Vietnam Veterans Lay Claim to Title ‘Luckiest Platoon’

Vietnam Platoon 2027 the “Luckiest Platoon”
by Ian Leslie

Left: Javier “Jay” Solis at Platoon 2027’s reunion in June.

Javier Solis doesn’t care if the Marine Corps is willing to call his Parris Island platoon the “luckiest.” He knows how lucky he and his friends were.

Of the 81 members of Platoon 2027, 77 went on to fight in Vietnam, and all returned, according to Solis, who said his is the only platoon that can celebrate that 100 percent success rate.

Does that make Platoon 2027 the “Luckiest Platoon,” as its members now call it?

“I don’t know who gave them that title,” Maj. Guillermo Canedo, spokesman for Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, said last week. “We can’t get verification that they’re the luckiest platoon. We can’t determine which is the luckiest platoon.”

Solis, 59, and the rest of his platoon, mostly men from Northern states such as New York and Connecticut, went through boot camp together in 1966. Over the final nine years of the United States’ presence in Vietnam, 77 of the 81 members of Platoon 2027 were thrust into battle…

“Back then we all knew sooner or later we would end up on the battlefields,” Solis said. “It was just how long it would take before we would get there.”

Solis was in Vietnam for 11 months before he was shot in the chest in March 1968. He slipped into a coma, and when he awoke, his memories of what happened mostly had disappeared.

“I didn’t have clear memories of things,” he said. “I could see and imagine things, but they had no real definition.”

So Solis started looking for the men he served with. Some of them he talked to, others their wives and friends. One by one he discovered that they all had survived.

That was surprising for Solis, whose drill instructor on Parris Island, Staff Sgt. F.W. Ott, delivered a cold dose of reality when the platoon graduated.

“Ott said to us that within six months most of us would be in Vietnam, and at least 10 percent would die in the battlefields of Vietnam,” Solis said. “Man, I thought that Ott’s prediction would be right.”

Solis said he ultimately confirmed that all of the members of his platoon had survived the war when he visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Of the more than 57,000 names inscribed on the wall for those who had died or were missing, none were members of Platoon 2027.

Marine Corps officials can’t confirm the platoon’s survival record.

“We didn’t research it,” Canedo said. “It’s their claim.”

On June 30, 21 members of the “Luckiest Platoon” returned to Parris Island to dedicate a plaque to all the Marines who served in Vietnam. Parris Island officials point out that the plaque was dedicated by members of Platoon 2027 and not to the “Luckiest Platoon.”

And even Solis acknowledges his group may not be the luckiest platoon, but he’s sure it was the luckiest that sent men to Vietnam.

“We did not come home as disgruntled Marines,” he said. “We came home and became valuable citizens to our community.”