It is Feb. 19, 1945. Your commander barks orders, and you and your fellow Marines are rushed from an amphibious vesselto a landing craft. As you hear gunfire and exploding bombs, the door opens and the black sands of Iwo Jima are before you.
Real life? Thankfully not for most.
But this experience will be awaiting visitors of the new National Museum of the Marine Corps this fall.
“We want to evoke the powerful feeling of being 19 years old and hitting the beach that famous day,” said retired Col. Raymond A. Hord as he stood in an unfinished, dusty room that will soon be one of many sense-jarring and interactive exhibits within the museum.
Since the official groundbreaking on the 135-acre site next to Quantico Marine Corps Base in Prince William County in September 2003, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation has raised all but $1 million of the museum’s $57 million price tag, said Hord, a Foundation vice president.
On Nov. 10 — the Corps 231st birthday — the museum is set to open to special guests and veterans. It will open to the public a few days later. The museum is 92 percent completed, Hord said. He expects to hand over the building to the Corps at the end of July to install $30 million worth of exhibits.
Already planes and helicopters used in World War II, Korea and Vietnam are suspended from the ceiling and covered in plastic to protect them from ongoing construction.
The 210-foot spire that juts from Leatherneck Gallery, the museum’s central rotunda, and can be seen from Interstate 95, is in the process of being plated with stainless steel. The terrazzo marble floors are being laid and buffed. Sidewalks stretching out into the parking lot are being poured.
“In addition to the artifacts, it will be a very, very beautiful building. A very sleek building,” the colonel said.
The museum focuses on World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War to allow the living veteran constituency to come here and see the history they made, explained Hord, a Vietnamveteran.
World War I, the Civil War, the Revolutionary War and more recent conflicts, including the ongoing one in Iraq, will have exhibits in the second half of the museum that will be built once additional money is raised. The Corps’ history will be represented in artifacts, movies and pictures in the Legacy Walk hallway that connects the larger galleries.
“We wanted to provide to the American people the depth and breadth of the Marines,” Hord said.
Prince William County donated land and funding to the project. The county also is working to redevelop the southern portion of Route 1 in Triangle, just outside of the museum’s gates.
“Quantico is the crossroads of the Marine Corps and Prince William County considers itself a long-term partner with the Corps,” said Sean Connaughton, Prince William Board of County Supervisors chair.
Marine Pfc. Luis Rosado, 19, of New Jersey, was recently stationed in Northern Virginia and said the museum represents “the brotherhood.”
“It kind of broadens people’s minds on how the Marine Corps works and what we have done in the past,” Rosado said.
National Museum of the Marine Corps
» 115,000 square feet, to open Nov. 10
» Will expand to 230,000 square feet
» Will include Semper Fidelis Memorial Park
» Parks’ trails will connect to Locust Shade Park
» Site plans include IMAX-type theater, hotel, conference center, chapel, as money is raised
