Just a couple of years after the Second World War, John Wayne starred in Sands of Iwo Jima, a movie reenacting it. At 42, the Hollywood actor felt he was too old to play Sgt John M Stryker ...

In real life and the movie, Hayes and the other two surviving ... Ira Hayes played himself, for a few seconds, in the 1949 “Sands of Iwo Jima,” the balderdashed John Wayne version of events.