The Belleau Wood Guardian (BWG) is a 48-star American flag that has been in our family for a century.  Carried by U.S. Service personnel in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and multiple North Arabian Gulf and Middle-East operations, it is a true American combat relic.

The flag was first carried in combat by a U.S. Marine at the famous Battle of Belleau Wood in 1918.  BWG then spent 24 years on a shelf until it was summoned to serve with the U.S. Army, being reintroduced into combat in 1944 during the Invasion of Normandy.  After the fall of Berlin, BWG came home again and rested in a frame on a wall for another 20 years.

The flag was again beckoned forth in 1966, this time to Southeast Asia to be carried for the first time by a woman soldier/Patriot in a place called Pleiku.  A year later this Patriot handed BWG off to her brother who took it into the Central Highlands near Dak To.  After Vietnam, BWG again became dormant and hung in a frame on a wall for more than three decades.  In 1999 BWG was removed from the frame and, in an odd full circle manner, deployed aboard the vessel that carried the name of its inaugural battle (the U.S.S. Belleau Wood).  This was another protracted period of combat that ended with the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.

The flag is called the Guardian because everyone that had the honor of carrying this American relic came home alive and unharmed.  Today BWG rests in a frame on a wall in Virginia.  It faithfully awaits another call to arms – a day when one of our sons or daughters are needed.  On that day, it will be removed from its frame and perform its tireless work of sacrifice for the freedoms enjoyed by the people of the United States of America.  Semper Fidelis