Clifton Bennett arrived on the island of Iwo Jima with his head down, crawling through the rut left by a tank in the sulfurous black sand with bullets flying all around.

Even several hours after the initial Marine landing on the first piece of the Japanese homeland to be invaded, the carnage and chaos were everywhere.

Dead and dying Marines, caught in the crossfire from Japanese emplacements that the intense bombing had been unable to take out.

Bennett, now 82, remembers the dead looked like department store mannequins.

"It was a shock to see our troops being killed," he said.

It was late in the afternoon of Feb. 19, 1945. What commanders had suggested would be a four-day campaign turned into a 34-day ordeal for Bennett, a radio man, and the remainder of the three Marine divisions sent to take Iwo Jima.

The 4th and 5th Marine divisions were involved in the initial campaign. The 3rd Marine Division had to be brought in later as the fighting and dying raged on.

"The fighting involved a lot of hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets; a lot of grenades and rifle fire," Bennett said. "A lot of our men were in continuous danger. They had to dig the enemy out of the caves."

The invading American troops would suffer greater casualties (26,000) than the defending Japanese (21,000). It was the only time in World War II that American casualties exceeded those of the enemy.

Although a dot on the map, Iwo Jima, which means sulfur island in Japanese, was strategic. The island was along the path B-29 bombers followed to attack Japan.

Japan had radar installations and fighters on the island where attacks could be launched against the bomber formations. Even before the Iwo Jima campaign ended, Bennett saw damaged B-29s land there.

"The B-29 crews sometimes perished in the sea when their planes crashed," he said. "Many landed there on their way back. Many crews were saved that way."

But for that to happen, the Marines had to take the island.

The loss of life started early as Japanese defenders waited for the first Marines to land before opening fire.

"The first waves were still pinned down on the beach. It made it difficult for succeeding waves of us to get on the beach. The beaches were jammed with the first ones," he said. "Sometimes boats had to circle for hours before they could get guys landed."

All the while, mortars and rifle fire were being directed at the landing craft.

It was a harrowing experience for the 19-year-old from Tillamook, Ore., whose job it would be to call in naval fire on the well-dug-in Japanese soldiers, all of whom were committed to dying for their emperor.

It was his first and only combat experience in World War II. But it was a big one. It was a battle to the death.

Bennett recalls he felt some excitement as he and his fellow Marines approached the beach.

"Finally we would be doing our job," he said.

But not right away. Bennett would have to wait until enough room on the beach could be cleared for the radio men to set up their post, a communications jeep and a foxhole.

From his vantage point in the landing craft, Bennett could watch the fighting as the Marines worked to establish the beachhead.

Once on land, Bennett and his fellow radio operators remained in the same location throughout the weeks of fighting.

It provided him a front-row seat for perhaps the defining moment of World War II: the famous flag-raising on Mount Suribachi that would become the model for the Marine Corps Memorial and win Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize.

Actually, Bennett witnessed the raising of both flags, the smaller initial flag that was later replaced by a second, larger flag captured in the Rosenthal photo.

Bennett recalls asking himself what the Marines were up to in raising a second flag. The Marine commander wanted a larger flag to fly over the island.

"I felt pretty proud," Bennett now says of that moment. "When the first flag went up, everyone on the island could see it and everyone on the ships. They fired their guns and there was great exultation. Some thought the campaign was over and that we had conquered the Japanese."

Bennett said he knew better.

He remained near the beach throughout the campaign, sending radio transmissions to the ships. Elsewhere on the island, Navajo code talkers were sending messages in their native language, which the Japanese did not understand.

Bennett later met one of the code talkers while both served in the occupation of Japan after hostilities ended. The pair became reacquainted more than 50 years later during a trip Bennett and his wife, Marvilena, took to Arizona several years ago.

Bennett was discharged in 1946 after almost three years of military service. He would be called back to active duty during the Korean War.

He went to college and became a research chemist for the Crown Zellerbach Corp. Eventually, Bennett accepted an offer from Pace International to work at the recently purchased juice plant on Branch Road near Wapato. It was from there that Bennett retired to the family home in Zillah in 1998.