Bellamy notes this is the sixth anniversary of “Armed Forces Week”
in the US. This is the first of several Armed Forces Week specials that Secret would do. Henry
points out that Bellamy took on his guest hosting duties with only two
hours notice. CBS newsman Eric Sevareid
was to have filled in for the vacationing Garry, but fell ill at the last
minute.
Marine Corps Corporal X: “I helped raise the
flag on Iwo Jima”
For years, Corporal Rene Gagnon was
believed to be one of the six marines in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph,
raising an American flag on Mount Suribachi.
Gagnon points himself out on the show as the marine whose full body
(turned away from the camera) is in the center of the photo. In 2019, the Marine Corps would announce publicly
that it was not Gagnon in the photograph, but another marine instead. In fact, of the six marines in the picture,
only three were correctly identified originally. Gagnon made the identifications himself in
1945 in Washington DC, two weeks after the fighting on the island ended. The reasons for his errors have been lost to
history. Gagnon returned to the show for the 1958 Armed Forces special (
E285
). He died in 1979.
Lt [Richard Daily] and SSgt Carl Osgood lead a Marine precision
drill team of a dozen men on the small Secret stage.
Air Force Lt. Henry Nielsen and Cpt. Edward
Sperry: “We parachuted from 8 ½ miles in the air” (World Record)
The tests were designed to prove the
feasibility of a particular ejection system which sent the pilot out of the
plane in a downward motion at 500 miles per hour, still attached to his seat. The fliers did not hold their world record
for long. By the late fifties, the air
force experimented with ejection systems at much higher altitudes.
Navy Commander Howell Forgy from Pluckemin, NJ:
“I said ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition’” (Dec. 7, 1941)
Commander Forgy was a chaplain aboard
the USS New Orleans during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and said the
now famous quote to bolster spirits while literally helping pass ammunition to
the gurneys. The quote entered the
public consciousness as a patriotic song written in 1942 by Frank Loesser. The Fort Dix Soldiers Chorus (some thirty
men) enters the studio singing the Loesser composition.
Music for this special episode was provided by the 69th
division band, under the leadership of [Alexander T Defranzo]. The Fort Dix men sing “Oh How I
Hate To Get Up In The Morning” over the credits.
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