Arlington, Virginia
Meade St. and Marshall Dr.
GPS coordinates: 38.890423,-77.069736
Take a photo of your rally flag with the above image.

The famous USMC Memorial is adjacent to the Arlington National Cemetery and is in honor of the service and sacrifice of the men and women of the U.S. Marine Corps since 1775 when the branch was known as the Continental Marines. The Iwo Jima statue became a symbol of hard-fought World War II battles in the South Pacific and the hard-charging Marines.

On February 23, 1945, five days after Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima, AP photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped the iconic image of five Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising the flag that claimed victory over the tallest point of the island, Mt. Suribachi. The conquest of Mt. Suribachi was strategically important in the battle because the enemy had been using the vantage point to advise artillery fire. Victory over the rest of the island wouldn't come until 31 days later.

The flag-raising in Rosenthal's photo was actually the second Stars and Stripes to fly there that day. As the story goes, a flag was raised earlier in the day and upon seeing it, the Secretary of the Navy, who had been witnessing the battle, wanted to have it as a personal souvenir. When the Battalion Commander heard of that, he ordered his operations officer to retrieve the flag for the battalion and put up a replacement. As the lieutenant was leaving, he shouted, "And make it a bigger one!"

The USMC Memorial is accessible 24/7.

The Arlington National Cemetery is the nation’s most hallowed burial ground. It was started in 1861 when a Union officer decided that the best place to inter Civil War dead was on the grounds of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s plantation, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

The cemetery contains the grave of President John F. Kennedy’s, the Tomb of the Unknowns, the USS Maine Memorial, Space Shuttle Challenger Cenotaph, Women in Service Memorial, and many others.

More than 300,000 soldiers and their dependents are buried here and every Memorial Day, an American flag is placed at each grave.

The cemetery portion is open to the public 365 days a year, 8am to 7pm. A visit here should be on every patriotic American's bucket list.

NOTE: The rider of the bike in the above photo obtained permission from a National Park Service employee to ride onto the sidewalk. If you can't get your bike in the photo, photograph the rally flag with the monument and submit a 2nd photograph of your bike and rally flag nearby.

Photo credit: Walter Gary Sharp, Sr., Lieutenant Colonel-U.S. Marines, ret.