war with Japan he was a sergeant. He was then commissioned, and in 1943 sent to the island of Bougainville, in the Solomons, which had been occupied by the Japanese.
There he proved his mettle when the platoon he was leading was cut off by an ambush a mile behind enemy lines. Although encircled, Severance and his men fought their way out, losing only one Marine.
After the war ended, Severance was stationed in Japan. In 1946 he finally got his chance to become a pilot, and during the Korean War flew 69 combat missions. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with four Air Medals.
Severance later served during the Vietnam War and was assistant director of personnel at Marine Corps headquarters before retiring in 1968.
He settled in La Jolla, California, and – only partly in jest – attributed his long life to giving up smoking at the age of 80. Reflecting that he had been “a Marine for 30 years and never ended up in jail”, he observed at 100 that “I look back and I didn’t die, as a matter fact I didn’t even get hit, I came close a couple of times – I made it through three wars.”
He organised many reunions for Iwo Jima veterans and acted as a consultant for Clint Eastwood’s film Flags of Our Fathers (2006), in which he was played by Neal Mcdonough.
Dave Severance’s first marriage, to Margaret Heins, ended in divorce. He was then married for 49 years to Barbara Austin. She died in 2017 and he is survived by two sons and a daughter of his first marriage, and by another daughter from the second.
Dave Severance, born February 4 1919, died August 2 2021