Raymond Goron, 86, was a Navy corpsman on Iwo Jima.

Yesterday he left a banquet commemorating the battle with a piece of that godforsaken speck in the Pacific: a packet of the black volcanic sand that tormented the Marine Corps during its fight for the island from Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945.

It was a gift from Tom Jones, a retired Marine major general whose wife's father, a Johnstown steelworker, served on Iwo.

This quiet tribute from one military man to another was one of many at an event arranged by state Rep. Tim Krieger, R-Delmont, to salute World War II veterans on the 65th anniversary of the victory on Iwo.

Some 60 veterans from all branches of the military were honored for their service in major campaigns across Europe and the Pacific, from the Battle of the Bulge to Tarawa.

"We wouldn't be here today if not for the guys who are sitting in this audience," said Gen. Jones, the keynote speaker, who served in Vietnam and the Gulf War.

But it was Iwo Jima that received special attention.

The victory cost 25,000 U.S. casualties, including nearly 7,000 killed, the majority of them Marines. More than 20,000 Japanese defenders died in some of the most vicious combat of the war.

Mr. Goron, one of two Iwo veterans who addressed the crowd, is proud of the job he did but not ashamed to say he suffered a nervous breakdown after a kamikaze plane slammed into his ship, killing 40 men, including the captain.

"I lost all sense," he said. "It will get to you after awhile."

That plane attack came after he'd already spent five days on shore in a field hospital, tending to wounded Marines.

"As soon as we landed, the Marines started coming in, wounded and dead," he said. "We stacked them up like cordwood."

A McKees Rocks native who now lives in Greensburg, Mr. Goron graduated from high school in Connellsville in 1943 and enlisted, even though as a railroad worker he was exempt from service. He chose the Navy, he said, because he wanted to see the world and "didn't want to kill anyone."

He ended up seeing enough death for several lifetimes.

He experienced his first tragedy even before he made it to the war when two ships collided off the New Jersey coast and he helped recover 80 frozen bodies.

On their way to Iwo from Hawaii, the Marines and sailors knew what was in store. The island was a stepping-stone to the Japanese homeland and its defenders had dug a network of caves and tunnels, prepared for a fight to the death.

A naval bombardment did little to soften their resolve. As his ship approached, Mr. Goron recalled, one Marine broke down, stripped off his gear and jumped overboard.

"We never saw him again," he said.

After the Marines landed, Mr. Goron's 40-man "beach party" scrambled ashore to establish a field hospital. One Marine who came to help out, he remembers, got shot in the back of the head and died before anyone could reach him.

Rockets, mortars and machine guns raked the black sand. His closest call came when a rocket passed over the hospital so closely that its exhaust caught his blanket on fire.

On Feb. 23, he saw a group of Marines raise the first flag on Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano at one end of the island. But that isn't the iconic photo taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal; his shot was of the second, more dramatic raising with a much bigger flag.

The first has largely been forgotten.

"The first flag-raisers never got any credit at all," said Mr. Goron.

After five days on the beach, Mr. Goron wasn't needed ashore any longer and returned to his ship to treat the wounded. It was then that the kamikazes attacked. After the first one hit his ship, he said, he saw two black sailors on the badly-burned superstructure stay at their posts and fire at a second plane, shooting it down.

The sailors weren't allowed to fire the gun, he said, without permission from their white officer. But the man had jumped overboard.

Iwo brought out cowardice and heroism, he said, in equal measure.

Mr. Goron suffered his own breakdown after the attack, crying and unable to move, but he said his friends talked to him and eventually brought him around.

He later saw action at Okinawa.

When the war ended, he was back in San Francisco, where he joined with other servicemen in "kissing all the girls" during a massive street celebration that also included plenty of vandalism.

He eventually returned home and spent most of his career working at a Westinghouse plant in Youngwood.

Iwo Jima has never left his mind; he wears a belt buckle with a depiction of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi.

That image inspired the sculpture for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va.. At its base is an inscription of the tribute from Adm. Chester Nimitz to the men who fought at Iwo: "Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue."

Washington correspondent Daniel Malloy writes the "Pittsburgh On The Potomac" blog exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.