Rene Gagnon

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Rene Arthur Gagnon
March 7, 1925(1925-03-07) – October 12, 1979 (aged 54)
Rene Arthur Gagnon
Place of birth	Manchester, New Hampshire
Place of death	Manchester, New Hampshire
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Marine Corps
Years of service	1943-1946
Rank	Corporal
Unit	2nd Battalion 28th Marines
Battles/wars	Battle of Iwo Jima

Rene Arthur Gagnon (March 07, 1925 – October 12, 1979) was one of the U.S. Marines immortalized by Joe Rosenthal's famous World War II photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.

1 Early life
2 Marine Corps service
- 2.1 Medals and Decorations
3 Post-war
4 Portrayal in film
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Early life

Gagnon was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, the only child of French Canadian immigrants from Saint-Luc, Quebec, Henri Gagnon and Irene Marcotte. Rene grew up without a father. His parents divorced when he was an infant, after his mother caught his father cheating. When he was old enough, Rene worked alongside his mother at a local shoe factory. Rene was drafted in 1943 and elected to join the Marine Corps.

[edit] Marine Corps service

On May 06, 1943, he was inducted into the Marine Corps Reserve and sent to Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina. From Parris Island, Private First Class Gagnon, promoted on 16 July 1943, was transferred to the Marine Guard Company at Charleston Navy Yard in South Carolina. He remained there for eight months and then joined the Military Police Company of the 5th Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California. Four days later, on 8 April 1944, he was transferred to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, by Joe Rosenthal / The Associated Press

A photo to show all six men

After training at Camp Pendleton and in Hawaii, Gagnon landed with his unit on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945. Four days later - though with much fighting still ahead - Gagnon participated in what was most likely the most celebrated flag raising in U.S. history. After the event, Gagnon recalled:

"On the morning of February 23rd when the Colonel ordered these four men to take up the flag, they started going up and the communications were faulty between the top and the bottom of the mountain and they ordered me to take up the radio battery. When I got up there the four-man patrol with the flag had just got up there and they were about ready to put it up and when I got up I delivered the battery and then I went over to them and I was watching them put up the flag and the very heavy Jap[anese] pipe…it weighed quite a lot…so they said lend a hand…so I just got into it. [...]"

After Iwo Jima was secured, he was ordered to Washington, D.C., arriving on April 7. Together with the other two survivors of the second flag raising, Pharmacist's Mate John Bradley and Private First Class Ira Hayes, he was assigned to temporary duty with the Finance Division, U.S. Treasury Department, for appearances in connection with the Seventh War Bond Drive.

He finished the tour on July 05, 1945 and was ordered to San Diego for further transfer overseas. Gagnon married Pauline Georgette Harnois, of Hooksett, New Hampshire, in Baltimore, Maryland, on 7 July 1945.

By September, he was on his way overseas again, this time with the 80th Replacement Draft. On November 07, 1945, he arrived at Tsingtao, China, where he joined Company E, 2nd Battalion, 29th Marines, 6th Marine Division. He later served with the 3rd Battalion of the same regiment.

On duty with the U.S. occupation forces in China for nearly five months, Gagnon boarded ship at Tsingtao at the end of March 1946, and sailed for San Diego, arriving on 20 April.

With nine days short of three years' service in the Marine Corps Reserve, of which 14 months was spent overseas, Gagnon was promoted to Corporal and discharged on 27 April 1946.

[edit] Medals and Decorations

CPL Gagnon's Awards and Decorations at the time of his discharge from the Marines.

He was entitled to wear the following medals and decorations

Presidential Unit Citation with one star (for Iwo Jima),
China Service Medal
American Campaign Medal,
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one star (for Iwo Jima), and;
World War II Victory Medal

[edit] Post-war

Gagnon's headstone in Arlington National Cemetery

After the war, unlike Ira Hayes and John Bradley, Gagnon attempted to cash in on his celebrity status. He made a brief movie career of the event, appearing in two films about the battle: To the Shores of Iwo Jima (a government documentary which simply showed the color footage of the flag raising) and Sands of Iwo Jima, the latter with fellow flagraisers Bradley and Hayes. He was also part of a Rose Bowl half-time show. However, in the end, it amounted to almost nothing, and left him bitter and an alcoholic. He worked at menial jobs, but was fired from most of them, the last one on Memorial Day of 1978. He died in October the next year at age 54, of a heart attack. In his last job, he had worked as a janitor at an apartment complex in Manchester. As recorded in the book Flags of Our Fathers, in his latter years Gagnon only participated in events that praised the flag raising at his wife's urging, as she enjoyed the limelight, whereas he by that time no longer did.

“

At the age of 53, he bitterly inventoried his lost 'connections' - the jobs promised him by the government people when he'd been at the height of his fame, jobs that never materialized. "I'm pretty well known in Manchester," he told a reporter. "When someone who doesn't know me is introduced to me, they say 'That was you in The Photograph?' What the hell are you doing working here? If I were you, I'd have a good job and lots of money.

”

^[1]

Rene Gagnon died on October 12, 1979 in Manchester, New Hampshire, and was buried at Mount Calvary Mausoleum. At his widow's request, Gagnon's remains were re-interred in Section 51 of Arlington National Cemetery on July 07, 1981. He is also honored in a special room at the Wright Museum of WWII History in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.^[2]

[edit] Portrayal in film

In the 1949 John Wayne film Sands of Iwo Jima, Gagnon made an uncredited cameo as himself.
Gagnon was played by Ray Daley in the 1961 film The Outsider.
Jesse Bradford portrayed him in the 2006 film Flags of Our Fathers.