THE POWER AND THE GLORY SURVIVOR SAW ORIGINAL IWO JIMA FLAG-RAISING.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

On the fifth day of fighting on the denuded hills and black volcanic sands of the Pacific Ocean atoll called Iwo Jima, where 6,800 Americans and 20,000 Japanese were to die before the battle ended, Art Wallace heard a Marine near him say: ``Look at that crazy guy raising the flag.''

Wallace looked up from the 3rd Marine Division's command post, where he was part of the guard, and saw an American flag flying on 550-foot-tall Mount Suribachi, the highest point on the tiny barren island.

``He's got to be nuts. They're going to dump all they've got on him up there,'' Wallace said he thought. ``But they didn't.''

The flag Wallace saw atop Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945, was the first hoisted. Several hours later, a commander sent five Marines and a Navy corpsman back with a larger flag that could be seen more easily from the rest of the island.

``I don't know that we really noticed when they changed them,'' Wallace said.

Captured on film by news photographer Joe Rosenthal, the image of the second flag-raising has been called the most famous photograph in the world.

Wallace, now 90 and a retired building contractor living with his wife of 56 years in Palmdale, was already a veteran of Guadalcanal, Bougainville and Guam when he got to Iwo Jima.

He got into the Marine Corps for his musical ability. In 1940, he was a newly licensed general contractor, and in his spare time he sang in a Los Angeles choir whose members included a Marine reservist.

The reservist was trying to put together a band for his battalion. He invited Wallace, who had played the trumpet and cornet since he was a boy.

Three months months after Wallace joined, the reserves were called to active duty. Fourteen months later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Trained as stretcher bearers to carry out Marines wounded in combat, Wallace and the bandsmen landed with the assault troops on the islands of Bougainville and Guam.

``We'd have six or seven bandsmen with each company. We'd go up to the front and pick up casualties,'' he said. ``We had quite a few casualties. ... When you lose one guy, it's a lot.''

On Guam, Wallace was coming ashore when a mortar shell exploded nearby. The explosion knocked him down.

That afternoon, he looked at the small first-aid kit strapped to his belt and noticed a half-inch piece of shrapnel embedded in the metal case.

``If it hadn't have been there, I would have been a Purple Hearter,'' Wallace said.

Before he got to Iwo Jima, casualties had reduced the bandsmen, so they were assigned as guards for the 3rd Division command post. At night, the Japanese, coming out of tunnels and hidden gun emplacements that perforated the island, tried to breach the American lines.

``We had a few trying to get through, but our guard caught them,'' Wallace said.

When fighting ended after nearly a month, a general had the band members' instruments flown in from Guam so they could play for the dedication of the 3rd Division cemetery.

Atop a cliff overlooking the sea, the cemetery's crosses - some 1,500 - reminded Wallace of a poem about World War I he recited as a boy in school: ``In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place.''

``There were these crosses,'' Wallace said, ``row on row.''

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Art Wallace, 90, has a Life magazine cover and other records of the two flag-raisings - the second one caught in a famous photo - on Iwo Jima. He saw the first flag-raising that day.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer

(2) Joe Rosenthal's historic photo is one of the most famous from the war.