SIERRA MADRE, Calif., April 28 (UPI) -- World War II veteran Alan Wood, who played a supporting role in the famed flag-raising on Iwo Jima, was remembered Saturday at a memorial service in California.
The former naval officer provided the actual flag to the Marine Corps squad that raised the flag on Mount Suribachi.
Wood died April 18 at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Sierra Madre. He was 90 and suffered from congestive heart failure, his family said.
Wood was the communications officer on a landing ship when he encountered a Marine who had come back from the front to fetch a flag to carry up the mountain.
"He didn't talk much about it," Wood's son, Steven Wood, told the Los Angeles Times. "He didn't draw attention to himself. He was just there when someone needed a flag and he gave it to them."
After the war, the Pasadena native was a public information officer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during a number of landmark unmanned space missions.
