NEW BRITAIN, Conn — Nearly 80 years ago, on February 19, 1945, U.S. Marine troops invaded Iwo Jima in a historic battle in the late stages of World War II. The battle would last 36 days, with Japanese soldiers putting up a strong resistance.
About 70,000 U.S. servicemembers took part in the campaign, and it would become the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history. About 6,800 U.S. service members were killed with thousands more injured.
Connecticut is home to the only monument and park built by battle survivors, and Stew Lahey is proud of that. He's a 97-year-old World War II vet from Bridgeport, Connecticut. He fought in the battle of Iwo Jima when he was only 18 years old.
“A lot of young men enlisted immediately,” he says when recalling the events of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Lahey grew up in Pelham, New York. His father was a dentist and his mother a homemaker who volunteered at New Rochelle Hospital. His brother was just over a year older than him and joined the Air Force at 18 years old. Lahey joined the Marine Corps in 1944 when he was 17 years old. His father had to sign for parental consent. His father was a World War I veteran, and he wanted his son to join to learn discipline.
“We heard of guys getting killed and we needed more troops,” Lahey recalls. “[We said] let’s go do our part. That’s the reason I wanted to go.”
Lahey hadn’t even graduated high school. He was sent to boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina. He was eventually sent to Guam.
“One day, our company sergeant had come to me and said, ‘There’s a doctor who wants to see you,’” Lahey recalls. He said he didn’t know why he was being summoned.
“He was a doctor in New Rochelle Hospital, where my mother worked. ‘I know your mother very well and you guys are going on a push to the battle of Iwo Jima.’ No one had heard of Iwo Jima. I’ll never forget it, because as I’m leaving, he handed me a bottle of liquor and he said, ‘This is for you.’ I said, ‘I don’t drink.’ He said, ‘Take it back and share it with the guys.’ I walked in the recreation tent and said, ‘Anybody want a drink?’” Lahey laughs. “I had more friends! That bottle was empty in about three minutes. He was right. We went on a push to the battle of Iwo Jima.”
Iwo Jima is a tiny volcanic island hundreds of miles off the coast of Japan. Lahey says that even with a map, he would have a hard time finding the island.
“The only movie I’ve seen in the last 30 years is Flags of Our Fathers which is actually supposed to be a depiction of the battle,” Lahey says. “The only difference between that and reality is in the movie when they landed, it was solid ground. When we landed, it was volcanic ash. Your feet sunk in. I don’t know how we survived. God had to be intervening in our lives.”
Lahey was part of an engineering battalion that repaired the military airfield that was left shell-pocked. He was on Iwo Jima for a month.
“The first night there, I said ‘Where do we sleep?’ They said in the bomb crater,” Lahey says. “I wake up in the morning and I look around. [I realized in the daylight] that’s where they put the bodies. I had never seen a dead person and here I am at 18, and wow! You’re right amongst them. I didn’t know how fortunate I was at the time.”
Stew Lahey will be the first to tell you he’s not a hero. He says the heroes didn’t come home.
“A lot of guys gave up their lives so they could have freedom. People don’t really understand or appreciate the freedom they have in this country,” Lahey says. “We were all brothers. Black, white, we were all brothers under God’s wing looking out for one another. If you see something coming to someone else, you stand up to defend them and help them. It was a great feeling for camaraderie and that’s what I loved.”
After the war ended, Lahey was stationed in Japan and China as part of a construction battalion. While stationed in Japan, he would often see a little dog in somebody’s yard while he was doing runs in his construction truck. He would stop and pet her, until one day he offered to buy her.
“I offered them a bar of chocolate and a pack of cigarettes for her and she was mine,” he says. “She had puppies in Japan and China. I brought her home aboard ship. When we landed in La Guardia, I put her down so she could go to the bathroom and my mother said, ‘Pick her up! She’ll get run over!’ I said, ‘Mother, in the motor patrol, there were tanks, you name it, everything and she never got a scratch, don’t worry about her.’ She had pups in Pelham. My mother loved the pups and she wanted to keep them all. I said, ‘No, we’ve got to give them to people who want them.’ Unfortunately, she was loaded with cancer, but I didn’t know it. We lost her in about three months after I came home, but she was the greatest companion.”
He was honorably discharged on the Fourth of July, 1946. He went back home to finish high school and be back with his family. His love for his family is a theme that has run strong through his life. He helped take care of his brother who contracted polio after the war. Today, Lahey is grieving the loss of his wife of nearly 50 years who recently passed away. He helped take care of her while she received nearly round-the-clock care in their home. He has two children, five grandchildren, and one great-grandson, who he adores.
They say the greatest generation is patriotic, determined and dependable. Lahey wears it all. He’s a man of his generation.
Today, when reflecting on his time in the Marine Corps, he talks a lot about faith and his love for life.
“It was for a great cause,” he says about his time in the service. “You didn’t even think about it. You just did your job. As far as I’m concerned, if I was 18 or 17 again in the conflict like that, I would do exactly the same thing.”
The Iwo Jima Memorial Historical Foundation will hold its annual flag-raising anniversary ceremony on Friday, February 23, at 10:30 a.m. at the National Iwo Jima Memorial in New Britain.
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