Voices of Veterans: Corporal Ed Hark shares his story of service in the US Marines

Jan. 3—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham Jan. 3 introduced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB’s Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Corporal Ed Hark, who served in the United States Marine Corps.

Hark was born and raised in New Jersey and said he always planned to become a Marine. Hark’s father was a recruit during WWII but was injured before going overseas. Hark’s brother was also a Marine. When Hark graduated high school in 1962, he immediately joined the Marine Corps.

He was in training when the Cuban Missile Crisis began but described being cut off from the outside world while working to become a Marine. After graduating from his initial training, Hark went to “Sea School,” where he got a taste of Navy life and got to travel the world.

“We were rather unique… we were unique because, for our class of about 35 or 40, about 99% of us all went to one ship, the USS Long Beach. The Long Beach was a nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser.”

After helping American citizens during a political uprising in the Dominican Republic, Hark was ordered to serve in Vietnam in the fall of 1965. As he traveled, Hark and his fellow Marines learned more about what they faced in this foreign country and started to separate rumors from facts about serving in Vietnam.

“There was a fellow who joined B Company the week I got my orders who had just got back from Vietnam, and we all started to look at this guy, and he just had that long-ago stare that was like he had just been through a tough time and just wanted to have some peace and quiet now. So we knew that there was something over the hill for us.”

Hark vividly described his fear during his first night in the field as an Infantryman.

“Keep in mind you’re in the jungle, at night, dark, quiet. Everything you see, you think is the enemy crawling towards you — every bush, every little tree stump looks like somebody.”

During his time in Vietnam, Hark was injured three separate times, for which he received three Purple Hearts. His first injury did not take him out of the fight, but it was terrifying all the same. Hark was on night watch with his partner when the enemy threw a concussion grenade between them.

“It gave both of us a ride. We thought we were about 8 feet in the air. We were probably about 12 inches, but we both got blown backwards out of that position, and we both thought we were dead. It was deafening. We had fragmentation from the skin of the grenade in our face and our hands.”

His second injury was from shrapnel during a firefight. Hark’s third and final injury was his most grievous and took him out of the war. While out in the field clearing a fort that was formerly occupied by Vietnamese forces, Hark and his fellow Marines, including his best friend Bugsy, were hit by heavy automatic machine gun fire and were unable to return fire immediately. Eventually, the Marine’s gun team was knocked out, and the enemy destroyed their machine guns as they closed in.

“At that point, Bugsy and I stood up [and] fired the last of my .45 ammunition. He threw the last 35 rounds out, and the lights went out. Something exploded right in front of me or in the parapet, and that’s when I got hit in the face. Bugsy got some shrapnel. It spun me around. It felt like someone threw hot sand in my face and I took a piece of metal fragmentation about 2 or 3 inches long but about 1/8th of an inch wide. [It] went in through the eye and came out through my upper jaw and spun me around. Bugsy put a patch on me. I got hit in the right eye also. My left eye, I didn’t know it, but my left eye was gone.”

Hark and others who were severely injured were medevaced out as quickly as possible when support could reach them. Hark remembered hearing bullets hit the helicopter as they loaded him in.

When asked what message he would like to leave for anyone listening to his story, he reflected on the time the nation was divided by its stance on the Vietnam War and how Americans may feel about future conflicts and those who serve.

“You may not agree with the war or the politics, but you got to support the guys who are doing it. The guys and the gals who are doing it have taken an oath of allegiance to do what they are doing. They don’t have a choice each day of saying I agree, or I disagree. They are sworn to their duty, and they are going to do it. I wish that we would really honor the veteran if not the war.”

Click here to listen to Corporal Ed Hark tell his story.

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