KEY POINTS:
Charles W. Lindberg, one of the US Marines who raised the first American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, has died aged 86.
Lindberg spent decades explaining that it was his patrol, not the one captured in the famous Associated Press photograph by Joe Rosenthal, that raised the first flag as US forces fought to take the Japanese island.
Lindberg, in the late morning of February 23, 1945, joined five other Marines fighting their way to the top of Mount Suribachi. "Two of our men found this big, long pipe there," he said in an interview with the Associated Press in 2003. "We tied the flag to it, took it to the highest spot we could find and we raised it. "Down below, the troops started to cheer, the ship's whistles went off, it was just something that you would never forget," he said. "It didn't last too long, because the enemy started coming out of the caves."
By Lindberg's account, his commander ordered the first flag replaced and safeguarded because he worried someone would take it as a souvenir. Lindberg was back in combat when six men raised the second, larger flag about four hours later. Rosenthal's photo of the second flag-raising became one of the most enduring images of the war.
