Vietnam Marine Veterans Reunite After 41 Years

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4 old friends reminisce on the old days
by Nicole Gerring

Wearing a green jacket inscribed with the phrase, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue,” Ed Williams paced back and forth in the hotel lobby, waiting for his friends to appear.

He wasn’t waiting for drinking buddies or a dinner date. Williams, 63, and his wife, Gracenia, were at the Thomas Edison Inn in Port Huron to meet men Williams hadn’t seen since they left Vietnam 41 years ago.

Four men from the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines flame section, who served together in the Vietnam War, are reuniting this weekend. Tom Bridges, 62, of Sacramento, Calif., and his wife, Colleen Bridges, were the first to appear. When Bridges walked through the swinging doors of the inn, he immediately recognized Williams.

Hugging and laughing, the men fondly remembered 1963 to 1965, when they trained in Hawaii before leaving for Chu Lai province, where they completed the first regimental ground mission of the war, Operation Starlite in Aug. 1965.

The soldiers were the first Americans on the ground in the Chu Lai province, where they landed in May 1965…

     

“We didn’t know we were going to Vietnam until the day before we made the assault on the beach,” said Bridges, who coordinated the reunion by searching for his buddies on the Internet. He found seven of the 12 men in the squad.

“It really broadened my horizons amazingly to realize there are so many cultural differences in our world,” he said.

The soldiers were in a flamethrowers unit. They mounted to their backs flamethrowers fueled by a mixture of gas and Napalm powder. When dispersed, the substance stuck to buildings, caves, people and everything in its path.

Life expectancy for a Marine carrying a flamethrower was 60 seconds, Williams said, because they couldn’t walk quickly while wearing the heavy devices.

Williams served in Vietnam for 42 months total, four tours of duty.

“Any types of award that I get, I don’t stand up by myself and receive them. There were 58,000 guys who lost their lives in Vietnam,” he said.

“It’s still such a part of him after all these years,” said Gracenia Williams, Ed’s wife. “He used to talk about Tom Bridges and say, ‘I wonder where he is.'”

Later in the day, Al and Ruby Pikes of Los Angeles and Paul Yackley of Saint Paul, Minn., arrived at the inn.

“It’s a great feeling to be around these guys … who I spent my youth with,” said Pikes, 61.

U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ran from 1962 to 1973, though the Second Indochina War lasted from 1954 to 1975. More than 3 million Americans served in the war, at first volunteering but later being drafted. In addition to those killed, a National League of POW/MIA Families September report says 1,798 Vietnam soldiers still are missing. Civilian casualties in the war are estimated at 2 million in the north and 2 million in the south. About 1.1 million Viet Cong died.

“I want to let the men in Iraq know there’s hope if they stay focused on what they’re doing and leave the rest to God. I always took time out to read my New Testament even in the midst of battles over there,” he said.


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