When Corp. Edward Chin and the rest of 3rd Battalion, 4th🍸 Marines rolled into Baghdad 15 yea🦩rs ago today, the winds of change were blowing — and, in doing so, conspired to create one of the most enduring images of the War on Terror.
Chin — the Brooklyn-bred leatherneck famously photographed holding an American flag over the face of a soon-to-be-toppled statue of Saddam Hussein during the April 9, 2003, fall of the Iraqi capital — says the Stars & Stripes only ended up 🃏in the deposed despot’s face thanks to a chance gust of wind.
“As I was heading up there, my captain wi𝓰th Bravo Company handed me the flag,” Chin told The Post on Sunday. “He said, ‘When you get up💯 there, show the boys the colors.’”
The tank mechanic, then 23, replied, “Will do, sir,” and scaled the crane of his M88A2 Hercule🔯s tank recovery vehicle towards the head of the 39-foot monument in the center of Baghdad’s Firdos Square.
Chin first wrapped the statue’s neck with the length of rope that would bring it down minutes later — a dark bit of foreshado🐽wing in light of the actual Saddam’s eventual demise at t༺he end of a hangman’s noose in Dec. 2006.
He then pulled Old Glory out from under his flak jacket, and, before he knew it, “The wind blew the flag onto [the statue’s] head,” Chin recalled. “I said, ‘That works for me,’ so I left it theꦏre for a few seconds.”
“It was almost kind of divine,” said Chin, no🐟w a 38-year-old architect living on Staten Island with his wife, 4-year-old daughter, and 5-month-old son.
One civilia𓆉n from among the throng of onlookers soon held aloft an Iraqi flag, which Chin quickly substituted for the Stars & Stripes so as not to inflame tensions on the emotional day.
“I didn’t want people to be mad at me,🧸” he explains.
Minutes later, the M88A2 surged forward, dragging down the statue and sending jubilant Baghdadis scrambling to chip 🌠off a shard aꦯs a keepsake.
“I never got a piece of it myself. I wish I did,” Chin said with a chuckle. “[Brass] told us we couldn’t bring any war trophies 🐲home. It wasn’t [like] Vietnam.”
As Saddam’s statue fell a✃nd crumbled, the feeling among Marines and civilians alike was that Iraq’s long era of dictatorship and sꦅtrife was soon to follow.
“That was definitely the feeling,” said Chin. “When we f🌳inally got to Baghdad, I felt like𓆏 we were welcomed at that moment. They were tired of Saddam Hussein.”
But the war dragged on through the years, past the fall of Baghdad, past official admissions that no weapons of mass destruction could be found in the country♐, an🐠d past the capture and execution of Saddam.
Chin left the corཧps as a sergeant at the end of his first tour in June🌺 2003.
Though the months after his return often felt like a hero’s welcome — he threw out the first pitch at a Mets game, met with President George W. Bush, and was invited to the White House for Asian-American Heritage Month — Chin reserves th♕at title for others.
“I’ve been called a hero, but I don’t feel that way,” he says. “[With] the guys who laid down their lives, who came back with limbs lost … it’s hard to feel like a hero.”