October 1st begins the Fiscal Year for the federal government. The Affordable Care Act started October 1st.
To me it is the anniversary death of shipmates. Just after midnight October 1, 1972 off of the coast of North Vietnam there was an explosion in turret number 2 which killed 20 men, injured 35 and risked the loss of the USS Newport News, flagship of the Atlantic fleet and at the time the world's largest active gunship.
Stuff happens. People die in war. This event may have simply been gross negligence by the ammunition manufacturer and Government inspectors. It also may have been a deliberate act of mass murder and a successful attempt to alter the war. Since I was a enlisted sailor on board the ship and it is natural to provide meaning and significance to events which shaped my life, I may put too weight on the latter. To me it is a tale that illustrates the how the powerful are immune from responsibility for their misdeeds while the victims can be mercilessly and casually punished.
It will take me awhile to get to that story. For context I must start in Morenci, Arizona in 1966.
The Morenci High School class of 1966 became a legend. Eight of our class and Sam King's older brother Stan joined the US Marines on the 4th of July after graduation. They had a major article written in Time Magazine. Arizona State University Professor Kyle Longley has written a book to be published next month about them. The Morenci Marines -A Tale of Small Town America and the Vietnam War. From the Book Jacket:
“The Vietnam War touched the lives of many working class American communities, but none more than a small town in rural Arizona. Longley tells the gripping story of nine high school graduates, caught up in a wave of patriotic idealism, who became known as the ‘Morenci Nine.’ The story of those nine Marines, two-thirds of whom died in the flower of youth, is forever woven into the fabric of the close-knit mining town.”—Marshall Trimble, author of Roadside History of Arizona
They participated in President Johnson's War. I am a veteran of President Nixon's War.
If you are 55 years old or older you can sing Barry Saddler's "Ballad of the Green Beret". You may have hated the song and tried to avoid it, but you can sing it. It was the Number One song of 1966. No song today could ever approach the saturation of that tune. Mass media was MASS MEDIA. It was played on Top 40 radio stations, country music radio, and on TV music shows. It could not be escaped.
The song also fit the national mood. We were the sons of World War II veterans. On television we watched "Combat" a well written and realistic depiction of World War II at the platoon level. As children we had participated in Duck and Cover drills and learned to identify markings which would lead us to fall out shelters. The Fascists had been defeated by our fathers and we knew that the Soviet Communists were their successors.
If you don't know the song listen to it once every waking half hour for a fortnight to get an idea of it's reach. [Not really, but try it once below and imagine doing that.]
Morenci was a community of a little over 5000 near New Mexico in rural Arizona. Legally it is a mining camp. In Arizona a owners of a majority of the property in an area must agree to incorporation. There was only one property holder, the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation, and they did not desire to have anybody capable of levying taxes on them. Order was enforced by Phelps Dodge (PD) company security which patrolled in green Chevy Pickups. PD mangers were on the school board. There were elections for the school board however there wasn't any competition. My father was a PD safety engineer and told me another worker in his department was considering running for the board. Dad was told to explain to him that it was his legal right to run for the office, but if he ran for the office he would be fired, which meant he could not live in company housing. If he did not live in the school district he could not be on the school board. He did not run. The only hospital in the county was run by PD. The only large store in town was the Phelps Dodge Mercantile. All in all it was a Koch brothers vision for America.
I remember being confused when told the evil of Communism. In civics class we were taught in the Soviet Union there wasn't any elections, the Government controlled all the jobs and owned all the property. As opposed to our hometown were there were no elections, Phelps Dodge controlled all the jobs and owned all the property.
The sixties were boom years for copper mines and Morenci was the largest mine in Arizona. The work schedule was 26 days on and 2 days off. Mountains was blasted into an open pit mine, shoveled into trains, taken to the crusher, then concentrated into a sludge, feed into furnaces, smelted into ingots and shipped out to make wire and other products. This included brass cartridges for small and large arms. Products later used be the graduates of '66.
PD workers were a mixture of the descendants of Appalachians, often by way of Oklahoma like my family and Mexican Americans with an upper layer of PD executives who came in from corporate headquarters in New York. The culture of the area was Mexican American with the population of Anglos swelling and declining with the health of the copper industry. Company housing had been strictly segregated until the middle sixties when the newly added housing was filled by alternating Anglos and Hispanics. There were a couple of odd families, the Lunsford's and the Peete's who while they had very dark skins did not speak Spanish. The Peete twins in the class ahead of me, Clifford and Clarence, were doomed to be called Pete and Repeat. Later in the Navy I picked up a copy of the Autobiography of Malcolm X which another sailor had left on his bunk skimmed it and found out they were Blacks and I was not an Anglo. but a White Devil. The main road through town was called the Coronado Trail after Francisco de Coronado who had passed through the area in 1540 looking for the Seven Cities of Gold. Stories were told of someone's Aunt whose family was cheated out of the their Spanish Land Grant which gave them the ownership of 20 or 30 percent of New Mexico.
I wasn't aware of it at the time but later was given the book The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction by Linda Gordon which tells the tale of Irish infants from a Catholic orphanage in New York being sent to Mexican American Catholic families in Clifton and Morenci in 1900. Somewhere on the train ride they quit being Irish trash and became white infants. The innocent babies were promptly rescued by good Christian Anglos. It's an interesting story, forgotten by the Anglos, but remembered by some Mexican American families.
Near graduation in 1966 it was rumored that a large group of our classmates were thinking about joining the Marines. Stan King the older brother of my good friend Sam, Bobby Draper, Clive Garcia, Joe Sorrelman, Leroy Cisneros, Van Whitmer, Larry West, Mike Cranford, and Robert Moncayo had decided they would like to see the world. College was not the choice for most of us at the time, and getting on with PD was not a sure thing, besides it wasn't that appealing or practical to stay in rural Arizona. I did not consider joining and was happy to go to the University of Arizona and keep my draft deferment as long as possible. These men made up a group just like a platoon from Combat. One Navajo, three Hispanics, a Mormon, a Southern Baptist, a crazy biker guy, and a football star. It was greeted with hushed awe when they all went down and joined as a group on the 4th of July after graduation.
War and combat is such a horrendous thing that it makes all of the participants equal, but Bobby Draper stood out. The only All-State Athlete I can remember from school, Bobby was a nice guy. Morenci has been called a rough town, there wasn't serious fights but no one would think of starting anything with him. It doesn't matter if the rock hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the rock it's going to be bad for the pitcher. If someone had been foolish enough to try to start something with him it wouldn't have mattered, he had the decency not to hurt crazy people. The cold realization of mortality of men arrived on August 2, 1967 when Corporal Robert Draper was killed in action.
Thomas Pierson's comment on the Virtual Wall states it well.
He will be remembered by all who knew him.
Me and big Drape were in Platoon #1055 together. We went to bootcamp together on July 5,1966. I heard that he was a great athlete back in Morenci, Arizona where he came from. We went through all our training together all the way to Vietnam. We went to different units, I went to the 9th Marines and he went to the 5th. A friend who was in the 5th Marines told me when he was killed. Everyone who knew him was in disbelief, we thought him indestructible. Everyone who knew him will always remember him, he was a friend. "Semper Fi". Tom
Old Morenci with Morenci High at bottom of frame.
Three months later Stan King was killed a few weeks after entering Vietnam. Which brings me to an old man's lament. I was still in touch with his brother Sam, we students at the University of Arizona. I hadn't gone to Draper's funeral I went to see Sam, offered my condolences and muttered some lame excuse for not going to his brothers funeral like I won't know what do and there wasn't anything I could do. In my defense I was screwed up. My parents divorced before I entered first grade, and my mother had enough problems that in different periods of her life she checked into state mental hospitals. She struggled to get by on welfare, intermittent jobs, and spotty child support moving frequently and occasionally homeless raising three boys. When I was in the eighth grade the courts said she was an unfit parent and custody was transferred to my father. In college I attendant anti-war protests and went to listen to William Kunstler when he came to campus. In fact I didn't go to any of the funerals. I regret that. There are times in life when you should man up and do the right thing. Making an appearance and showing respect is the least possible thing. I was an ass.
April through June of 1968 saw one funeral a month.
The next year I heard that Clive Garcia was being considered for Officer's Candidate School. To which I replied Clive? ? Clive was a doofus I stupidly said. I mean goodness, who would try to comfort his mother like he was quoted as saying in Time Magazine?
CLIVE GARCIA was photographed with his mother just before he returned to Viet Nam. He wrote a note on the back of it: "Your eyes are swollen. You've cried too much, Mom. Life itself really isn't this bad. We only have a few sad minutes, all we can do is accept and live with reality." He also told his mother that "it would happen and not to be sad." He said that he would be brought home by someone who loved him"a grunt, Mom, a grunt like me."
Clive wasn't that friendly awkward kid I knew in High School. In 1968 he was Sargent Garcia, squad leader, on his second tour in Vietnam. When his group was sent out on an unscheduled patrol and there was a problem with the Marine who was supposed to go on point Sargent Garcia took the lead. He was killed by what has come to be called an IED. An artillery shell turned into an anti personnel mine.
Clive's niece, Nikki Windsor posted this touching memory on the Virtual Vietnam Wall in 2006.
Juno, I never got the opportunity to met you but from what I hear from everyone you were a pretty amazing guy. I sat and talked to your mom, dad, and sister and asked them what was their favorite memory that they had of you so I could get a better look on you and learn more about you and your life. Your mom, Honey, said that her favorite memory she had of you is when you were coming back from Guam when you were in the war. There were protesters protesting at the border against the war and a policeman looked at you and asked what you thought about all the protesting? You simply replied I wear these (and pointed at your badges on your shoulder) so they can do that. The look in Honey's eyes - I could tell that that probably was one of the proudest moments she had of you. Then I asked Papa, your dad, and his favorite memory of you was from your childhood when you and your little brothers would go down to the river and set up traps. There were rumors that there were tigers down there and you guys wanted to catch it. Then you guys were so happy because you caught your prey. When you went down to see what it was you saw that it was just a skunk. When I herd that story I definitely laughed a lot. I also asked my mom, your sister, and her favorite memory of you was the day of your gradation from the Marine Corps boot camp. She said that was the proudest moment she had of you. I can tell from all the touching memories that you are missed and loved very much. I only wish that I had the chance to meet you. I love you.
Reporters decided that Morenci had the highest casualty rate of any town in the United States and unrequested attention transformed the living and dead into story lines.
Professor Longley has spent years putting the story of these men together. He has been giving a lecture on the Morenci Marines to various groups for well over a decade and I am looking forward to reading it when it comes out next month.
Elsewhere the Ship's Part Control Center in Mechanicsburg PA awarded a contract to the Bermite Powder Company to produce eight inch naval ammunition for the USS Newport News (CA-148). They did not do a quality job, which I was to discover first hand years later.
A different state and one year off but otherwise Big Time in Jungle by Old Crow Medicine Show could be about the Morenci 9.
It's been forty years and the effects of the Vietnam War linger. In 2053 the effects of our current wars will still be felt.
I plan to get back to the USS Newport News later. If I seem like I'm trying to make a point I regret that. These were men not storylines.
Only Leroy Cisneros. Mike Cranford, and Joe Sorrelman survived the war. Joe is the only one still living. Yah-Tah-Hey Joe.