An honor to share

• By GEORGE MORRIS
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 19, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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When Earl Flatt signed up for the first Louisiana HonorAir flight, he thought he knew what to expect. After all, he was a board member
of the Acadiana-based group offering a free trip for World War II veterans to visit the Washington, D.C., memorial that had been built in their honor.

The trip turned out to be more than Flatt imagined — a reaction shared by veterans who went with him.

“I could hear them talk,” Flatt said. “Some of them had never been on an airplane before. Some of them had not been out of the state of Louisiana after World War II. Some of them were holding hands. This is one of the most emotional experiences I’ve ever had.”

It’s one that almost 1,000 Acadiana veterans have shared, and will be available to hundreds more from southeast Louisiana this fall. Four Louisiana HonorAir flights are scheduled to fly out of Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, each taking 105 veterans for a daylong visit to the World War II Memorial and other sites.

The trip Flatt took on May 12, 2007, was packed with highlights, starting with his arrival at Lafayette Regional Airport, which was filled with family members seeing off the veterans. Marine Corps Reserve members in their dress blues lined the walkway to the airplane entrance, and as the veterans approached, they saluted.

“They held that salute, and I can’t hold one that long,” said Flatt, 84. “They held it for all 105 we had on the first flight.”

When their flight reached Reagan National Airport, a fire truck saluted by spraying a water cannon. When Flatt exited the airplane, he was stunned by the reception, which included U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu and U.S. Reps. Charles Boustany and Charles Melancon.

“There were two or three hundred people there with American flags welcoming us to Washington,” he said. “This was something! I said, ‘My God, I can’t believe it.’ Each person was given a rose. Each person was given a small American flag and was hugging us. We were in tears.”

The veterans boarded three buses that took them to the National World War II Memorial, which opened in April 2004, almost 59 years after the war ended. The tour included the Korean War Memorial, placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery and the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial.

That last venue was special for Flatt. It depicts the famous second flag raising on Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi — an event he had witnessed.

On Feb. 19, 1945, Flatt was among the Marines who landed on the heavily defended Pacific island. At about 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 23, a small American flag was raised. That afternoon, a larger, more visible flag was brought to the summit, where five Marines and a Navy corpsman raised it in a moment that was famously recorded by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

“I guess almost everybody on the island saw the first one go up. But it was too small,” Flatt said, “so they sent up a larger flag, and it took about four hours to get from the ship that they took it from to the top of the mountain. By then things had calmed down pretty good, and somebody said, ‘There it goes’ and we all looked up and there it was.”

Flatt knew Sgt. Hank Hansen, who helped raise the first flag, and felt a military kinship with Cpl. Harlon Block and Pfc. Ira Hayes, who helped raise the second, more famous, flag because they, like he, had earlier served as Marine paratroopers. Hansen and Block were killed in action on Iwo Jima.