Page 130 - Images: We were...We are

and another cross, a Navy Cross, symbolic of the valor of the man who lies beneath
it.
Angel Mendez had not yet reached his 21st birthday when he gave his life for
his comrades in a rice paddy in Vietnam. His was a story of an extraordinary
moment of rising to the heights of heroism in combat.
Last week, on the 36th anniversary of his death, his brothers and sister, his
fellow Vietnam veterans, and his fellow Marines came together to pay tribute to his
extraordinary sacrifice.
"Angel and I grew up in Mt. Loretto together as kids," said Al Richichi. "He was
younger than me, a year younger, so he was always one house behind me, because
we lived in separate dormitories, so I never really got to know him."
Richichi is now a member of Mt. Loretto's board of trustees and an officer in its
alumni association.
"For years the alumni have been involved in taking care of his grave there," he
said. "We put flowers there on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and my youngest
daughter, Noelle, would come out and help. I kept trying to get organizations
interested in going there, but I never really had any luck.
"Finally, somebody said to me, 'You know, Angel was a Marine, and there is a
chapter of the Marine Corps League on the Island.' So I went down there, and they
were very interested. Those guys have been terrific. Then I found out through
alumni, and I went on the Internet, that Angel had the Navy Cross, and the guys at
the Marine Corps League just picked up the baton from there."
Mendez was serving in the 3rd Platoon, Company F, Second Battalion of the
Seventh Marines in March of 1967. The corporal was his platoon's "right guide," a
leadership post among his men. His platoon was involved in Operation DeSoto, an
offensive aimed at driving Viet Cong forces out of the coastal regions of Quang Ngai
province (the Viet Cong were the guerilla Communist rebel units in South Vietnam -
Quang Ngai is a key coastal area, near the former border between North and South
Vietnam, and has some major roads and rail lines running through it).
Quang Ngai was a dangerous place. It is believed that it was the province most
heavily infiltrated by Viet Cong units in the whole of South Vietnam, and was the
theater of fierce battles -- a year later it would be the scene of the My Lai incident.
On March 16, 1967, Mendez' unit was conducting a search and destroy mission
when they came under punishing attack from 50-calibre machine guns being fired
by a hard-core Viet Cong battalion. Half of Mendez' platoon was pinned down in the
middle of an open rice paddy, the swamps created to grow the grain, while bullets
whizzed around them.
Mendez, who was in a relatively safe position, volunteered to lead a squad into
the devastating machine gun fire to try to relieve his fellow Marines and drag them
back to safety. Two were critically wounded already, and two were dead.
Mendez calmly walked out onto one of the dikes that separated the flooded
paddy squares, into the midst of a relentless hail of bullets, and turned his M-79

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