(It's the 'without losing one soldier' thing that makes someone proud and grateful, I think. Thanks for posting this, Chaz. - promoted by elwood)
Marine Corporal Sotorios "Sammy" Margaritis was one of over 58,000 Americans who gave their lives in Viet-Nam.
Sammy and I were classmates at Raymond High School. For a time his mother worked with my mother in the Bourque Shoe Factory in town. Sammy's dad ran a diner in Raymond and the Margaritis children all pitched in. Sammy always had money in his pocket and was one of my first classmates to own a car.
Sammy was a quiet, mild mannered kid. He just always seemed to be in a good mood. In particular, I remember his near-permanent smile. Sometime in 1966 Sammy dropped out of school and enlisted with the United States Marine Corp.
Sammy sent me a letter from boot camp on Marine letterhead. I think that letter is still tucked away someplace in my attic. I also remember hanging out with him at a town fair in Candia while he was on leave.
I just did a Google search and found a picture of Sammy with Lima Company in Viet Nam. Please pay a quick visit. Sammy and a friend are at the bottom of the first page.
That's Sammy on the right with the smile I mentioned.
Here's the link: http://www.marzone.com/7thMari...
Prior to his death he had been honored for valor. I'm sorry, but I can't remember the details other than he was involved in a firefight.
On August 8, 1967 Sammy stepped on a landmine and was killed instantly.
My father Charles "Charlie" Proulx Sr. fought in World War II. He was on the ships during the D-Day invasion. He was a GI engineer and his mission was to build airfields as soon as the first wave of Allied troops secured a thin strip of land in Normandy. Everyone knows the sacrifices Allied soldiers made that day.
On D-Day plus one, my father landed at Omaha Beach, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting. The GI's went to work immediately putting down airstrips. It would take a long time and a lot of lives to reach Berlin, but in a sense those airfields sealed the Germans fate. D-Day has gone down as one of the great military successes of history.
The Germans had buried tens of thousands of land mines near the coast. The mines had glass covers so they couldn't be detected by metal detectors. The only way to clear them out was to crawl on your belly and gently slip your bayonet into the ground and locate a mine without setting it off. Then you had to dig it out of the ground.
My father, who was a Sergeant by then, led a small group of GI's in a major mine sweep without losing one soldier. When he returned from the War he got a job at Bourque Shoe in Raymond, where he met my mother.
My father turned 92 on Tuesday.
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