A Marine-issue knife belonging to Rene Gagnon, one of the six soldiers who raised the flag at Iwo Jima during world war two, is to auction at Nate D Sanders.
The lot is due to cross the block in the February 26 sale and carries a minimum bid of $11,000.
 Iwo Jima was among the bloodiest battles fought in the Pacific during world war two |
The battle of Iwo Jima was among the bloodiest engagements of the war in the Pacific. Joe Rosenthal's iconic image of Gagnon and the others raising the flag became a powerful symbol and was later adopted for the statue that stands atop the Marine Corp War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
Of the six men pictured, only three survived.
Gagnon wrote during his training: ''...it certainly gives you a funny feeling to know that in my hands I hold two means of killing a person...stabbing him...or shooting him...
"Those are the things we're fighting for...when I was a kid I never realized that I one day would actually kill a man, as a matter of fact none of us really like the idea of killing, but if that's the only language the Axis understand then that's what it will have to be...''
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