FALSE.
From Snopes:
Claim: Lee Marvin, actor, and Bob Keeshan, television's "Captain Kangaroo," fought together at the battle for Iwo Jima.
Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]
Tonight Show... Johnny Carson...His guest was Lee Marvin.
Johnny said..."Lee, I'll bet a lot of people are unaware that you were a Marine in the initial landing at Iwo Jima...and that during the course of that action you earned the Navy Cross and were severely wounded."
And you know how Lee was..."Yeah, yeah...I got shot square in the ass and they gave me the Cross for securing a hot spot about halfway up Suribachi. Bad thing about getting shot up on a mountain is guys gettin' shot hauling you down. But Johnny at Iwo I served under the bravest man I ever knew...We both got the Cross the same day but what he did for his Cross made mine look cheap in comparison. The dumb bastard actually stood up on Red Beach and directed his troops to move forward and get the hell off the beach. That Sgt. and I have been life long friends...When they brought me off Suribachi we passed the Sgt. and he lit a smoke and passed it to me lying on my belly on the litter..."Where'd they get you Lee?"...."Well Bob...if you make it home before me, tell Mom to sell the outhouse."..... "Johnny, I'm not lying...Sgt. Keeshan was the bravest man I ever Knew - Bob Keeshan....
You and the world know him as Captain Kangaroo."
Origins: We can't say for sure whether Lee Marvin ever told the story described above to Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show (Marvin was a guest on the show seven times during Carson's tenure as host), but the details of the anecdote are undeniably false.
Lee Marvin did enlist in the U.S. Marines and saw action in the Pacific during World War II, and he was wounded (in the buttocks) by fire which severed his sciatic nerve. However, this injury occurred during the battle for Saipan in June 1944, not the battle for Iwo Jima, which took place several months later in February 1945.
Bob Keeshan, later famous as television's "Captain Kangaroo" also enlisted in the U.S. Marines, but too late to see any action during World War II. Keeshan was born on 27 June 1927 and enlisted two weeks before his 18th birthday, months too late to have taken part in the fighting at Iwo Jima. A 1997 interview with Keeshan noted that he "later enlisted in the U.S. Marines, but saw no combat" because, as Keeshan said, his enlistment "was just before we dropped the atom bomb."
Last updated: 8 March 2002