Two days later he was a member of the patrol that captured the top of Mount Suribachi where he helped raise the first U.S. flag on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945.

[4] He graduated from high school in Monticello and was attending Tri-State University in Angola, Indiana, studying aeronautical engineering, when he decided to enlist in the Marine Corps at Orlando, Florida.

In September, his company was sent to Camp Tarawa in Hawaii to train with the 5th division for the Battle of Iwo Jima.

On February 19, his unit landed with the first wave of Marines on the southern beach of Iwo Jima towards Mount Suribachi.

Thomas and his men successfully assaulted a heavily fortified hostile sector at the base of Mount Suribachi.

[8] On February 23, 1945, Lieutenant Colonel Chandler W. Johnson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment, ordered a platoon-size patrol to climb up 556-foot Mount Suribachi.

Captain Dave Severance, E Company's commander, assembled the remainder of his Third Platoon and other members of the battalion headquarters including two Navy corpsmen and stretcher bearers.

First Lieutenant Harold Schrier, E Company's executive officer,[9] was handed the Second Battalion's American flag from Lt.

Lindberg (Platoon Sergeant Ernest Thomas was watching inside the group with a grenade in his hand while Pvt.

Ward, and Third Platoon corpsman John Bradley helped make the flagstaff stay in a vertical position.

The men at, around, and holding the flagstaff which included Schrier's radioman Raymond Jacobs (assigned to patrol from F Company), were photographed several times by Staff Sgt.

On February 24, Schrier ordered Thomas to report to the flagship USS Eldorado (AGC-11) the next morning to meet with Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner and Lieutenant General Holland Smith about the flag raising.

Thomas met with the two commanders and during an interview with a CBS news broadcaster aboard ship, he named Lt. Schrier, Sgt.

A 96 by 56 inch flag was obtained from a ship docked on shore and brought up to the top of Mount Suribachi by Pfc.

On March 14, an American flag was officially raised up a flagpole by orders of Lieutenant General Holland Smith at the V Amphibious Corps command post on the other side of Mount Suribachi where the 3rd Marine Division troops were located, and the second flag which was raised on February 23 on Mount Suribachi came down.

He was buried at the 5th Marine Division cemetery on Iwo Jima where a service was held on March 26, the morning of the day the battle ended.

Thomas's military decorations and awards include: Thomas' Navy Cross citation reads as follows: The Navy Cross is presented posthumously to Ernest I. Thomas Jr., United States Marine Corps Reserve, for extraordinary heroism as a Rifle Platoon Leader serving with Company E, Second Battalion, Twenty-Eighth Marines, Fifth Marine Division, during action on enemy Japanese-held Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 21 February 1945.

After each trip to the tanks, he returned to his men and led them in assaulting and neutralizing enemy emplacements, continuing to advance against the Japanese with a knife as his only weapon after the destruction of his rifle by hostile fire.

Under his aggressive leadership, the platoon killed all the enemy in the sector and contributed materially to the eventual capture of Mount Suribachi.

On March 3, eight days after the first flag raising and ten days after he earned the Navy Cross for heroism in action, he was killed leading his men in combat.March 10, 1924 - March 3, 1945.In the 2006 film Flags of Our Fathers, Thomas was played by American actor Brian Kimmet.