First Vietnam vets mark anniversary at Des Plaines gravesite
The pain still fresh enough to elicit tears from some Marines, five dozen people gathered Tuesday around a simple gravestone in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines.
On the 50th anniversary of combat Marines arriving in Vietnam, the ceremony honored Michael Badsing, the first local Marine killed in combat in the Vietnam War.
“Mike will be in our hearts forever. My children and grandchildren know who Mike Badsing was,” said John Miller, a 69-year-old retired Los Angeles police officer who served on a machine gun crew with Badsing in Vietnam and flew in to Chicago to lead Tuesday's service.
“I just give credit to all of those fellows in his troop,” said Bernadette Badsing, the dead Marine's older sister and a member of the religious order of the School Sisters of St. Francis in Barrington.
“They all stayed in touch even after my brother died. They were so good to my parents.”
Michael Badsing, 20, was killed by a sniper's bullet less than three months after arriving in Vietnam.
He was a member of the 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment, which arrived on Vietnam's Red Beach on June 16, 1965.
That battalion, which suffered the highest casualty rate of any Marine battalion in any war, was given the nickname “The Walking Dead,” by Vietnam's Communist President Ho Chi Minh.
“Don't pray for him, pray to him because he is one of the saints up in heaven,” said the Rev. John Smyth, a longtime priest at Maryville Academy, who gave the opening and closing prayers.
A Marine honor guard performed taps and presented a folded flag to Bernadette Badsing and her sister Barbara Grosskopf of DeKalb.