Felix de Weldon's 1954 bronze depicts five Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising the flag on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi as Allied forces struggled to capture the Japanese-held island.

WSJ: Original Iwo Jima monument coming to NYC auction

That sculpture, designed by Felix de Weldon, was patterned after a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press image of the Feb. 23, 1945, flag-raising by Marines and a Navy Corpsman on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi.

WSJ: Original Iwo Jima monument unsold at NYC auction

Suribachi, and who became the anonymous subjects of the most famous photograph of the war, three survived the battle to be called home and paraded around the country as salesmen-heroes in a national War Bond tour.

NEWYORKER: Flags of Our Fathers