Sergeant Major Justin LaHue
speaker
52 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 31 Oct
Sergeant Major Justin LaHue’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.
Appearances
Steve, thanks for having me on. And Cleo, I don't think that could have been a better, more encapsulating intro. So kudos to you. We started this on October 26. This is about the fourth leg of our 2022 continuation journey. In 2023, it was 300 miles.
arriving at the Pentagon on National POW MIA Day. 2024 was all the way across 120 miles across the Florida Keys, highlighting the history of the Florida Keys, the military history of that region. And then this year was from ground zero on 9-11. We really started at Fort Hamilton, very historic Fort Hamilton, as everybody should be aware.
And we've been covering 20 miles a day, 20 to 40 pound packs.
And for the 250th, 250 miles for the 250th anniversary of the world's finest fighting force. And we're currently, last night we walked into Philadelphia. And Philadelphia is the home base. It's ground zero. It's the birthplace of the United States Marine Corps. Just held a fabulous ceremony here for the city just about a week and a half ago. And went down to the Tun Tavern sign. We are going to continue. We took a day off today.
Going to continue on down the road through Wilmington, Delaware, down through Baltimore, Fort McHenry, down through Washington, D.C., the Marine Barracks, the War Memorial, the 9-11 site, the Pentagon, past Arlington National Cemetery, remembering all those for veterans who have fallen in the service of their nation or served in the service of their nation.
and then ending up at a cake-cutting ceremony on 10 November at the beautiful and historic National Museum of the Marine Corps. And a few years ago, Steve, I walked into a post office in 2022. We were coming out of the pandemic shutdown that really killed a lot of international operations and recoveries.
of our service members abroad, and it was, I found out that that black POW MIA flag that flies over every federal installation, every post office, and is the only flag that is authorized to fly underneath the American colors in all 50 states and territories. Now, if you're from Iowa, you can fly the Iowa flag underneath the U.S. colors. You're from Ohio, the Ohio flag is
But there's only one other flag all the way across our nation that's authorized to fly in all of those states and territories, and that's the black and white POW MIA flag. And I found that people were really forgetting why that was created and what that was. And I walked into a post office to mail a package in spring of 2022. I talked to a very nice young lady that had a tattered POW MIA flag.
I asked if I could replace that for them. They said that they had that on order. And when I kind of walked out after failing the package and I offered to put one up for them again, she just stopped me and she said, can I ask you why that matters so much? I've worked here a long time. And a lot of people asked to replace the American flag, but no one has ever asked to replace that flag. And you're the first one. And after about five minutes of talking to her, that woman was in tears.
And she said, I will get right on that, sir. And when I walked past that post office the following morning, that flag was up.
And I figured, you know, if I can have a five-minute conversation and do that with one person, you know, maybe I could walk across the nation or do a few other things and go where the rubber meets the road and talk to individuals and get out there in the hometowns of America and remind people what that flag means and that service and sacrifice.
So it's an incredible honor right now, walking 250 miles. We were in a rainstorm yesterday, about 50 mile per hour, wind gusts. A lot of people saying, hey, you knew that weather was coming, why didn't you just take the day off yesterday? And it was like, you know what, since 1775...
Our nation, the Marines, have hiked in a lot worse weather than that, and it was an honor and a privilege to be able to walk into the beautiful city of Philadelphia yesterday under those conditions, representing 250 years of the United States Marine Corps. So that's a little bit of the tidbit of why we're doing what we do, a little bit of motivation behind that, Steve, and again, thanks for having me on the program today.
And I fought in that four and a half square mile cemetery on August 5th to August 28th of 2004. One of the finest fighting units that I think America has ever put on the field of battle. I mean, everywhere that you look, nobody teaches you how to fight inside of a cemetery. Everywhere you look...
125 degrees on the ground, 40 pounds of kit on these Marines. I had 162 of the greatest warriors that anybody has ever put on the battlefield, I think, in the history of the world.
And we pushed into that cemetery and fought for those 25 days to secure elections, to secure a very hostile city, and basically be the first ones fighting the house-to-house, street-to-street, that just a couple of months later, units like 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, and all of that, were going to push into the city of Fallujah. And Najaf set the precedence for that.
The U.S. Marines have been fighting hand to hand and house to house and street to street like that since 1775. And because we have people like that, Steve, we're going to be fighting like that because we're Americans. We were born in war. We're going to fight like that for the next 250 years for our survival. And God bless that we have an organization like the Marine Corps that's going to do more than their share for that.
for looking out into a cemetery in the direction of north, south, east, and west, and as far as the eye can see to the horizon, it's nothing but above-ground tombs, crypts. And on August 5th, when you're getting an order at 130 degrees of heat that day, roughly about 4 p.m. in the afternoon, that says, you know what, we're going to take it to the enemy now, because these were exclusionary zones before.
When we first took over Najaf from the U.S. Army, we were briefed that there were certain areas like Kufa and the cemetery that were off-limits. They were red zones, exclusionary zones. You could not go in there. And the Marines instantly knew, well, that's where they're at. So when we took over and a police station was attacked and a helicopter was hit on August 5th, it was, we're going to pivot to those areas and we're going to start...
putting bayonets on weapons, and we're going to route tomb to tomb and street to street, and we're going to clear four and five and six hundred meters of this from stone to stone, above and both below ground. There is no amount of training or sitting in a school arena that ever has prepared Marines to fight in a cemetery that is thousands of years old and is about five square miles. People cannot even encapsulate that inside of their heads.
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