The package lands on my desk one Tuesday, overnighted from Los Angeles.

Inside the package is a single manila envelope sent to me by a woman named Dezreen MacDowell. Inside the thin envelope is the sum total of everything Dezreen knows about the time her stepfather, Harold Schultz, spent fighting on Iwo Jima.

My search for Schultz has been long, frustrated by false leads and dead ends. I contact a man in Indiana, and a woman in Pennsylvania, and several middle-aged men in Michigan. Yes, their departed father was named Harold H. Schultz, they say. No, he was not a Marine in World War II.

When I finally track the real Schultz by following his Purple Heart, which had been sold by a distant relative to a California pawnshop, it becomes clear why he was so hard to find.

Our Mystery Man lived a mysterious life.

Wounded on Iwo Jima just weeks after the famous flag-raising photo was taken, Schultz came back to the United States, got an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps and moved to sunny L.A.

He worked for the U.S. Postal Service for his entire career. After a teenage fiancee died — likely while Schultz was fighting in the Pacific — he spent most of his adult life single and never fathered any children.

He finally married in his 60s, to Rita Reyes Schultz. She had several children, including Dezreen, from a previous marriage.

Harold was kind, quiet and all-but-silent on the subject of his World War II experience.

Dezreen tried to ask him questions. Harold told her he lied about his age to join the Marines early. He told her about coming home. He never breathed a word about Iwo Jima or Suribachi or a famous photo.

He died in 1995, with few friends and no close relatives, as far as Dezreen knows. Harold Schultz didn’t get so much as a one-paragraph obituary, though he did score a famous final resting place: Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where ordinary folks are buried next to film stars like Rudolph Valentino and punk rock guitarist Johnny Ramone.

After her mother died last year, Dezreen helped to clean out her house. It was then that she found a manila envelope containing the things Harold Schultz chose to save from his long-ago war.

I open the envelope. Here are Schultz's discharge papers. Here is a program from the Marine Corps' 40th anniversary reunion for Iwo Jima veterans, a celebration it looks like Harold Schultz attended.

Here is a copy of the group photo taken atop Mount Suribachi. It's known as the "Gung Ho" photo and is famous in its own right. The photo is autographed at the bottom by the man who took it: Joe Rosenthal.

On the back of the photo, in shaky blue ink, Schultz has written the names of the 18 men in the "Gung Ho" photo, from left to right.

PFC Ira Hayes, he writes. First Lieutenant Harold Schrier, third from left. Then Sousley. Strank. Bradley. Fifth from the right, he writes his own name, tracing over the 'z' twice to make it more visible: "PFC Harold H Schultz."

There is one more item in this envelope. It is right on top of the other pieces of memorabilia, in fact, the first thing I see.

I set it aside, and then when I have looked at the rest of the envelope's contents, I pick it up and stare at this photo for a long time, wondering if the fact that Harold Schultz kept a copy of the famous flag-raising photo until the day he died means anything — or nothing at all.

I slowly turn it over, hoping he has written the names in shaky blue ink, hoping he will lead us closer to answering a seven decade-old question, hoping he will tell us something, anything, about the most reproduced photo of all time.

There is no blue ink. There is nothing at all.

The back of the photo is blank. Harold Schultz isn't solving the lingering mystery of the Iwo Jima flag raising. If we want to do that, we'll have to do it ourselves.