Tag Archives: Francis Scott Key

A Special Flag Day, looking back 80 Years

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A popular trope is that on U.S. military bases the flagpole’s finial– the golden ball at the top of the pole–contains a razor, a match, and a bullet, just in case the base falls, so that the banner doesn’t fall into enemy hands.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

With that being said, the West Point Museum holds a small strip of cloth, a fragment of an American Flag, formerly carried by Black Knights legend, Paul D. Bunker (USMA 1903).

As noted by the Museum:

(Photo: West Point)

This artifact in the West Point Museum collection rotates on and off exhibit. Following his graduation, Bunker served 40 years in the Army. During World War Two he was on the island of Corregidor when it was captured by Japanese forces, becoming a prisoner of war. On 6 May 1942, Colonel Bunker was ordered to remove the U.S. Flag from its pole for destruction and raise a white sheet (signifying the American surrender). Prior to the U.S. Flag’s destruction, he cut a piece out of the red stripe. On 10 June he cut this piece of the flag into two segments giving one piece to fellow POW Colonel Delbert Ausmus and holding on to the other. Bunker would not survive his time in captivity and died of starvation and illness on 16 March 1943. He was cremated with the segment of the flag he kept. Ausmus kept Bunker’s war diary, as well as this segment of the flag through his time in captivity.

Ausmus said, “On several occasions, the shirt and all of my possessions were examined by the Japanese without the piece of flag being discovered”. Upon liberation, Ausmus presented this segment of the U.S. Flag at Corregidor to the Secretary of War.

Colonel Bunker’s cremated remains were recovered in 1948 and re-interned at West Point. His legacy still lives as an inspiration in the West Point Community. During his time at West Point Bunker was an outstanding football player, contributing to three victories over Navy. He was inducted into the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame in 1969, as well as the Army West Point Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013.

Happy Flag Day

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Even in Preble’s day, the flag had to be guarded day and night to prevent souvenir hunters from making away with bits of it-Note the relative size of the Marine complete with heavy white buff leather belts, M1859 pattern enlisted dress frock coat with fringed epaulettes and tall painted shako. This particular antebellum uniform would be replaced in 1875.

This is the first known photograph, taken on 21 June 1873 in the Boston Navy Yard by then-Commodore George Henry Preble, of the Great Garrison Flag– the famous flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the National Anthem. The flag was flown over Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland during the bombardment of the position by the Brits in 1814. Preble, entered the Navy as a midshipman on December 10, 1835, and retired in 1878 as a rear admiral after a 43-year career.

While at the Boston Naval Yard, Preble had the cotton and dyed English wool bunting flag sewn to a piece of sailcloth in order to preserve it and penned the first book about the ensign, History of the American Flag. Even in Preble’s day, the flag had to be guarded day and night to prevent souvenir hunters from making away with bits of it– and swaths cut from the banner before then still surface today. 

The flag has been in the Smithsonian’s collection since 1912 and was restored/stabilized in 2008.

The preserved Star-Spangled Banner today is on display in its own protective chamber at the Smithsonian, and you can thank RADM Preble for that. (Hugh Talman / NMAH, SI)

Washington’s Standard

Also, if you are in the Philadelphia area this week/end, the faded and fragile blue silk flag known as the Commander-in-Chief’s Standard that marked General George Washington’s presence on the battlefield during the Revolutionary War will be on display this Flag Day through Sunday, marking its first public display in Philadelphia since the war itself. The Museum of the American Revolution is bringing the old banner out from secure archival storage for the event.

The AmRev will also have famous original Monmouth Flag and the Forster Flag on display, two of the oldest surviving flags from the American Revolution, dating to 1775-6.