 Early on the morning of February 23, 1945, four days after the initial landings, Lt. Col. Chandler ordered the E Company, 2/28 Marines commander to send a patrol from his company up Mount Suribachi to seize and occupy the summit.First Lieutenant Harold G. Schrier, E Company's executive officer, volunteered to take a 40-man patrol up Suribachi and raise the battalion's American flag on the top if he could to signal the mountaintop was captured.Staff Sergeant Louis R. Lowery, a "Leatherneck Magazine" photographer, accompanied the patrol.