By Ron Estes

“I carried the Regimental colors that day in the flag detail. I was a sergeant, a squad leader (three stripes). It was a stirring day.” Ron Estes later served 25 years as an Operations Officer in the CIA Clandestine Service and received the agency’s highest medal of honor.

Memorial Day, Uijeongbu, Korea, May 1953

The 1st Marine Division was taken off the line on 5 May 1953, and sent into corps reserve; 25 miles behind the fighting lines. It was sent there to regroup and refurbish: to prepare to go back up on the line. It was the first time the Marines had been taken off the line since they had been evacuated from Hungnam, after fighting their way there from the Chosin Reservoir.

The 1st Marine Division was comprised of three infantry regiments, The 1st Marines, the 5th Marines, and the 7th Marines, and an artillery regiment, the 11th Marines.

In reserve, the Division was set up in regimental compounds: each a tent city surrounded by barbed-wire fences.

On 30 May, Memorial day, the entire 1st Marine Regiment, the 1st Marines, 3,000 men, was marched out of its compound to a plateau surrounded by mountains. On the plateau the regiment was formed on line, shoulder to shoulder. 

Behind the Regimental Commander, the colors detail led the column: four Marines, one carried the U.S flag, one carried the regimental battle colors and two riflemen.

The Regimental Colors were laden with the battle streamers of the history of the regiment’s campaigns: Vera Cruz, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, Okinawa, Inchon, and Chosin Reservoir. 

It was considered a great honor to carry those colors.

Behind the regiment was a line of about 20 snare drummers. God knows where they came from.

Behind the drummers, a rifle squad.

Once on line, a flat-bed truck was parked in front of the regiment. Each regimental company commander then climbed the truck, and through a power system, announced the names and rank of each member of his company who had been killed in action since January the 1st.

After each name, a long drum roll sounded, rrrrrrrrrmp, dum dum. There were so many.

After the last name was announced, the rifle squad fired 21 volleys.

And then… a long complete silence, not even a cough.

Then, from a ridge of a surrounding mountain, a bugler blew taps.

That haunting bugle call echoed loudly, resounding throughout the valley.

There were 3,000 battle hardened Marines in that formation, and not a dry eye among them.

It’s okay to shed a tear on Memorial Day.