Quantico, Virginia
Quantico’s Iron Mike is officially titled Crusading for Right. It depicts a World War I Marine holding a 1903 Springfield rifle, wearing a pack with a bayonet.
At the end of the war, US Army General John J. Pershing commissioned the French sculptor Charles Raphael Peyre (sometimes Raphael Charles Peyne) to commemorate the service of the US Army’s "doughboys". The sculptor, unaware of the differences between the branches of service, used a Marine private as a model and included the Eagle, Globe and Anchor insignia on the helmet. When Pershing saw the finished product, he insisted that the Marine Corps insignia be removed. The artist would not allow his work to be censored, so the Army declined to buy the statue.
Finally, Marine Corps General Smedley Butler raised enough money to buy the statue and had it installed in front of the headquarters building at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virgina. The statue was begun in 1918 and first exhibited at the Exposition des Beaux Arts of the Grand Palaise des Champs-Élysées, in Paris in May 1919. Marine Officers and Enlisted donated money to purchase the statue, and it was sited in front of the Base Headquarters, Building 1019, in Quantico, Virginia, some 75 miles from DC and a bit off the tourist trail. Three tablets were erected in the memory of the officers and men of the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, 5th Regiment and 6th Regiment, United States Marines, "who gave their lives for their country in the World War in 1918" by the Thomas Roberts Reath, Marine Post No. 186, American Legion, on November 10, 1921. On December 8, 1921, the statue was dedicated.
Today, a recreation of this statue stands in front of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, outside the Quantico base. On that statue's base is the name "Iron Mike". The original statue remains in front of Butler Hall, home of the Marine Corps Training and Education Command.
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