Vietnam, Basic School Class 6/67

Hard-Hit Marine Class from Vietnam War Celebrates 50th Reunion

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/06/17/hard-hit-marine-unit-from-vietnam-war-celebrates-50th-reunion.html

Excerpt: In the fall of 1967, The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, finished training 498 twenty-something Marine second lieutenants. By the end of the year, nearly all were in Vietnam. Before Christmas, the first of them was killed in action: 2nd Lt. Michael Ruane, of Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, on Dec. 18, 1967. The TBS class that began in June 1967 (TBS 6/67) would have a casualty rate of more than 50 percent -- the highest of any Marine officer class during the Vietnam War. For those second lieutenants and their platoons, the pace was unrelenting. They would go past the wire -- when there was wire -- on daily patrols through terrain that ranged from paddies and dikes along the coast, through the scrub brush and elephant grass of the interior, and into the triple-canopy jungles of the high ground reaching into Laos. (My best wishes to these men, the survivors, and my prayers to those who fell in battle. Bless them all, RIP. Semper Fidelis, Del)