Ira Hayes

I was just listening to a Johnny Cash CD (Johnny Cash 16 Biggest Hits) that has a cut of The Ballad of Ira Hayes(mp3).

I don't think about Ira Hayes very often. I was only 5 when he died, but I remember it. I was an early reader and was a newspaper reader even at 5 (mostly the cartoons, but I could usually parse headlines too). Also, my dad wasn't able to get out of the house unless he took me with him so I spent a lot of time with my dad in various coffee shops and beer joints where his death was a topic of conversation among vets (in 1955 beer joints and coffee shops had a lot of vets sitting around). Mostly they made jokes about it.

My memory of the story is that he fell face down in some shallow water of a street gutter, drunk. But looking it up now it seems it was more like a ditch.

In 1954, Ira Hayes attended the dedication ceremony in Washington, D. C. for the Iwo Jima Memorial. This monument was a bronze cast replica of the now famous photograph of the flag raising, created by Felix DeWeldon. Within 10 weeks of this celebration Ira Hamilton Hayes would be dead at age 33. After another night of drinking and still lamenting over his fallen "buddies", Ira fell drunk in an irrigation ditch and froze to death, alone and forgotten by a country that had called him a hero. The ditch where he died was the single source of water that was provided for his people by the same government he'd proudly served.

Those of you who might not know who Ira Hayes was should be ashamed. He was an American Indian from an Arizona reservation who joined the Marine Corp during WWII and was one of the Marines who raised the flag over Iwo Jima. He was one of 5 survivors of his 45 man platoon on Iwo Jima but he was one of the guys in that photograph.

He was a good Marine but didn't really distinguish himself in battle other than with his ability to keep his head down. He didn't receive any individual medals for heroism. But FDR made him and the other survivors from that photograph into war heroes and used them to do a national tour to sell war bonds.

Probably as much a result of that bond sales tour as from actual combat, Ira Hayes developed a strong case of PSTD. He was an alcoholic by the time the war was over and things just got worse from him in the years after the war.

Back then PTSD was called shell shock and the typical treatment was to tell the guy to snap out of it. That treatment didn't work well with Ira Hayes.

Vets with PTSD are treated better these days than they were back then. But whenever you read about some politician talking about how much he supports the troops you really should remember Ira Hayes.

The Ballad of Ira Hayes

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Gather round me people there's a story I would tell
About a brave young Indian you should remember well
From the land of the Pima Indian
A proud and noble band
Who farmed the Phoenix valley in Arizona land

Down the ditches for a thousand years
The water grew Ira's peoples' crops
'Till the white man stole the water rights
And the sparklin' water stopped

Now Ira's folks were hungry
And their land grew crops of weeds
When war came, Ira volunteered
And forgot the white man's greed

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

And when the fight was over
And when Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Ira returned a hero
Celebrated through the land
He was wined and speeched and honored; Everybody shook his hand

But he was just a Pima Indian
No water, no crops, no chance
At home nobody cared what Ira'd done
And when did the Indians dance

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Then Ira started drinkin' hard;
Jail was often his home
They'd let him raise the flag and lower it
like you'd throw a dog a bone!

He died drunk one mornin'
Alone in the land he fought to save
Two inches of water in a lonely ditch
Was a grave for Ira Hayes

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes
But his land is just as dry
And his ghost is lyin' thirsty
In the ditch where Ira died

A retired light colonel

During the first Gulf War I was teaching in the business school at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. We had a couple of retired military who taught supply channel type courses in the management department. When the war started they began sitting around the faculty lounge pontificating on military logistics. I couldn't take it and started walking across the quad to buy coffee at the student union rather than go into the faculty lounge to get a free cup of coffee.

My military experience was that of a Navy deck force ape, my politics and life experiences was so far removed from those guys that I didn't even want to be in the same room with them when they were talking up how easy it is to win a war.

I'm in Las Vegas this week, sitting in Coffee Bean across the street from UNLV, doing some Excel work for a small consulting gig I'm working on in between trips to the Rio for the World Series of poker.

There's a large table next to me with 5 business school students, members of some student group, and their faculty adviser. He has the look and talk of some retired Air Force Lt. Colonel supply officer. Listening to him spout off with various nonsense is making me want to through a chair at him.

College for veterans

Inside Higher Education has an article about an academic advising program for wounded veterans. Sounds like a great service. But too bad it's limited to severely wounded, so far they've only helped about 100 vets.

The idea is that the wounded are released from active service and cut off from military resources about academic advising.

“This allows us to fill a gap,” Selbe said. “The Department of Defense, they invest heavily in promoting the value of higher education, and they put a like investment in putting in the resources to ensure access and success in quality higher education programs. The participation is so high that a service member doesn’t need to look far to find someone who can provide them with advice and counsel and the like.

“But once they leave active duty, they lose the convenience and the access to those sorts of advisers.”

That's all fine and good, but it presumes that the resources that the military academic advising is competent. My experience was that it's not.

I knew nothing about college when I was in the service. My mother's family had some college grads, her dad had been an MD, but she was a German war bride, her family was kind of disrupted, and I didn't really know any of her family. My dad's family just didn't have many college grads. His younger brother had graduated from college (he got a math degree from Texas Tech and went in the Air Force), but that was about it as far as the close family. My dad was something of an anti-intellectual, pretty much your classic redneck about those beatnik queers and professional students.

When I was a baby he'd had a seismograph business that did pretty well. But he got hurt and couldn't work the rigs any more, so he sold out to his partner and moved back to Austin, working as a security guard at the University of Texas campus for a while. I think he had a lot of resentment and anger about his injury that ended up directed at students. When he'd gotten out of the Army he'd had a chance to go to college on the GI Bill, but choose the seismograph business instead because it seemed to offer much more opportunity. He made a lot of money for a while, but by the time he got hurt he had two kids and going to college just wasn't going to work out for him.

I was a smart kid, but an often disruptive student so none of my teachers or school administrators ever did much to try to steer me to college. In fact, some of them went out of their way to steer me away from college prep work. I didn't even take an SAT or ACT exam when I was in high school.

When I went in the Navy I stood a few graveyard quarterdeck watches with a young officer who'd gone through the Navy NESEP program, that's a program where the Navy sends an enlisted man to college then gives him an OCS commission when he graduates. He gets payed E5 pay plus tuition while in college a pretty good deal. He talked to me some about college during those midnight to 4 am watches.

The Navy did have some college correspondence courses available through schools like the University of Maryland and my fellow watch stander suggested I talk to the ships education officer for advice about what courses to take.

That's where the official Defense Department advising for potential college students falls through the cracks. The Navy had on official "Education Officer" on each ship. He was a junior officer appointed by the Captain, it was just part-time job, not part of his regular duties. Based on my experience as a sailor on a destroyer, and later in life as a college teacher teaching on a couple of different ammunition supply ships (AE's), not very many Education Officers take the assignment seriously.

I went to our Education Officer for advise about what course to take. In my first 7 months of active duty (6 months of it in Vietnam) I'd completed Navy correspondence courses for Radioman, Personellman, and Petty Officer (3&2 for all those for those of you familiar with Navy courses). I'd been trying to get out of the deck force and finally gave up when I realized that I'd offended the XO so much that I was never going to get out of the deck force and would never be promoted (I'd told him that just because he wanted to suck LBJ's dick didn't mean I wanted to -- I wasn't the brightest 18 y.o sailor in the Navy).

Anyway, having never taken and SAT or ACT, there were no college placement exams to guide the advisor in placement, but I did have the military ARI/GCT scores which the Navy used in general placement. I think those scores were 133, which is pretty high, high enough to have qualified for any program the Navy offered, from OCS to crypto school. So, based on what I know now, I'd think anybody with a basic understanding of college placement would have guessed that I'd be able to place out of some of the first year courses, like composition and math.

Not this clown. Since I didn't have any thoughts about what I might major in he suggested I just take a composition course since wherever I went and whatever I majored in I'd have to take Freshman English. So that's what I did.

Of course the credit didn't transfer when I later went to college, because I placed out of the 1st semester English comp just based on ACT scores. What the lazy, incompetent boob should have steered me to was something like intro to sociology or physics, or some other topic specific course. Something that might not always be required for some degree programs, but something that always would be given credit for. Any degree program would have accepted transfer credit in those subjects, but that turned out to not be true for freshman composition.

Someday I'll tell y'all about that run in with the XO that left me with pretty much no chance to succeed in the Navy. He was new to the ship at the time and I don't think he realized that we were actually in a combat zone.

Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation

Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation

The Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation is a unit award of the United States Navy which is awarded to a command which displays exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service, heroic deeds, or valorous actions.

National Defense Service Medal

National Defense Service Medal

For service during the Vietnam war, The National Defense Service Medal is awarded to anyone who serves on active duty in the United States military during January 1, 1961 to August 14, 1974

Since everybody got one, we used to call this the Alive in '65 medal. I'm not sure why since it actually dates back to the Korean War.

Combat Action Ribbon

Combat Action Ribbon

To be awarded the Combat Action Ribbon, the individual must have rendered satisfactory performance under enemy fire while actively participating in a ground or surface engagement.

Surface engagement means combat on the water. Ducking qualifies as satisfactory performance.