The Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina have experienced all sorts of conflict.

But one of the oldest is a different kind of battle, a war of words, or more precisely, of a word.

The debate centers on Gen. John Archer Lejeune and how to pronounce his last name.

He led the Army’s second division in World War I and later served as the 13th commandant of the Marine Corps.

He is often referred to as the “greatest of all leathernecks.”

“He was one hell of a commander for the Marines,” said Louisiana State University Military Museum director James Gregory.

Shortly after Lejeune died in 1942, a barracks and training facility was named in his honor. It has become the sprawling 150,000-acre base in eastern North Carolina known today as Camp Lejeune.

Lejeune was a hero in the family of Harris Hull Jr., who said he is the general’s great-grandson.

“His values really were kind of what my mother and my grandmother tried to instill in each of their children,” Hull said.

So imagine his surprise when he heard many people pronouncing his great-grandfather’s name differently from how he pronounced it growing up.

Hull said his grandmother and his aunts always pronounced it “LUH-JERN,” but many people in North Carolina pronounce it “LUH-JUNE.”

He’s not the only one who says the correct pronunciation is “LUH-JERN.”

“The man lived here, he grew up here, that’s how his family pronounced it. That’s how it’s pronounced,” said Gregory, a WWI historian who lives in Louisiana.

Louisiana is critical in this conversation because that’s where Lejeune was from.

So why the confusion?

“I think it’s just a bad case of telephone. Once you don’t have someone from the Lejeune family there to correct you, no one wants to correct a general who is pronouncing it Lejeune,” Gregory said.

The Marine Corps admits pronouncing it wrong for decades, beginning in the Vietnam era. The mispronunciation took hold.

Then Patrick Brent, a veteran, businessman and writer, got involved. 

“When I started this thing, I would say about 95% of people said it wrong,” Brent said. “Now we’re doing a lot better.” 

Brent took matters into his own hands, after writing an article 15 years ago about the mispronunciation.

He paid for a 40-foot billboard outside the base to set people straight and says he has spent six figures over the years on his education campaign.

“His credentials are awesome. Don’t you think we should say his name with respect?” Brent said.

And there’s archival video from 1928 of Gen. Lejeune’s outtakes of a speech. Someone identified as Lejeune’s grandson appears on the screen afterward and refers to his grandfather as “LUH-JERN.”

“I think it’s more than a name. It’s a sign of who we are and what we find important in life,” Hull said.

Spectrum News 1 started pronouncing it camp “LUH-JERN” years ago after our own research and after Marine leaders asked us to pronounce it that way.

The Marines also provide the phonetics of how to say Camp Lejeune (LUH-JERN) on this website.