Frozen in bronze as part of one of the most famous monuments in the world, Ira Hayes spent his short post-war life trying to escape the image that made him famous. This episode goes back to Sacaton, Arizona, where a silent Pima boy who could read by age four grew up on a subsistence cotton farm with a World War I veteran father. Hayes volunteered for the elite Paramarines in 1942, became the first Pima to earn jump wings, carried the Browning Automatic Rifle at Bougainville, and landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945 with a 45-man platoon of which only five would walk away.

We separate the flag raising from its myth: Hayes and his squad were sent up Mount Suribachi to haul communication wire, grabbed a heavy pipe to replace a smaller flag, and were caught by Joe Rosenthal's camera in a moment of manual labor. Pulled from combat for a 33-city b ...