Famed Marines buried at Quantico cemetery

[Vulture6]

Famed Marines buried at Quantico cemetery

By Charles A. Jones
Special to the Times

Across Interstate 95 from Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. — called “The Crossroads of the Marine Corps” — is Quantico National Cemetery, the resting place of several famous leathernecks.

In 1977, the Corps transferred 725 acres of land to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the federal agency that oversees national cemeteries. Construction began in 1981, and the cemetery was completed in 1983.

It was dedicated May 15, 1983, with the first burial the next day. As of Nov. 24, the cemetery had 23,342 interments.

Famous Marines who participated in a variety of conflicts are buried there.

Col. William “Ironman” Lee earned three Navy Crosses and two Purple Hearts. He fought in World War I and Nicaragua and spent four years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

Capt. Louis Lowery, although not clearly identified in the recent film “Flags of Our Fathers,” was a staff sergeant working for “Leatherneck” magazine when he photographed the first flag-raising atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. His photograph was overshadowed by the famous image of the second flag-raising taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

Gen. Lewis Walt earned two Navy Crosses during World War II, one of which was for his leadership as a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander in taking and holding Aogiri Ridge during the Battle of Cape Gloucester, repelling five Japanese counterattacks in one morning. While assistant commandant of the Marine Corps from 1968 to 1971, he was promoted to general, becoming the first four-star to hold that position.

Cpl. Eugene Stoner, who was in combat aviation during World War II, became a small-arms designer regarded by some as being in the same class as John Browning and John Garand. Working for Armalite, Stoner improved its AR10 rifle — leading to the AR15 rifle, which the U.S. military modified and adopted as the M16 service rifle.

Leon Uris, a Marine who served in the South Pacific and New Zealand during World War II, wrote many novels, several of which were made into movies. “Battle Cry,” a 1953 story about the Corps, became a movie in 1955 and “Exodus,” a 1958 story about the founding of Israel, became a movie in 1960. He also wrote screenplays for the movies “Battle Cry” and 1957’s “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”

Lt. Col. William R. “Rich” Higgins, chief of the United Nations Observer Group, Lebanon, was kidnapped there in 1988 by terrorists. Higgins, who was married to another Marine officer, was promoted to colonel while missing. The terrorists later broadcast video of his body hanging by the neck.

Since his body was not recovered initially, Higgins has an “In Memory Of” marker at the cemetery. In 1991, his body was found dumped on a Beirut street. He was buried at Quantico; his tombstone has a date of death of 1990 and reads “killed in captivity.”


The writer is a lawyer in the Marine Corps Reserve. He can be reached at cajones@earthlink.net.