These Marines took down the U.S. flag in Cuba in 1961. Today, they watched it rise again.

[DonViejo]

Marine Corps veterans Francis ‘Mike’ East, James Tracy and Larry Morris wait to present the U.S. flag to Marines stationed in Cuba during the raising of the U.S. flag over the newly reopened embassy in Havana, Cuba on Friday, Aug. 14. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

It was a few days into January 1961 when three Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Havana were given a sad task: Take down the American flag. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was shutting down the diplomatic compound and pulling Americans out, a response to the downward spiral in U.S. relations with the new government of Fidel Castro.

The non-commissioned officer in charge at the embassy asked for three volunteers — “the biggest, ugliest Marines you can find,” recalled retired Master Gunnery Sgt. Jim Tracy, then a sergeant. He and two others — then-Lance Cpl. Larry C. Morris and then-Cpl. Francis “Mike” East — were sent out to part a crowd of about 300 Cubans and take down Old Glory, Tracy said.

“We didn’t have anybody on the sidewalks at all,” Tracy said in a State Department video released this week. “They knew what we were going to do.”

On Friday, the Marines, now in their 70s, returned to Havana alongside Secretary of State John F. Kerry to take part in a ceremony to raise the flag again. It has been more than 54 years since U.S. relations with Cuba were severed, but the embassy reopened following an agreement reached earlier this year between Havana and Washington.

Kerry said that tensions were high as the Marines took down the flag in 1961. He recalled how they folded the flag surrounded by Cubans before returning to the embassy building.

“Fifty-four years ago, you gentlemen promised to return to Havana and hoist the flag over the United States embassy that you lowered on that January day long ago,” the secretary said. “Today, I invite you, on behalf of President Obama and the American people to fulfill that pledge by presenting the Stars and Stripes to be raised by members of our current military detachment.”

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