![]() I last saw him at our grandmother’s funeral in 1970. “My cousin Connie, named for baseball manager Connie Mack, joined the marines in 1967. I have always, and will always, cherish our friendship.” Rob Bolvin describes the aftermath of the war for his cousin and US marine Connie: His name is etched on Panel 13E, Line 123 on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. On the night of January 7th I walked alone through the Iwo Jima’s hangar deck and stopped behind a parked helicopter. John’s death was the first war casualty I experienced. As the marine jumped into the chopper, a fused grenade dropped from his belt suspender strap, exploded and killed him and my friend John, a corporal at the time. John was a gunner aboard a helicopter that picked up a marine in the Delta. The Iwo Jima, carrying remnants of the 1st Battalion Ninth Marine Regiment, was one ship of a naval flotilla participating in Operation Deckhouse V. “In early January 1967 John Mooney and I were US marines aboard the USS Iwo Jima, a helicopter carrier, off the coast of Vietnam near the Mekong Delta. One year later I was in Vietnam with the 2nd Bn ,1st Marines.” David Hariman says his friend and fellow US marine, John Mooney, was his first experience of a war casualty: I got one of the pens LBJ is handing out. Corpsman always come with the Marines when they leave the hospital and I was pushing a wheelchair and wound up in the front row. They asked some wounded vets to attend the signing of the New GI Bill on Aug 31. “I was a US Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd class stationed at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland. Photograph: Frank Wolfe/LBJ Library photo ![]() Jack V Sturiano (pictured second row, second from right) meets President Lyndon B Johnson, 31 August, 1967.
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