Grout's restored 'Ironman' banner part of huge Waterloo 250th Fourth flag display

Posted by Pat Kinney on Monday, June 29, 2026

WATERLOO — Some local service clubs and the Grout Museum District are hoping the “Fourth time” will be a real charmer for a massive flag display in downtown Waterloo.

Because it’ll be on the Fourth — July 4, Independence Day, for the nation’s 250th birthday.

There'll be 1,776 flags displayed downtown --- and one more very special standard. It is a banner Waterloo's own Iowa National Guard soldiers carried into Europe when they became the first American military unit to set foot in Europe in World War II.

Organizers hope the display will go over with a bang — since there will be a big fireworks display as well.

The Exchange Club of Waterloo, along with the other Exchange Clubs in Black Hawk County — the Sunrise and Cedar Falls Exchange clubs — and the Americans for Independent Living veteran service organization, are planning a “Field of Honor” of 1,776 U.S. flags in downtown Waterloo for the Fourth of July weekend — Friday, July 3 through Sunday July 5. July 4 falls on a Saturday this year.

An ceremony highlighting the flag display will be 10 a.m. July 4 at Soldiers and Sailors Park outside Veterans Memorial Hall.

Immediately following, at 11 a.m., will be a presentation by historian and filmmaker Mary Pat Kelly, will deliver a presentation on the Waterloo-headquartered Iowa Army National Guard 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry — the "Ironman Battalion," so named for his 611 days in combat in World War II, including the siege of Monte Cassino in 1944. The battalion, and the 34th "Red Bull" Infantry Division of which it is part, has subsequently distinguished itself on numerous deployments since the terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001, including a 22-month combat deployment to Iraq from 2005-07 and another to Afghanistan in 2010-11. It also provided disaster relief between those deployments in the Parkersburg-New Hartford tornado and record Cedar River flooding in May-June 2008. The battalion's Iraq deployment was the subject of an Emmy-winning CBS News documentary in 2007.

When the "ironman Battalion" stepped off a troop ship in Belfast, Northern Ireland in early 1942, they became the first American military unit to enter the European theater of operations in the war. The Grout was donated the flag (pictured in the Life article below) those troops carried in to Europe by its commander Col. William Rouse. Over the past years the Grout Museum District, under the sponsorship of the Cedar Falls chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, raised $10,000 to have that flag restored, thanks to a matching grant from the national DAR, matched by funds raised from numerous veterans organizations and individuals.



That restored flag will be on display at Memorial Hall on July 4 and plans are under way for an eventual permanent display at the Grout's Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum. 

Trent Hunter, who is heading up the Field of Honor event for the Waterloo Exchange Club, hopes it will be a memorable event.



“I want kids that are six all the way up through high school age to go through this and remember it for years to come — so 50 years down the way when it’s the 300th anniversary, they’ll want to do this again,” said Trent Hunter of the Exchange Club of Waterloo, an Iowa Army and Air National Guard veteran, who is event chairman.

It’ll be similar to the post-9/11 “Healing Field” display the club erected at Soldiers and Sailors Park adjacent to Veterans Memorial Hall in 2004 and 2007, recognizing those who lost their lives following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that led to U.S. conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A similar “Field of Honor” display was staged in 2020 honoring Iowa war dead from all eras.

This year, though, the park won’t be big enough to hold all the flags.

“The Exchange Club of Waterloo came together, a group of us that’s done this in the past, and we were just gonna do 250,” Hunter said. “And we said ‘That’s not enough,’ “ not for the nation’s 250th birthday.

They decided to put up 1,776 flags, commemorating the year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“We didn’t have enough space to do 1,776 flags in Soldiers and Sailors Park,” Hunter said. Tree growth over the past six years also limited the amount which could be placed there from previous years.

“So we said ‘You know what? We’ll go down Fourth and Fifth Street with some flags and we’ll utilize the Vietnam memorial,” he said.

Flags will line the Fourth and Fifth Street bridges, extending from either end of the park and Memorial Hall, across the Cedar River to the Black Hawk County Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Paramount Park, across the river from Memorial Hall.

They’ll also line the top of a city parking ramp adjacent to Soldiers and Sailors Park and organizers plan to drape large U.S. flags over the ramp walls.

Additionally, the canopy of the Fourth Street Bridge pedestrian walkway is illuminated in red, white and blue every night at the top of every hour, as are lights along the Cedar River, the downtown RiverLoop Amphtheater and the superstructure of the Waterloo Convention Center at Sullivan Brothers Plaza, as part of the “Waterloo River Lights Experience” initiated in June 2023.

People can participate in the Field of Honor event by purchasing a flag for $50 in the name of an individual they would like to honor.

“You can dedicate to anybody you’d like,” Hunter said.

The flag display will not only honor military personnel and veterans, but first responders like firefighters sand police officers as well as “community heroes” who have made outstanding civilian contributions to the welfare and vitality of Waterloo and the greater Cedar Valley community over the years in any number of fields of endeavor — such as business, volunteerism, social activism, education, recreation, or the arts.

“There’s so many people that made an impact on this community that we should honor them in some way,” Hunter said, Those individuals will be appropriately listed and recognized in the Field of Honor.

“We sell the flags for $50 apiece and you get to take them home afterwards,” he said.

The idea came from the flagmaking firm Colonial Flag of Sandy, Utah. “They are the ones that produce and have ‘Healing Field’ and ‘Field of Honor’ copyrighted,” Hunter said. “They work in line with Exchange Clubs throughout the nation. Everything they do is all U.S. made.”

Waterloo is one of three Exchange Clubs in the Iowa-Minnesota-Nebraska area which are doing flag displays, but others are comparatively smaller in scale.

“Realistically, we are one of the biggest if not the biggest this year,” Hunter said, among the displays Colonial Flag is working with in conjunction with the nation’s 250th, or semiquincentennial, anniversary.

“We’ve got a great group of people, but we still didn’t have enough” volunteers, even with the combined efforts of the Exchange Clubs, Hunter said. So staff members at Americans for Independent Living were enlisted.

“As a board member of AFIL, I wanted to see AFIL recognized for what they do anyway,” Hunter said. “This was this was a way to have a collaboration between organization” with similar missions.

Ideally, Hunter said, he’d like to incorporate, as part of the July 4 weekend display, military re-enactors in period dress to interpret and explain the American experience in different periods of history. Those details and other aspects of the program are being worked out.

Field of Honor organizers are also coordinating with the Main Steet Waterloo downtown promotion and development group which does the “Red, White and ‘Loo” fireworks display.
“We’re going to be celebrating not only our nation, but the Reservists and National Guard” returning from recent deployments to the Middle East, said Hunter, who served on such a deployment several years ago.

More information on the Black Hawk County Field of Honor, including information on purchasing flags, can be obtained on the event website, which may be accessed by clicking on the link here, contacting Americans for Independent Living, 4020 University Ave., at (319) 232-2582, or the “America 250 Black Hawk County Field of Honor” Facebook page.

More information about the Ironman Battalion flag, including how to donate to support its permanent display, may be obtained by calling the Grout at (319) 234.6357 visiting the museum website here.

Hunter hopes the event resonates with people and is as memorable as the nation’s bicentennial celebration was in 1976 and will give everyone, especially young people “a little pride and remembrance.”