Jack McLean played trumpet at Phillips Andover, and because of his participation in the prep school band at age 14, he was around ceremonies that in various forms paid respect to the service of people who dedicated their lives to the defense of the United States.
The impression that those encounters made on him were only part of the point of the story he told as keynote speaker to Marion’s Memorial Day Remembrance gathering at Old Landing. The actual point was that in having served years later in Vietnam and lost dear friends, his words were addressing future members of the armed services who are years away from a decision and an oath that will define their future.
That realization brought a sobering dimension to McLean’s words on an idyllic morning in Marion amidst blue skies, sunshine glistening on the sea, the picture-perfect backdrop to an event serving as a platform for Americans to acknowledge how good we have it.
McLean shared his speech with The Wanderer, and his words seemed to have foreknowledge of the children in attendance on Monday morning whose lives look like his did in 1961.
“Like many of you here today, I enjoyed playing in the marching band. I liked the uniforms (blue blazers and white slacks) and the paramilitary discipline of learning to march in step with several dozen other boys. I also liked playing marches, particularly college fight songs, and always shivered with pride as we entered the football field before a game while playing our school fight song, The Royal Blue. Having struggled in class during the week, those fall football Saturdays provided me with needed structure and made me feel as though I was part of something bigger. I liked the feeling,” wrote McLean.
While his selection to play Taps “was an unimaginable honor” that instilled “patriotic pride,” enlisting wasn’t a dream as much as the answer to a logistical quandary. “As graduation neared, unlike my classmates, I wasn’t eager to attend college right away. I felt that doing something else first for a year or two might be more beneficial.”
Limited in his options during the era of the Vietnam draft, McLean contemplated the honor of military service and was cognizant of his father’s service and that of respected members of the Andover faculty.
“The extraordinary achievements of recent military heroes like Eisenhower, Bradley and Marshall still resonated. There was honor in military service. My parents had instilled this in me. Andover had reinforced it. Still, I didn’t want to join the military, but I also didn’t want to go to college for the sole purpose of avoiding the draft,” he told the audience on Monday. “While home on spring break, I decided to depart from the long-established Andover norm and get my military obligation out of the way before starting college.”
Little did he realize as the Vietnam War was heating up but that it, in fact, would last more than a year or two. “I was more concerned about surviving the looming reality of the Marine Corps’ infamous Parris Island boot camp,” he said.
McLean’s outfit got more than it bargained for.
He was among 225 United States Marines from Charlie and Delta Companies, 1st Battalion, 4th Regiment, who 54 years ago this week were dropped onto a remote hilltop near the Laotian border with the goal of halting enemy traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam through Laos into South Vietnam. Because new fire bases were being code-named for American birds, the Marines code-named the hilltop LZ Loon.
“Our assault was considered a success,” said McLean. “Over the next two days, it was estimated that over 400 of the enemy had been killed and the supply line was at least temporarily interrupted. The cost, however, was severe. Forty of my fellow Marines were killed and another 100 of us were injured, some gravely.”
McLean still deals with the pain of knowing some of those who were lost. Whether they were from big cities or small towns, they had become friends and he had to grieve. “Some of them were heroes and I knew a few of them. Most, however, were just doing what they were trained to do and had the great misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.
In the preparation of his speech, McLean planned to recognize Thomas J. Morrissey III and his family. Thomas III was only 14 months old when his father Thomas J. Morrissey Jr. of Dover, New Hampshire, was killed while carrying a severely wounded soldier to safety. McLean was also mindful of Glen and Kathy Benjaminsen, Glen being the cousin of Virginia native Sidney B. MacLeod, Jr., whom McLean knew before he, too, was lost in battle.
Memorial Day, pointed out McLean, is not a celebration.
“When the war was over, all that Tom’s dad … and the others wanted to do was come home to their families and be honored on Veterans Day. Not a single one of them wanted to be remembered on Memorial Day,” he said. “While we may try to direct our words and our actions in a manner worthy of their sacrifice, we will never succeed. Their sacrifice was too great. But we must continue to try, in our own ways, to give grateful recognition to the lives of the dead and pay homage to their sacrifice.”
McLean did not escape unscathed, and it was not until 2002 (34 years after his return home) that he took steps in his own recovery process from the trauma.
“I was still haunted by the war and my role in it,” he said. “To help in my long recovery from the experience, I decided, for the first time, to tell my story to my three daughters. … I began by transcribing the 102 letters home that I had written while I was in the Marine Corps. Over the next six years, my small project took on a life of its own and the story turned into a book.”
“Loon: A Marine Story” was published in 2009 by Random House.
“The boys who were killed on LZ Loon were kids that I never would have known had I not joined the Marine Corps,” said McLean. “Most came from places that I had never been to – or even heard of – that were as diverse as our country. When, during my quiet moments, I read their names and their hometowns to myself, the memories of those grand young sons flood back. I am richer for having had them in my life.”
Marion Memorial Day Remembrance
By Mick Colageo