News

Marines from bloody tour keep bond strong

Marines from the Basic School for officers class 5-67 gathered in Laurel Park in September for a reunion. Holding a photograph of their platoon’s graduating class on the first row are Paul Barents (left) and Tony LaTorre (right). On the second row, from left, are Ron Chambers, Jack Cooney, George Chaconas, David Combs and Larry Bearden; third row, Dan Wszolek (left) and Mike Sommers.

By Amy McCraw, Published: November 7, 2024

Time changes many things in 57 years. Hair turns gray. Sight dims and sometimes even memories cloud.

But what hasn’t changed for one particular group of Marines is the bond they formed during some of the bloodiest days of the Vietnam War.
“One thing that binds us together — we trained together. We were there through the worst part of the war,” 79-year-old Jack Cooney of Louisville, Ky., said as he relaxed on a late summer day in the Laurel Park living room of fellow Marine, 79-year-old David Combs.
Cooney was one of eight Marines who came to Combs’s home in September for a reunion of soldiers who graduated from the Marines’ Basic School for officers in 1967. The daughter of one fallen Navy officer who served with the Marines also attended.
The men from Basic School class 5-67 come together in different cities across the United States about once a year to catch up with one another, share a few meals and laughs and remember the good times. In 2017, the Washington Post wrote a feature article about the Marines and their 50-year reunion in the nation’s capital.
“The year 1967 saw the deaths of 11,400 Americans, and 1968 claimed 16,900, the worst yearly toll of the war,” said the article, citing records from the National Archives. “The two years account for almost half of the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, which honors those killed in the war.”

‘We talk about our current lives’

The veterans from class 5-67 rarely tell war stories.
“We talk about what we are doing in our current lives,” 80-year-old Larry Bearden of Davidson, N.C., said.
The men, now retired, got on with their lives after the war. They raised families and worked jobs. Some started their own businesses.
But they never forgot each other, the war, the men they commanded and their classmates who never made it home.
“You’re over there around men and fellow officers. We talk about those sometimes,” Bearden said. “We went with dreams of concepts of where we would be. I always wondered if they got their dream.”
Many of their Basic School classmates died in Vietnam, never having a chance to pursue their dreams.
“Their dream was over,” Bearden said.
Class 5-67 graduated 325 Marine officers who were destined to serve, most as lieutenants, in Vietnam. They were mostly in their 20s, college educated and patriotic men who were thrown into combat as infantry platoon leaders as soon as they arrived in the war zone.
The class lost 39 men during their 13 months in Vietnam, some on their first day in country.
Others suffered life-changing wounds. Paul Barents, who was a second lieutenant and only 23 years old at the time, lost both legs during combat shortly after he arrived in Vietnam.
The Washington Post article described the night Barents, now 80, was wounded during a friendly-fire incident as he crept through the jungle to warn Marines serving under him to be alert for an attack.
A new Marine in the platoon mistook him for the enemy and opened fire. Bullets tore through both his legs.
Barents, like the others who attended the reunion this year at Combs’s home, said he volunteered to serve because he believed it was his duty as an American. He said he fought because of that duty and his loyalty to his fellow Marines.
“I felt it was the right thing to do,” he said. “That’s why people fought, for each other and for the cause. Those guys are great. I’m proud to be one of them.”

‘They have a bond I still don’t understand’

The reunion in Laurel Park included officers from 1st Platoon K Company, a part of the overall class of 5-67 who graduated from Basic School in Quantico, Va.
Besides Combs, Barents, Bearden and Cooney, others who attended included 82-year-old Dan Wszolek of Ithica, NY., 80-year-old Ron Chambers of Apex, N.C., 84-year-old training Capt. Tony LaTorre of Denver, 80-year-old George Chaconas of Washington, 85-year-old Mike Sommers of Texas and Lori Goss-Reaves, whose father, Navy Corpsman Larry Goss, died serving alongside Marines in Vietnam.
Goss-Reaves, a Republican member of the Indiana House of Representatives, was six months old when her father died. She held on to the letters he wrote to her mother from Vietnam and cherished the times he reminded his wife to “kiss Lori for me.” She knew little else about his service or death until she began a decades long search for answers.
Her investigation into her father’s death eventually led her to Vietnam and to some of the Marine officers from class 5-67. Her book, Kiss Lori for Me: A Vietnam Corpsman’s Sacrifice, His Widow’s Undying Love and Their Daughter’s Quest to Find the Truth, details her experience learning about her father’s death.
Goss-Reaves father died on Valentines Day in 1968 when he joined members of Kilo Company on a combat patrol mission from the Marine Corps’ Ca Lu Combat Base. Members of the North Vietnamese Army attacked the patrol as they scaled a ridge, killing Goss and 10 Marines. Two other Marines wounded in the battle died later.
She attended the reunion in Laurel Park to honor the men who served with her father and their sacrifice, Goss-Reaves said.
“We have to do a better job of letting these men tell their stories,” she said. “Those stories haven’t been told.”
The men who served with her father fought honorably and deserve recognition, Goss-Reaves said.
“Marines don’t leave their men behind. These men kept their brothers alive,” she said. “They have a bond I still don’t understand. It can only be found in their lived experience.”
Combs said reunions such as the one at his home this year and a memorial to the fallen officers from class 5-67 at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico also serve as a way for surviving members of the class to sustain the memories of their brothers.
Combs and other surviving members of class 5-67 pushed to have the granite memorial, inscribed with the names of the 39 officers from class 5-67 who died in Vietnam, located at the museum.
The Boys of ’67 memorial is part of the one-mile walking trail in Semper Fidelis Memorial Park at the museum.
“Semper fidelis,” Combs said. “It means always faithful. Marines never leave anyone behind.”
The birth of the United States Marine Corps is celebrated annually on Nov. 10. The day commemorates the creation of the Continental Marines in 1775, when the Continental Congress passed a resolution to create two battalions of Marines.