Iwo Jima: In Memory Of A Friend

By Mark Hendricks (Hillviews, 2011)
Glen Cleckler ’50 and his wife JoAnn ’52 sit at the base of the Iwo Jima statue in Harlingen. One of the Marines depicted in the statue is Harlon Block, Glen’s friend who died on the island in 1945.

    From time to time, Glen Cleckler, 87,  still visits his dear friend Harlon  Block. He stands respectfully beside  his gravesite. He may speak to  him quietly, with a trace of a smile  on his face, about the perils of growing old.  But, for the most part, Cleckler uses these  visits to remember.
    And on this sweltering  summer afternoon on the campus of the Marine  Military Academy in Harlingen, it is no  different. Cleckler looks down upon his old  friend’s resting place and remembers. The  memories come easily, perhaps because they  comprise a story that is so impossible to forget.  The two were best friends in high school in  the Rio Grande Valley town of Weslaco. They  were young, handsome, athletic, and popular –  teammates on a conference champion Weslaco  High football team. Both seemed destined to  play college ball. Cleckler, in fact, had a scholarship  offer to Howard Payne. 
    But one afternoon in the fall of their senior  year of high school (1942-43), Block had a mischievous  idea. It was an idea that would tip the  first domino and start a sequence of events with  consequences both tragic and heroic.

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It would  also eventually solidify a friendship that still  lives, more than six decades after Block’s death.  “Harlon suggested that we skip school that  afternoon and go to a movie,” says Cleckler.  Cleckler was not keen on the idea at first.  He had been hoping for perfect attendance  that year. But Block was persistent, so Cleckler,  Block, and a third friend and teammate, Carl  Sims, piled into Block’s pickup and took off for  the theater. 

The Weslaco theater was out of the question  because the manager there was a big fan  of the local football team and would certainly  recognize the three truants. They eventually  ended up 18 miles away at a theater in Harlingen.  After the show, it occurred to Cleckler that  they would need an excuse for missing school  that afternoon, or they would face the principal’s  dreaded paddle.  “Right there by the theater, there was a  Marine Corps recruiting office,” says Cleckler,  and another life-changing idea was formed.  The recruiting officer there told the three to  come back after they finished high school, but  they picked up some recruiting brochures and  applications anyway and headed back to Weslaco. 

The next morning, they were  confronted by the principal, A.C.  Murphy, who had his paddle at  the ready.  “I said, ‘Don’t you want to see  why we were out of school?’” says  Cleckler. He showed the principal  the recruiting materials and  presented him with a filled-out  Marine Corps application.  “He said, ‘I have misjudged  you boys. When do you join?’ We  told him we would join as soon  as we could, and we escaped the  paddle,” Cleckler says.  Well, Cleckler, Block, and  Sims figured their enlistment  would come later that spring  after graduation, but about  three days later, Murphy came  back with a better idea.

He had  made arrangements for the  three to take their exams and  graduate early. Eventually, five  other fellow seniors and football teammates  joined them, and a special early graduation  ceremony was held in January for the eight  future Marines.  Cleckler was chosen to speak on behalf  of the group at the graduation assembly and,  to this day, he remembers that one-sentence  speech word-for-word. 

“I said, ‘Wherever we go, whatever we do,  we will always remember you in this place today,’”  says Cleckler.  They left for Marine Corps basic training in  San Diego shortly thereafter. Following boot  camp, Cleckler, Block, and the others went  their separate ways, assigned to separate Marine  Corps units in different parts of the Pacific  theater in World War II.  U.S. Naval operations during the Pacific  campaign were highly complex. There were construction projects, security details, and  battles to be fought in scores of locations with  names that most of the young Marines and seamen  had never heard of — places like Tarawa,  Kwajalein, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, and Peleliu.  For the most part, rank-and-file Marines did  not know exactly where they were going until  they got there. 

In late 1944 and early 1945, Cleckler was  on a troop transport harbored in Honolulu,  where he and other Marines awaited their  next departure for whatever destination lay  in store. One evening he boarded a transport  barge to go ashore for a night of liberty. On  the way to shore, he felt a tap on his shoulder.  He turned and came face-to-face with his old  friend, Harlon Block.  “Imagine, being out there in the middle  of the Pacific Ocean and running into my old  friend! That was quite a surprise,” says Cleckler.  Block’s unit was on a troop transport harbored  adjacent to Cleckler’s ship and both had  been granted liberty that evening, which led  to the chance encounter on the barge. They  spent the evening ashore talking about old  times, catching up, and speculating about  where they might go next. 

On the way back to their ships that evening,  Block removed a ring he was wearing and handed  it to Cleckler. It was a gold Marine Corps ring  he had bought after completing Marine paratrooper  training. He gave it to Cleckler.  “He told me to give it to his mother when  I got home. He said he wasn’t coming back. I  told him to go jump in the lake, but he wouldn’t  have any of that. Some guys just got that feeling.  So I took the ring,” says Cleckler.  They shipped out soon after. At the time,  they did not know their destination, but they  surmised they would be going to the same  place, and they were.

The Battle of Iwo Jima involved some of  the fiercest fighting of the war. American commanders  had estimated that the island could be  captured in three days. It took 36. During those  36 days, 6,800 American servicemen — the vast  majority Marines — were killed. More than  20,000 Japanese soldiers died in the battle.  On the fourth day of the battle, the Marines  secured the high point of the island,  Mount Suribachi.

Although the fight was far  from over, that event provided one of the most  iconic moments of World War II, when photographer  Joe Rosenthal snapped the Pulitzer  Prize-winning photograph of five Marines  and one Navy corpsman raising the American  flag on Mount Suribachi.  The Marine at the base of the flagpole,  pushing the pole into the ground, is Harlon  Block. Eight days after the flag-raising, Block  was killed by mortar fire. 

Cleckler survived Iwo Jima. He was rotated  back to the United States and assigned to a military  police unit at the Corpus Christi Naval  Base. He paid a visit to Block’s  mother and tried to give her  Harlon’s ring, but she did not  want it.  “She told me I should keep  it — that I’d been his best  friend. So I did,” says Cleckler.  Cleckler expected to be  recalled to the Pacific theater,  probably for what most  thought was the upcoming  invasion of Japan. But the  Japanese surrendered before  he shipped out.  Cleckler served out the  remainder of his enlistment  stateside and then went looking  for a college.

That football  scholarship offer to Howard  Payne was no longer on the table,  thanks to time and coaching  changes. He eventually decided  on Southwest Texas State  Teachers College, now Texas  State. He joined the Bobcat  football team, became a starting  center and linebacker and  was highly regarded as an allaround  athlete.  Cleckler graduated from  Texas State in 1950.

He returned  to the Rio Grande  Valley to Harlingen, where  he served more than three  decades as a coach, teacher, principal, and  family man. His wife, JoAnn Smith Cleckler  is a 1952 Texas State alumna. They still reside  in Harlingen. 

Their home is near the Marine Military  Academy in Harlingen, home to the largest  existing statue depicting the raising of the flag  on Mount Suribachi. It is, in fact, the original  working model prepared by the sculptor Felix  de Weldon that was used to cast the monument  that stands at Arlington National Cemetery.  At the base of the statue is an inscription  bearing the words of Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz,  who said of the Marines on Iwo Jima, “Uncommon  valor was a common virtue.” 

A few feet from the statue is the gravesite of  Harlon Block. Originally interred at Weslaco,  his body was moved to the academy in Harlingen  in 1995 during the commemoration of the  50th anniversary of the battle.  And Block’s ring? Until last spring, Cleckler  wore it every day. Through his years as a Bobcat,  through his career as an educator, through  his life as a husband and father. But last year,  in a ceremony beside the monument and the  gravesite, Cleckler donated the ring to the Marine  Military Academy. It is on display at the  academy’s museum. 

On this day, Cleckler stands beside  Block’s grave. He has borrowed the ring  from its display case. He turns it over and  over in his hand, feeling the memories it  never fails to produce. 

“You know, I wanted to keep it, but I felt  this was better,” he says, looking at the monument  to his friend and his comrades in arms.  “It belongs here.”