The boys in their grubby navy bow ties and blue uniforms were indistinguishably horrid—nose-pickers, thumbsuckers, snorers, neer-do-wells, farters, burpers, the unwashed and unclean.
Outloading for the evacuation, conducted from 2 to 10 December, was under Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Jim” Crowe with muscle provided by his 1st Shore Party Battalion.
The expression my country right or wrong—perhaps a misquotation of the American naval officer Stephen Decatur, but also attributed to Carl Schurz—is the extreme form of this belief.