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Jed Boal reportingIn a few days, a Vietnam War veteran from Utah will head off on a mission of honor four decades delayed. Gary Campbell and nine fellow Marines will travel back to the battlefield where they lost nearly three dozen comrades.
July 24, 1966 was a holiday at home in Utah, but a terrifying battle for Gary Campbell and his fellow Marines on Hill 362 in Vietnam. India Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines was on an extended search-and-destroy mission.
Campbell says, "You go through something like this with people, I was with them less than a year, but they're like my brothers."
The Marines planned to take control of Hill 362 for a radio relay tower, but it turned into a fierce fight with the North Vietnamese. "Absolutely a defining point in your life. For the last 40 years I think about it. It's always there," Campbell said.
On that hill, 26 men from their company died, more than 70 others were wounded. Two days earlier, in a lower stream bed, eight other Marines were killed. "As we loaded these guys' bodies on the helicopter, their blood running down our arms and our chests, we stood on that hill and made a commitment they would not be forgotten," Campbell said.
So 10 Marines will head back to Hill 362 to honor their fallen friends. Campbell says they plan to "just spend some time together, time to set up on that hill, maybe grieve and talk about it. I'm not really sure what to expect when we get up there."
They'll visit villages they protected and, in some measure, try to settle lingering emotions from a bitter battle.
"Maybe you would have to be there to see the bodies lying around and the wounded. They were our brothers in arms. There was just no way we would let them be forgotten, and we made that promise," Campbell said. He says they'll keep that promise and solidify their honor as Marines.
Campbell served 13 years in the Marine Corps and another 13 in the Army. Today he is a recruiter for the U.S. Army in Orem.
E-mail: jboal@ksl.com
