Three Marines return to Cuba to raise the US flag, 54 years after lowering it

The flag itself will not be the same one taken down 54 years ago, a State Department source said

WASHINGTON: The three Marines, now retired, who had lowered the US flag at the American embassy in Cuba in 1961, will return on Friday with Secretary of State John Kerry to raise the Stars and Stripes once again.

"I'm gonna love seeing that flag go back up," said 78-year-old Jim Tracy in a video posted on the State Department website.

Tracy -- who served in the Marines for 30 years -- was a master gunnery sergeant tasked with lowering the flag at the embassy in Havana when the United States severed relations with Cuba on January 4, 1961.

A huge crowd of Cubans had gathered outside the embassy seeking visas to leave the island, then in the throes of a communist revolution.

As Tracy, Corporal Mike East and Lance Corporal Larry Morris marched out of the embassy, the crowd parted and the Marines proceeded to bring down the flag, ceremoniously folding it up.

"It was a touching moment," said East, who is now 76. Cuba was his first posting as a member of the Marine embassy detachment.

On Friday, they will go back to Havana with Kerry to seal the renewal of diplomatic relations embarked on in December by US President Barack Obama and Cuba's President Raul Castro.

White House spokesperson Katherine Vargas said the retired Marines were being reunited "to raise the flag again tomorrow at the ceremonial opening of the US Embassy in Cuba."

However, the flag itself will not be the same one which was taken down 54 years ago, a State Department source said.

Even so, for the now gray-haired Marines, the ceremony means the repairing of a breach.

The flag, said the 75-year-old Morris, "is coming back to where it should be."

It is expected that after the ceremony, the three retired Marines will hand over duties to another set of soldiers from the embassy detachment.