Test captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 thats from the marine corps archives. And signed in big letters, harry truman. The key west conference pulled it all back. There was a picture of truman with a rifle with the marines looking around. Pull the trigger. And then theres one of the most probably the most critical document in marine corps history. Thats an apology by the president of the United States to the marine corps for his remarks. Now where have you ever seen Something Like that . Can you imagine truman gritting his teeth while writing that . He does put that big harry truman on the back of it. General cates was Second Division guy, fourth brigade, and he belawood, took with about 16 marines and fought through. After it quieted down, thank you, mccar thur, and using the marines that way and once the public bought into that, this receded. Of course, years later, i mean its still a good competition between the army, navy, marines, et cetera, but, you know, that has to be. Improved and done the right way. Thank you very much. [ applause ] i see that next month is the 100th anniversary of belawood. Is there any special National Recognition of that event . Not national. I mean the Centennial Commission is recognizing it, the Marines Corps is doing their thing. Com man dant is going over to make his remarks. A lot of the families of the descendents of the marines are going over as a group. The marine corps is planning a symposium at quantico, where a historian will come in and bring in the artifacts and things that were done. The marine corps is putting out history of the battles because, you know, this is an interesting thing. This is one of the points i want to make is about remembrance. How do we remember this. Im afraid, you know, its going to go by fast and were going to lose part of what we should be remembering. We should be remembering we remember the men, but what about the what does this mean to our nation . You know, a lot of talk about the casualties, but why . What about the casualties . Pershing knew. He put it wasnt pershings fault we werent ready. You could put that on wilson. Once pershing was there, the offensive was going to begin the next year to win the war. Once pershing saw that the line was moving, he put his his determination was, im going to spend the lives now and win it this year rather than next year. You know, if you go and look at what they were asked to do, half troops trained in what was terrible conditions against germans that were veterans of three or four years of battle, but he decided thats what were going to do. Its reminiscent of grant when he says overland, were not coming back and he spends all those casualties, but the war does come to an end. Hopefully well interpret that, thats what happened, about but was pershing right or wrong . We should discuss it. Sorry. Thank you, sir, very much for your impassioned defense of the marine corps. The measure of a man is the caliber of his enemy. Based on that, marines have a High Standard there with their enemies ranging from Teddy Roosevelt to truman to many others. What they say about the marine corps, its the Mens Department of the u. S. Navy. It may be politically incorrect to say that, but i think you will understand. My question is about the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Yes. Bringing it back to that and how would you say that trumans experience in world war i and his recognition of the casualties that would likely be incurred in the invasion of japan, how that factored into his decision to use the atomic bomb . Im glad you picked up on that little thing i was dangling out there in the beginning. That goes back to the point that we were just talking about is, he was not in battle very long. How could that impact his psyche when it comes to now becoming the war president. And my sense of it is that truman saw what war was, he experienced it, didnt need ten more months to see death and destruction. Also, knowing truman as ive studied him from afar and i wish i could talk to that guy because sometimes he would not respond in his letters and such, he would just he was like your uncle that comes over on sunday and you make fun of him when he leaves. The point is that he was really a genius. About a minute left in this conversation. We will leave it here to go live to remarks from u. S. Army secretary Ryan Mccarthy and army chief of staff general james mccart mcconville who will talk about their efforts to modernization the army. We are graced with the presence of the 24th secretary