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thedrifter
10-27-06, 02:48 PM
Flags of her father

Debbie McCain keeps memory of veterans alive in tributes to her dad
By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer
North County Times

Debbie McCain of Fallbrook knew her father was a war hero. She knew Col. G.M. "Jinx" McCain had been wounded on Iwo Jima and in Korea, where his heroism earned him a Silver Star.

She knew he had been wounded again in Vietnam, and knew he had earned the Legion of Merit for overseeing 13 Vietnamese refugee camps on Guam in 1972.

But she didn't know what was in the boxes in the garage.

"I found all the paperwork that pertained to all the commendations he received," she said. "The Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star. The accommodations that the military had presented to him and what it took to receive these accommodations. They were all packed away in boxes."

Like many veterans, McCain was not showy. Fortunately, he did recognize the value in the old letters, photographs and medals from his three decades in the Marines, and kept them safely stored.

In the few years before his death in 2003 at age 82, he and Debbie took some of his collection to local schools to talk to students about his life in the military. After the talks, the medals went back in the closet, along with McCain's helmet from Iwo Jima.

The volcanic island of Iwo Jima was the site of one of the epic battles of World War II and the source of one of history's most iconic images: six American troops hoisting an American flag atop Mount Suribachi. People throughout the nation are remembering Iwo Jima this weekend with the release of the movie "Flags of Our Fathers," based on the book by James Bradley and Ron Powers.

Bradley's father, John Bradley, was one of the men who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi, the highest spot on Iwo Jima. Joe Rosenthal's photo of the flag-raising has been reproduced countless times, but it never hung in the Bradley home.

"He shoved the mementos of his immortality into a few cardboard boxes and hid those in a closet," Bradley wrote in the book about his father.

Bradley also wrote that he never knew much about what his father did on Iwo Jima, and his dad asked him to deflect all requests for interviews on the subject. After his father's death in 1994, Bradley finally gained some understanding about what he did during the war when a search for his will led to three cardboard boxes in storage.

"John Bradley might have succeeded in taking his story to the grave had we not stumbled upon the cardboard boxes a few days after his death," he wrote.

Debbie McCain was more fortunate. As a career Marine, her father could not conceal his work from his family; and, like his daughter, he felt a duty to tell other generations about the war.

"The saddest day of his life was when he had to retire," Debbie McCain said about her father, who left the Corps in 1976 after 33 years of service. He continued to work as executive director of the Camp Pendleton Auxiliary, Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society until 1992.

Debbie and her parents moved into their Fallbrook home in 1975. She never joined the service ---- her father told her the Marines were no place for a woman ---- but she does work in the stables at Camp Pendleton. Her mother died in 2002, a year before her father's death.

Like John Bradley, "Jinx" McCain also had his picture taken on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal. His photo is not of a valiant flag-raising, however, but a picture of him on a stretcher being taken from the beach where he had been placed when other troops thought he was dead.

"He was in the first wave to hit Green Beach," Debbie McCain said about her father. "He and a friend were scouting for Japanese pillboxes."

"Jinx" McCain's buddy spotted a sniper and yelled at him to take cover. McCain, a private first class at the time, was grazed in the back of his leg by a Japanese bullet, which then ricocheted off his rifle's face plate, striking and killing his friend about 30 feet away.

McCain's second injury on Iwo Jima was much more serious than the wound to his leg. At about 9 p.m. on March 16, he spotted a sniper by the light of a flare on Mount Suribachi. Before he could get off a shot, another sniper opened fire on McCain, shooting him in the head.

The wounded Marine fell back and lay helpless and alone until dawn. His bullet-pierced helmet pressed hard against his wound and may have kept him from bleeding to death during the long night.

"They took him and laid him on the beach because they thought he was dead," Debbie McCain said. "They were giving the last rites to everybody when a Navy corpsman saw him move."

With nothing else available to tape over McCain's gaping head injury, a medic harvested the kneecap and a piece of shin from a dead Marine on the beach and used it to cover the wound.

Rosenthal snapped a shot of McCain, whose head was wrapped with bloodied bandages, as he was carried from the beach. The photo hangs in a rear room of Debbie McCain's house, surrounded by other photos of her father. A print of Rosenthal's flag-raising photo hangs in the living room and is signed, "To Jinx, one of the corps' finest who was there. ---- Joe Rosenthal, photographer."

"Dad was just a small-town boy from Texas, like hundreds of others who wanted to serve," Debbie McCain said.

He got the nickname "Jinx" while on the Texas A&M football team from other players who came to expect him to fumble whenever he got the ball. He didn't jinx the team, however, and he played in the 1940 Sugar Bowl and the 1941 Cotton Bowl for A&M.

But McCain's real passion was the military, his daughter said.

"He always wanted to be a Marine," she said. "He tried six times to get into the Marine Corps. He'd pass the physical part until he got to the chest exam."

Doctors examining his chest X-rays saw a rib that had been broken playing football and misdiagnosed it as a scar on his lung. After repeatedly failing his exam, Debbie McCain said her father paid another man to switch X-rays with him.

He arrived on Iwo Jima as a private first class and was promoted on the island to corporal. After he was wounded, McCain was taken to Guam and then Hawaii, where he was accepted to school to become an officer.

After World War II, McCain served in Korea, where he earned a Silver Star after twice driving a tank through a known minefield to fight the enemy and pick up American casualties.

In 1968, McCain was serving in Vietnam and was wounded a fifth time, almost losing his left arm when he was hit with shrapnel from a 122mm rocket. For the rest of his life, he would routinely roll three silver dollars in his hand for physical therapy, a trait that become a part of his identity.

McCain's final overseas duty came in 1972 when he was the base commander on Guam, where he served until 1975. At the fall of Saigon, the base was given 30 hours' notice to prepare for 170,000 Vietnamese refugees. McCain was the coordinator for all 13 refugee camps on Guam and was recognized with the Legion of Merit for his work there.

When he finally retired from active service, McCain stayed close to the corps by serving 19 years in the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society. He and Debbie McCain began speaking to local students in 1998.

"We'd go to the different high schools and talk about his story," she said. "It's very important to me that the future generations don't forget the past generations that gave so much of themselves and gave us the freedoms that we have today."

Her father used to take his medals, helmet and other things he collected during his career to the classrooms, but once he returned home they would go back into the closet. Since his death, Debbie McCain has decided to keep them on display.

One wall has a South Vietnamese flag signed by grateful Vietnamese elders. A shelf holds a hand-cranked air-raid siren, a favorite with the students she visits.

"I just brought all this stuff out," she said. "It should be out, and not hidden away."

But nothing gets students' attention as much as her father's Iwo Jima helmet with the gaping hole on top, her most prized possession.

"As long as there's somebody who wants me to tell my dad's story, and basically all veterans of that time, I'll be happy to tell it," she said about visiting classes whenever she is invited.

Debbie McCain mounted the coins her father used for physical therapy in a framed case that hangs on a wall in her home, not far from a howitzer shell she uses as a vase to hold peacock feathers, a picture of her father on a golf course with Richard Nixon, and an original script from the movie "Hell to Eternity," which her father worked on as a technical advisor and briefly appeared in as a recruiting officer.

Despite all she has learned about her father's military career, Debbie McCain said there still are gaps. She knows he once flew with President Nixon aboard Air Force One, but she doesn't know why, for instance.

She has taken all the paperwork she found in boxes from the garage and put it into binders, but there still may be treasures hidden somewhere in the house.

"I haven't even got to the attic," she said.