The SS Mayaquez was a US merchant ship. Its crew had been taken prisoner and the ship was in the hands of hostels. This was very different from the Kimbro incident. In this case there was no question about the status of the crew and the ship. Additionally, the organization, which had committed this piracy, was not fully understood by the US government.

As we, and three other ships, were steaming rapidly north we began to get more information. The ship had been taken into a Cambodian port and the ship’s crew was being held on the island of Koh Tang off the coast of Cambodia.

We break out the charts for the island and learn that there is good deep water all around. We will be able to use our four five inch guns to full advantage in covering any operation anywhere on the island. The other ships each have two five inch guns. We are all equipped with 50 caliber machine guns and M16s for self-defense. We have the ability to support any type of operation, but are not trained to perform any on land operations so we are hoping for the marines to do the dirty work.

We have two twin 5"/38 caliber gun mounts. Unlike big gun mounts on cruisers and battleships the enclosure is little more than a weather shield. Each gun can operate independently or they can be fired in salvoes of two or four guns at a time. The ammunition comes in two pieces, a projectile and a powder cartridge. There are a variety of powder mixtures including ones for daylight and for nighttime to minimize the flash given off at the muzzle. The projectiles come in a much larger variety including ones suitable for antiaircraft fire, for illumination, penetration, and antipersonnel. Projectile, or bullet, part weighs about fifty-five pounds. This 55 will be made up of a variety of explosive, fuse, and casing.

These gun mounts keep quite a few people busy. Each gun has a powder loader, a projectile loader, and a gun captain. There is a safety officer, who insures the gun is not aimed where it shouldn’t be, a mount captain, and a trainer (who can control where the mount is pointed), and an elevation operator for each gun. In fact each gun in a mount can be aiming at a different target in the same direction. Alternatively, all four guns can be controlled as a unit and fire a four gun salvo at a single target. Additional people are in the upper handling rooms (where shells and projectiles are routed to the guns) and the ammunition magazines.

Each gun can be fired several times a minute and there are hundreds of rounds of ammunition for each gun so this is a very powerful weapon system. It can be used in any weather and both day and night. We can even fire shells that provide illumination suspended by parachute over a target while firing on the target.

As we approached, but before we could provide any softening up of the targeted island the Marines conducted an attack on the island by helicopter. They faced heavy fire from the enemy and found that the crew was not on the island. They extracted the living and wounded Marines by chopper but left 15 dead Marines behind. We now had a completely new challenge. We were to recover the remains of those who had not made it back to the choppers.

This would require new planning and we were to conduct the recovery upon arrival at the island in the morning. At least we had good intelligence and a clear mission. Each of the ships would make a run towards the beach where we expected to find the majority of the Marines and drop it’s whaleboat with a crew, a team of 4 gunners and 4 men to recover whomever they could. The ships would provide cover for all boats with their 50 caliber machine guns and 5’ guns as necessary. When the boats were ready their respective ships would dash in to recover them as quickly as possible. Fortunately Koh Tang Island was surrounded by deep water and we will minimize exposure of our crews a much as possible by getting as close as possible to the beach before lowering or raising the boat from the unengaged side. This means we will use the ship between the possible gunfire and the boat as long as possible. We will also lower the boat to just clear of the sea on the way in and slow to minimum speed only to unhook or hook the boat to the davits.

There was no question that I, as weapons officer, would be in charge of our boat. It would be an all volunteer crew. I would select from those who volunteered the most skilled small arms people to handle the guns on the boat. We would all be armed, but the gunners would handle the automatic weapons.. The engineer officer would designate the boat’s engineer and I would select the men to handle the other boat duties. There would be additional four men to do the physical recovery.

Since I am in the best position to select the best gunners and boat handlers the captain decides that all volunteers are to identify themselves to me. When I have made my choices for the various jobs he will make the final decision on who would man the boat.

It would be a tense six hours before we the boat so sleep was out of the question. I made myself available on the mess decks (The area of the ship where the crew eats and spends idle time) for the next few hours. It was clear to everyone that this recovery mission would be extremely dangerous. Even though there were no weapons on the island bigger than a machinegun and we would be going in under the protection of four powerful warships. We knew that the forces on the island had killed 15 well-trained and well-armed marines. In less than two hours virtually every man had approached me on the ship. I was able to choose from the very best the ship had to offer. I made my list and a list of alternates for every position and proceeded to the bridge to discuss my choices with the captain.

We proceeded to his cabin and discussed the choices and what he expected of us. The final choices were made and the announcement was made to the crew. I meet with the selected crewmembers a short time later and discussed the danger once more and specifically how we would conduct the operation including how we would handle our own casualties. Once more I told the men that they could still back out without any problem.

Two hours before we were to start shelling the island to soften it up for our mission the whole operation was canceled.

We were told that an agreement had been reached with the Khner Rouge that the crew and ship would be released and that the remains of our people would be returned. We would no longer be needed. We remained in the area until the ship and it’s crew were released and then headed back towards Australia for our, now delayed, rest and relaxation.

Flash forward almost 26 years to January 25, 2001. I read a report from CBS that three Marines may have been left behind alive. Is it possible that one of the boat crews that was supposed to retrieve bodies might have found live Marines?

The last fifteen names on the Vietnam War Memorial might have been only twelve if we had been allowed to do the job we were ready to do

Along with the article were some of the recently declassified documents that were used as a basis for the news report. It appears that a Marine Captain was the last officer on the island. He knew that all of the surviving Marines assigned to him were extracted from the island. What he didn’t know was that three men from another unit had been ordered to report to him and had not done so.

An official Marine Corps Investigation was initiated about a week after the operation and the report I read was dated 7 June 1975. This report recommended that the status of the three Marines in question be changed to Killed in Action (body not recovered) from Missing in action. The report included the statements of four of the marines that saw them in the last few hours of the operation.

The three men in question were assigned to an M-60 machine gun. When last seen they were uninjured. A prearranged signal to pull back towards the beach for extraction was yelled to them by a Marine at a distance of 5 meters. The M-60 was out of ammo at one point and additional ammo was passed to one of the three by someone who left on the fifth of six helicopters withdrawing troops. Captain Davis was never aware of the fact that these men were still ashore. The three men never reported to the Captain.

The last time any of the three were seen was just before the fifth helo lifted off. During the day visibility was limited and after sunset visibility was nil. There was heavy enemy fire during the whole mission. There was both outgoing and incoming fire between the departure of the 5th and the arrival of the 6^th choppers. A sergeant observed that the three men were nervous and confused and that they had expended all of their ammunition. He ordered them to reposition to the proximity of the captain. He also told them to board the next chopper (which would have been #5). None of them boarded chopper 5 but ammo was passed to one of them by people who did leave on chopper #5.

After chopper 5 departed there was a period of quiet on the island and an arial flare was ignited which illuminated the entire area surrounding the Marines. No sounds were heard and no movement was sighted which might indicate that the three men were outside the final perimeter of Marines. Prior to lift off of the sixth helicopter the captain, his sergeant, and the chopper pilot visually checked the area. No indication of anyone remaining was detected.

Private First Class Gary C Hall, Lance Corporal Joseph N Hargrove and Private Danny C Marshall did not make it to any of the extraction helicopters.

It seems clear that the three men were alive, scared, and confused at least until the fifth helicopter took off. At leas one of them was in proximity to the fifth chopper to request and receive ammo. It is likely that his teammates were still healthy and nearby at that time. In the exchange of fire between the last two helicopters included grenades. It is possible that a grenade and or incoming or outgoing fire took all three men’s lives. It is hard to understand how these three could fail to get on the sixth chopper if they had been able to.

The official findings of the investigation indicate the three Marines failed to carry out the Sergeant’s orders to report to the Captain. That they were not in the landing site after the lift off of the 5^th and 6^th helicopters took off. That if they had been in the area they would have tried to board unless they were unconscious, incapacitated due to wounds, or were dead.

On one hand I wish we had been given the chance to find out if the fifteen men were, in fact, dead. We had the advantage of heavy fire support from four ships that the Marines did not have. On the other hand we would have put many more lives at risk and we were not trained for such a mission. On balance I have to hope that the correct decision was made. The odds of those three men being alive and surviving through the night, spotting or being spotted by our boats, and coordinating a rescue had to bee extremely small.