"The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a MARINE CORPS for the next 500 years."
James Forrestal, Secretary Of The Navy
What!!!!!
ONLY 500 years?
Tsk, Tsk, tsk...
Chesty did better than that!
Ref
http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=220604&messageid=1033318016
http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=220604&messageid=1033318016
BTW, it was this same Forrestal who not long afterward had the following warning for the Corps...
"THROUGH THE YEARS...
"Beginning with the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Marines had survived eleven serious proposals to disband the Corps or merge it with the Army.5"
"...Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, who was inspecting Green Beach on Iwo Jima that morning in 1945, saw the Stars and Stripes go up atop Mount Suribachi and heard the beleaguered troops below come alive with whistles and cheers and shouts of joy. He turned to Marine General Holland M. Smith and said, 'The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years!'1"
Forrestal had been speaking of the first flag raising on Suribachi at about 1020 on the morning of 23 February 1945, not the raising of the second, or 'replacement' flag made famous by the Rosenthal photograph.
"In 1948 Secretary Forrestal--the same Forrestal who had predicted a long future for the Marines on the beachhead below Suribachi--warned the Corps not to begin thinking of itself as a second Army.14"
-Marling/Wetenhall
Ref
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/notes.html