Lt. Col. John B.
Lang’s Remarks for the Maxam Park Dedication, 17 April 2010
Thank you.
First I would like
to acknowledge the members of the Maxam family who are here today. Larry Maxam was the eldest of three
children. His brother, Robin, and his sister,
Linda, and Linda’s daughter, Bernadette--Larry’s niece—are here. Larry’s cousin, Gary, is also here with his
family and there are a number of other members of the extended Maxam family
here today.
This is the first
time Linda and her daughter have been back to Burbank in 20 years. Please welcome them back.
The other distinguished
guests here are the gentlemen seated behind the Maxams. These are Larry Maxam’s brothers-in-arms. They are the Marines from 1st
Battalion, 4th Marines who served with Larry--and most of them were
there the night Larry Maxam earned the Medal of Honor. Gentlemen, please stand for a moment.
Now, I would like to
ask all of the other Vietnam Veterans who are here today to also stand.
Many of these men never
got a proper welcome home when they returned.
Please join me in showing our appreciation for these men’s terrific
service to our country.
Thank you for
allowing me to speak here. It is a unique
honor because I am neither a member of the Maxam family nor a Vietnam
Veteran. I was a Marine for most of my
adult life and have become associated with this project, and with Larry Maxam,
through my research on Marines who earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. In December 2006, I tracked Robin Maxam down
in Australia and called him on the phone.
When I asked him if he had some time to talk to me about his brother, he
said, “I ALWAYS have time to talk about Larry.”
I also talked to Larry’s mother, Alice, whom we lost about a year ago
and Larry’s sister, Linda.
I qualify my remarks
about my historical research. You see,
as anyone who has served as a Marine will tell you, the Marine Corps is very
much a family. Within the Marine Corps,
those Marines who went before are viewed more as ancestors in our martial
family rather than as mere historical figures.
To all Marines, men like Larry Maxam are people who have brought us to
today.
Following me, Major Clark,
who is the current Executive Officer for 1st Battalion, 4th
Marines, Larry Maxam’s unit, will talk to you about how Larry Maxam is still
leading Marines—through his legacy and the example he set as a Marine.
Thank you again for
this honor.
Every single one of
us living the wonderful life we are afforded in this great country has a duty. Our duty is to remember. It is the one thing that our fallen ask from
us—to remember them. As the old saying
goes: The first duty is to remember…..The City of Burbank has made a wonderful commitment
to that duty with this monument to one their brave sons who fell on a
battlefield halfway around the world 42 years ago. It is also worth noting that, this memorial to
Larry Maxam also serves to memorialize the other 57,177 men and women who also
made the supreme sacrifice in Vietnam. I
salute the citizens of Burbank for their loyalty.
I’ll tell you some
of what I know about Larry Maxam.
Larry Maxam lived
here in Burbank until he went into the Marines.
The house were he grew up, on East
Magnolia Avenue, is still there. When I
spoke to his mother, she said that he liked to pack a lunch and hike up in to
the mountains there above the town. He
would spend all day up there—exploring. He
was a good son and a good older brother. His father died when he was fifteen and he tried
to be a source of strength for his mother and an example for his little brother
and sister. He had always been fascinated
with the military. When he became restless
and bored with high school he decided to enlist in the Marines.
He was a superb
Marine. He was a low-key and methodical
leader. His men trusted him—a rare
quality when men know that a mistake would cause them to be killed or named.
I would like to tell
you some of what I know about Larry Maxam and that terrible night in 1968:
General Giap, the
head of the North Vietnamese Army was ordered in April 1967 to come up with a
plan to win the war in Vietnam. The plan
he devised and executed became known as the Tet Offensive.
The plan was to
stage massive attacks all over South Vietnam while most of the people were
celebrating the Chinese New Year—which is called “Tet” in Vietnam. For us to understand Tet, you have to imagine
a holiday that is Christmas, New Years Eve and Easter all rolled into one. While families across South Vietnam
celebrated Tet, tens of thousand of communist soldiers staged for attacks.
One of the
objectives identified in that plan was the Vietnamese District Headquarters at Cam
Lo. Cam Lo is located just south of the
DMZ—the border between North and South Vietnam.
To make sure this
initial objective was a success, the mission of overrunning and capturing the
compound at Cam Lo was given to one of the elite units in the North Vietnamese
Army, the 320th Division. The
320th was proud that it had been one of the units to defeat the
French at Dien Bien Phu. The soldiers in
the 320th Division were not the Viet Cong guerrillas—the farmer by
day, fighter by night types. The men in
the 320th division were professional full-time soldiers. They had gone through years of training. They had state of the art weapons, superb
discipline and morale. They wore
uniforms, and were tough and dedicated.
The 320th
Division crossed the Demilitarized Zone and prepared to overrun the tiny
contingent of local villagers and their advisors who were in Cam Lo.
Major Payne, the
army officer assigned to Cam Lo, noticed that the local villagers had begun to leave
the village a day or so earlier and he suspected they were leaving because they
knew a battle was brewing. Payne went to
the closest command to get reinforcements—the 9th Marine regiment at
Dong Ha. The Marines told him they
didn’t have any extra troops—they were already preparing for the coming
offensive, but they would do what they could.
Eventually, word was
passed to Lt Michael Stick, a platoon leader who was patrolling along Route 9,
to take whatever Marines he had and spend the night in the Cam Lo compound to
help Payne and his men.
Just before sunset
on 1 Feb 1968, two squads from Stick’s platoon and one squad from Echo Company,
2nd Battalion, 9th Marines wandered into the
compound. They didn’t know much more than
that they were supposed to spend the night there. One of the squad leaders was a 20-year-old
from Burbank named Larry Maxam. He had
been in Vietnam for just over six months.
Every day of that
six months, Larry’s mother, his sister and his brother had been praying for
him—and feeling sharp pangs every time the evening news turned to reporting on
the war in Vietnam.
To imagine the
compound at Cam Lo, think of a football field with a trench around the outside
with a couple of buildings in the middle.
The compound wasn’t very fortified because it had never really been attacked
before.
The compound was
defended by a local militia force of about eighty, who were led by a handful of
US Army advisors.
At ten minutes after
two in the morning, the 320th Division attacked. They initiated their attack with a barrage of
mortars and recoilless rifle fire. The
barrage was so intense; it was more of a continuous roar, rather than a
succession of individual explosions.
Major Payne was killed in the first few seconds.
Immediately after
the barrage, the NVA soldiers came out of the woodline surrounding the compound,
and began storming the barbed wire rolls around the compound. One Marine later said that there were so many
of them that it reminded him of pictures of the lines of Red Coats coming
forward shoulder-to-shoulder from the Revolutionary War books he had seen as a
kid.
Intelligence
gathered after the battle showed that at least 750 enemy soldiers assaulted the
lines. Three squads of Marines—about
forty men, and the local militia men, against 750 hardened professional
soldiers. At best those odds are about seven
to one. If you just count the Marines,
it’s about 20 to one.
Miraculously, the
Marines were able to fight off wave after wave of NVA soldiers. However, with each assault, the enemy assault
lines got closer and closer to the last line of concertina wire around the
compound. The Marines were resigned that
it was going to be a fight to the death.
They fixed bayonets and two men were sent to destroy the flagpole so
that, if they were overrun, they would deny the enemy the satisfaction of
raising a communist flag over their bodies.
On the east side of
the compound, the NVA assault got close enough to hurl explosive satchel
charges into the compound. This broke
the nerve of the local militiamen who were defending that side of the
compound. They abandoned their positions
and retreated to the center of the compound—leaving their weapons behind and almost
half of the perimeter undefended.
With half of the
line suddenly empty, the NVA soldiers began to stage for their last
assault. There was no way the compound
could hold with so much of the line undefended.
Larry Maxam saw the
situation and decided to take action.
There was a machinegun located at a critical position at the corner of
the compound and he knew that if he could get to it and man it, he could defend
the line from there. He turned his team
over to his assistant team leader and began sprinting across the compound for
the gun. The fact that Larry told his
assistant team leader to take over is important. Marines do not relinquish their commands
unless they are fairly certain they are not returning. Larry Maxam knew that what he was about to do
may be a one-way trip.
I would like you all
to look at your watches now. I have about
ten after twelve. In an hour-and-a-half,
it will be about 1:40. I would like you
to try to remember to look at your watch again at that time. Most of you will be on your way home. I want you to reflect on how long an hour-and-a-
half really is. I want you to do that
because Larry Maxam manned that gun for an hour-and-a-half. He single-handedly fought off hundreds of
enemy troops—being attacked from two sides.
At one point, the enemy only focused on knocking out Larry’s
position—throwing everything they could muster at it. Although being wounded again and again, he
kept manning that gun and preventing the enemy from breaching the perimeter
there.
An hour-and-a-half.
How many times did
he fight back terror and the instinct to run.
How many times did he think of his family and wish he were anywhere else
in the world. How many times in an hour-and-a-half
did he pray. We will never know. What we do know is that he stayed there for
an hour and a half—until he finally succumbed to his wounds. He had been hit at least seven times. He had never called for a corpsman the whole
time.
Just before dawn,
the 320th Division abandoned its mission to take the Cam Lo compound
and retreated back into the jungle. They
suffered hundreds of casualties and never breached the compound’s lines. The unit’s flag was found among their dead in
front of the American lines. Their
officers were so sure taking Cam Lo would be easy, they had already written victorious
slogans on it.
Larry Maxam’s impact
on the outcome of the battle could not be overestimated.
In the official
package submitted to nominate him for the Medal of Honor, Lt Stick wrote, “Firing
to the east, to the north, and to the northwest, with no one to his right or his
left, Corporal Maxam without any doubt whatsoever saved the life of every man
in the perimeter.”
Captain Weede, the
company commander of Delta One-Four, wrote, “All of those who observed Corporal
Maxam’s sacrifice that night are convinced that his actions, above and beyond
the call of duty, salvaged what would have otherwise been a disaster.”
Alice Maxam had her
son buried in the most beautiful spot she could find, the National Cemetary in
Honolulu—known as the “Punchbowl.” He
rests there today with thousands of other American heroes—overlooking peaceful
Hawaii waters, beneath the gentle sway of palm trees.
On the 20th
of April 1970, Alice Maxam accepted Larry’s Medal of Honor at the White House.
I would like to make
a point about something that often comes up when discussing men like Larry
Maxam: There is a quote, attributed to F.
Scott Fitzgerald, that goes as follows: “Show me a hero and I’ll show you a
tragedy.” I’ve always hated that quote
and personally, think it’s a load of…nonsense.
I don’t think Larry Maxam’s life was a tragedy…and I’ll tell you why.
Larry Maxam’s death
on the 2nd of February 1968 was an incredible loss. To his family, his death left a void that can
never be filled. To his mother, the world
was never going to totally make sense after the day she was informed her eldest
son was killed. His comrades, who fought
alongside him in Vietnam, think of him every day and will tell you they have
never been able to completely shake a feeling of guilt because he died and they
lived.
However, I don’t believe
Larry Maxam is a tragedy. Let me explain… People die every day, often for stupid
reasons. However, Larry Maxam died because
he chose to sacrifice his life to save his fellow man. And that is the greatest expression of love. And anyone making that unbelievable choice refreshes
my faith in the nobility of the human race.
To me, it would be a tragedy if we became a culture where we no longer
found people who were capable of that depth of love and loyalty to their fellow
man. A loss yes indeed, a terrible loss--but
not a tragedy.
I would like to
leave you with how an American President, when presenting the Medal of Honor,
summed up the meaning and importance of the Medal of Honor—his words, I believe
apply to Larry Maxam.
He said:
“War is a
terrible thing, wasting the young before they have a chance to reach their full
potential. But there are moments,
terrible in their danger and devastation, that can also bring out unimaginable
courage and leadership that cannot be fully described: but once seen and felt,
can never be forgotten.
He went on….
As a people we need
heroes, real heroes, who when tested excel and in doing so inspire others to
reach for greatness within themselves.
We need heroes not just for the victories that they make possible on the
battlefield but also in later days to remind us of what America at its best can
be now and in the future—the greatest nation on Earth.”
This park is a grand
symbol to remind us of that nobility and will serve to challenge us and give us
gratitude.
Now I would like to
introduce Major Brett Clark, the current executive officer of 1st
Battalion, 4th Marines.
Thank you for
allowing me to talk to you this afternoon.
It was indeed an honor.