LEWISTON – Rolland Madore never talked about it. Not to his wife. Not to his children. Not to friends.

It’s been his secret for nearly 61 years.

On Thursday, Madore could finally put his time on the island into words. He didn’t break down.

As he talked in his Lewiston apartment, he wore the standard issue fatigue cap of the U.S. Marines, its center decorated by a streak of red, the insignia of the 5th Marine Division. He takes it off only to sleep. It’s his memorial to his buddies who never made it home.

In what now seems a former life, the 80-year-old was a young Marine on a landing craft circling off the southern tip of Iwo Jima, a shot of whiskey and steak still in his stomach. He had gotten so seasick he was eager to get ashore.

But when the amphibious vehicle delivered him to the volcanic sands of the beach, he forgot about his stomach.

The battle veterans had told him it was going to be the worst fighting yet. Madore didn’t know what that meant. His only war experience had been training stateside. He had enlisted as a 16-year-old from Lewiston.

Then he was on the beach, standing in a shell hole. Rounds rained down from the left and right. He shot a glance into the shell hole next to his. Two of his buddies had been hit.

He started shaking. He started shoveling to make a bigger hole, to get out of sight. Others just stood on the beach. He heard some of the Marines yelling, “Look at Frenchy, he’s digging.” Then they started to dig.

His regiment headed northeast, another split west toward Mount Suribachi. There, troops eventually planted an iconic American flag on the highest point of the island. A photograph capturing the historic moment later brought fame to those Marines and the bloody battle for the pivotal Pacific island. He didn’t know the men who raised the flag. He may have talked to one of them, briefly, he said.

Madore’s unit fought its way up toward the island’s northern tip, five miles away. It was his job as a rifleman to fire a burst of three blasts into the pillboxes so his troops could advance.

Half way up the island, he suddenly heard troops cheering. When he looked back, he could see an American flag waving from the mountain.

His 15th day on the island, he was about two-thirds of the way toward the northern tip, on Hill No. 362. He was in a hole. The Japanese started shelling. A chunk of shrapnel ripped into his left shoulder. Had his shoulder not blocked the metal shard, it would have pierced the head of his buddy, who had been leaning on him, Madore said.

“When you see all your buddies and officers around you getting killed, you ask when’s your turn … you never know … it’s such a devastating place.”

The official toll, nearly 7,000 American troops dead, roughly 20,000 wounded. The Japanese death toll topped 20,000.

His buddies evacuated Madore to the beach, but couldn’t do much for him. The shrapnel had lodged too close to his heart. He was taken by ship to Guam, then to Hawaii. At a hospital there, he was patched up and decorated with a Purple Heart.

Snapped from his reverie, Madore said Thursday from his apartment kitchen, “Gee, what history I’ve been through. It’s unbelievable now that I think of it.”

On May 21, 1943, he had joined the U.S. Marines at 16, two weeks into the seventh grade. He needed his father’s signature on his enlistment papers. He was called to duty shortly after he turned 17.

Living in Little Canada, the Lewiston boy could barely speak English. That earned him his nickname.

When the war was over, he returned to Lewiston, pursued a high school diploma and, later, the priesthood. But he met his future wife. They had six children, who had 12 children, who had 13 children.

At 80, and divorced, he lives alone in his first-floor apartment.

He told his story publicly for the first time Thursday, prompted by the opening of a movie about the marines who fought on the same island.

Madore plans to see the film on Saturday with his three daughters.

He tried to talk about his time on Iwo Jima before. “I’d just start crying. I couldn’t do it,” he said.