I felt immortal back then. I was mired in black volcanic sand on the beach at Iwo Jima. Scrambling up that slope was as impossible when I had to do it as it has always been.
The black lava beach was a nightmare and I remember looking at the volcanic mountain named, “Suribachi”, on my left and the caves where Japanese machine gunners sprayed bullets—we were panting and gasping for air to breathe.
As soon as I got on top and looked down into the volcano’s steaming crater, I grabbed my shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes—Camel—the Camel’s slogan: “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” but it seemed like walking two or three miles would be easier than climbing to the top of the steaming Suribachi volcano.
I was young and felt I could do almost anything but I was already troubled with breathing. I didn’t have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) then by had bronchitis and a touch of asthma. Not related was my “flat feet” that kept me from standing or marching in parades. I had a slip of paper that excused me from any of those activities.
Now, some 60 plus years later, I still have COPD and my breathing is an ongoing struggle—I use inhalers to open airways so I can take a bigger breath and I have oxygen bottles and oxygen concentrators that enables me to keep a steady supply of oxygen going into my lungs. Without the medical treatments and medications I use every day I would have had a stroke a long time ago. I am fortunate to live now when there is some help available—a few years ago and I would have succumbed to the disease and been a name on a stone monument.
At eighty years of age, I only have memories of how I used my life and what I did to myself and what politics did to me. The tobacco lobby in Washington made sure the Army had cigarettes in our C-rations and they all knew that smoking caused cancer and heart disease but they gave every soldier a package whether he smoked or not.
