the V Amphibious Corps command post located on the other side of Mount Suribachi; the second flag on Mount Suribachi was taken down at the same time and delivered to the Second Battalion's headquarters. The battle of Iwo Jima was officially over on March 26 and a service was held at the 5th Marine Division cemetery. On March 27, the 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines and Pfc. Gagnon left Iwo Jima for Hawaii, and both of the U.S. flags that were flown on Mount Suribachi were sent to Marine Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1991, former Marine Lt. George Greeley Wells, who was the Second Battalion, 28th Marines, adjutant in charge of carrying the American flag(s) for the battalion on Iwo Jima, stated in The New York Times that he was ordered by the battalion commander on February 23, 1945, to get a large replacement flag for the one on top of Mount Suribachi, and that he (Wells) ordered Pfc. Gagnon, the battalion's runner for E Company, to get a larger flag from a ship on shore — possibly the . Wells stated that this flag was the one taken up Mount Suribachi by Pfc. Gagnon to be given to Lt. Schrier, with a message for Lt. Schrier to raise this flag and return the smaller flag raised earlier on Mount Suribachi back to Gagnon. Wells also stated, that he had handed the original flag to Lt. Schrier that he (Lt. Schrier) took up Mount Suribachi, and when this flag was returned to him (Wells) by Pfc. Gagnon, he secured the flag until it was delivered to Marine Headquarters in Washington, D.C., after the Second Battalion returned to Hawaii from Iwo Jima. Government war bond tour In February or March 1945, President Roosevelt ordered that the flag raisers in Joe Rosenthal's photograph be sent immediately after the battle to Washington, D.C., to appear as a public morale factor. Pfc. Gagnon had returned with his unit to Camp Tarawa in Hawaii when he was ordered on April 3 to report to Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. He arrived on April 7, and was questioned by a lieutenant colonel at the Marine Corps public information office concerning the identities of those in the photograph (Rosenthal did not take names). On April 8, the Marine Corps gave a press release of the names of the six flag raisers in the Rosenthal photo given