Over the last two decades, Fred Smith just hasn’t had the time for the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines reunion.
As the founder of FedEx, and “The World On Time,” the end of the fiscal calendar always fell on Curtis Eidson’s growing annual gathering — which for the last 14 years has been held at Lake Barkley State Resort Park in Trigg County.
Now retired, and a recent 2024 “Veteran of the Year” honoree from the Military Times and Military Times Foundation, the former CO of 3/5 Kilo Company paid visit to his band of brothers last Friday in Cadiz — spending intimate time with several, taking sips of hot black coffee, before delivering a preview look of his planned May 27 speech at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Going to The Wall, he added, has never been easy — but he wants to further cement the fact that the 58,000-plus etched in stone are “real people.”
Smith said despite never making it to this reunion previously, Eidson always sent him a T-shirt and “cover” — or hat — as a token gesture.
Several of those names will be the focus of Smith’s words on Memorial Day, both spoken and unspoken.
A college friend of Smith’s, 2nd Lieutenant Richard “Dick” J. Pershing was the grandson of John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing, General of the Armies and commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I.
Commissioned and deployed to Vietnam in Company A, 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne Division in December 1967, Smith said Pershing wanted to be a paratrooper, but was “blind as a bat” with “thick glasses,” who likely got waived through because of his military lineage.
Smith didn’t know it until a letter from his mother weeks later, but Pershing perished on February 17, 1968, and today he’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery’s highest spot next to his grandfather.
Smith said he came in to the 3/5 like most 2nd Lieutenants do “as some hot thing,” where he grew a mustache and kept a cigar at all times.
He credits his first platoon sergeant, Richard Jackson of India Company, as someone who got him where he is today.
Jackson was killed in action during Operation Swift.
A Medal of Honor recipient, Smith also made mention of Rev. Vincent R. Capodanno — who is uniquely listed as “KIA” with every company.
Known as the “Grunt Padre,” he, too, was killed during Operation Swift. A beloved figure of the 3/5, he was wounded in the hand, arms and legs during a September 4, 1967, Labor Day engagement, when he refused medical evacuation and continued offering last rites to fallen soldiers near a machine gun nest.
Two others of India Company, Joe Campbell and Captain Hank Kolakowski, were close associates of Smith — killed at the same time and day during Operation Allen Brook, while the next skipper of Kilo 3/5 was Captain David Wendell Myers, who would die at Operation Meade River after being shot in a hot landing zone.
Smith noted there is merit with the fact people still argue that the United States didn’t belong in Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s —making a wrong turn after World War II by supporting the French going back to Vietnam.
With more retrospect, Smith said the speed of business in the Pacific now brings a clearer picture of what America’s presence in southeast Asia 50 years ago meant, and he cited some direct words and observations from former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew.
Right or wrong, the memory remains.
Smith served two tours South Vietnam, was honorably discharged in 1969 as captain, and received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.
COMPLETE SPEECH (Listener Discretion Advised):
