Stormriders Challenge! and the Iwo Jima Flag Raising · 1:04am Feb 23rd, 2012
So fillies and colts here's the deal, I was sitting around and bullshitting with some bronies and came up with an awesome idea to expand the Stormriders into a seriously hardcore trilogy. Taking the epic up to 12 and generally breaking out some serious win. It required some serious rewrites to the end of Dead Seas but I can do it and I'm planning to do it, but I need your help. Your support is what keeps me going so let's publicize the hell out of this project! If Dead Seas ends with 50+ trackers (we're already half way there) I'll for sure be doing the final part of the trilogy which is tenatively titled "Ascension". That is the ONLY hint you people get about the nature of the next story line. Trust me it'll make ALOT more sense at the end of Dead Seas.
On to important IRL stuff:
Ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow, the 23rd of February is a day that will be remembered for a long time. In the hell of war that was the island of Iwo Jima, six men on Mount Suribachi, five Marines and a Navy corpsman stepped into immortality while raising the second flag the war torn island. Their photograph happened to taken by Joe Rosenthal.
Of the six men who are now icons of the United States and legends of the Marine Corps three of them died in what was some of the fiercest fighting in the Second World War. Their names were Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, PFC Frank Sousely, PFC Ira Hayes, PFC Rene Gagnon and PM2 John Bradley. These men are regarded as heroes by many even though they would dispute it till the day they died. So in honor of that don't use today to reflect on them, on the act of raising the colors over Iwo Jima, take time instead to think about the many thousands of Marines, sailors and soldiers who fought and died on goddess forsaken spits of rock across the pacific, the men who never came home and traded their lives in the resistance of tyranny. Those are the real heroes, even to today.
"Uncommon valor was a common virtue"
-Admiral Chester Nimitz, referring to the Marines and sailors who took Iwo Jima
Semper Fidelis,
Pony Marine
To learn more about the flag raisers and the battle of Iwo Jima I recommend the excellent novel Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley (son of John Bradley as it happens)
