Our Lady, Protectress of the Marines

With filial gratitude in our hearts to Mary Immaculate, Patroness of the United States, and not unmindful that as it was on the Eve of the Feast of her Immaculate Conception that our nation was plunged into war (1941), so it was on the Feast of her Assumption into Heaven (Pacific Time) that she transmitted to us her Divine Son's gift of peace (1945), we hereby request that the Virgin Mother of Our Holy Redeemer be enshrined in your hearts, as she is in ours, under the title of Our Lady Protectress of the Marines. Indeed, the Virgin Mother of Christ is so loved by our men that entire regiments were solemnly dedicated to her; and like the Christian knights of old, rugged, hardened warriors, with her medallions, rosary, or scapular around their necks, stormed into battle crying her name. Firm is our belief that Our Lady personally conducted to the throne of her Divine Son our many comrades who, signed with the Sign of the Cross and faithful in devotion to her, made the supreme sacrifice. If, indeed, chaplains have been amazed to find so ardent a love for Our Lady among the Marines, how much more gratifying should this fact be to you. Our first act of thanksgiving, therefore, is to Almighty God that He, in His infinite goodness and mercy, saw fit to honor us, the Marines, by sending His own Mother to lead us safely, physically and spiritually, through the valley of shadows.

   -Sgt. Louis J. Maloof, USMC: from a statement to American Catholics signed by enlisted men of the Sixth Marine Division, Veterans of Okinawa, and the Third Marine Division, Veterans of Iwo Jima, World War II, and presented to Abp. Spellman at Guam, 20 August 1945; given influx in Our Sunday Visitor, 9 Sept. 1945.