Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
They may have looked like all other U.S. Marines to the casual tourist.
But there was a big difference.
Scores of the men in tan uniforms taking in the sun, surf and sights in Waikiki yesterday were from the first contingent of Vietnam war veterans being rotated home from combat.
Their Navy transport, the Mitchell, left Honolulu Harbor this morning taking the 875 Leathernecks back to the Mainland and well-deserved 30-day leaves.
Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak, Pacific Marine force commander, was at the dock to see the Mitchell arrive yesterday morning.
"I’m real proud of these marines," he said. "They were the first to go and the first to come back. I’m real proud."
The Mitchell sailed here from Danang, Taiwan and Okinawa and left this morning for California.
All the marines on leave had put in 13 months in the Far East and seven months or more at Danang. Much of that time had been on patrols and combat with the Vietcong.
In Vietnam they had been the First Battalion of the Third Marines and now they have received the new title, Third Battalion, 5th Marines.
To Krulak all 875 of them are heroes.
And eight received special attention on the second deck of the Army port dock not far from the pier 40 gangway.
Krulak stood at attention in front of each of the eight as an aide read off citations won in combat.
Then Krulak said, "You eight Marines are only symbols of the heroism, sacrifice and courage of 30,000 others just like you," referring to those leathernecks still in Vietnam. …
Now the 875 will spread out to towns across America as the first combat veterans to return from Vietnam.
The only ones to precede them home were those wounded.
The Pearl Harbor Marine Barracks Band was on the dock yesterday to liven up the occasion. The scene was reminiscent of the return of war heroes from France in 1919 and from Europe and the Pacific in 1945.
