Three Marines raise U.S. flag in Cuba, 54 years after lowering it

Retired Marines, from left, Gunnery Sgt. Francis “Mike” East, Master Gunnery Sgt. James Tracy and Lance Cpl. Larry Morris, wait to present the U.S. flag to Marines currently stationed in Cuba, during the raising of the U.S. flag over the newly reopened embassy in Havana. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool/AP)

Washington (AFP) — Three Marines, now retired, who lowered the flag at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba in 1961 were back on Friday with Secretary of State John Kerry to raise the Stars and Stripes once again.

SLIDESHOW – Flag-raising ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba >>>

“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 U.S. severed relations with Cuba on Jan. 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, then-Cpl. Mike East and Lance Cpl. 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.

They returned to Havana with Kerry to seal the renewal of diplomatic relations embarked on in December by President Obama and Cuba’s President Raul Castro.

White House spokeswoman Katherine Vargas said the retired Marines were being reunited “to raise the flag again … at the ceremonial opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba.”

The flag itself will not be the same one 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.”