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View a eulogy for Carl Barry McGee, USMA '69, who passed away on March 28, 1971.

Carl Barry McGee

West Point, 1969

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Bill Bahr, USMA '69 on April 14, 2011:

The following (reverse chronology) was posted on the USMA-69 Forum:

Gene, I know that pain too. Let's raise a warm Falstaff's to all the Immortals of our youth, whose memory still makes us catch our breath and leaves us silent for a moment.

-- RW 4/11/11

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I usually don't respond/comment to many of these posts; however, since I was the Comm Officer for the 1/46 at the time of Mary Ann I thought I might. As a quirk of fate I had somehow been on R&R when the firebase was overrun and therefore I was spared the horror and perhaps my life.

Barry, Don Navor and I were the three '69ers in the battalion. Capt. Strand was from '68.

During my six months with 1/46 Barry and I became very close. Most of the time he had been the LRP platoon leader. Often when he returned to the LZ or "hill" as we called it, he and I would sit on top of a hooch and drink warm Falstaffs. If we happened to be back in the rear (Chu Lai) together we'd get drunk and just raise hell. I remember one night we went to the doctor's O Club and convinced some nurses we were doctors.

Besides being the tough boxer we all remember, Barry was also really smart. He was a star man for much of his WP time. I remember being so surprised when he told me he had just extended for another tour just before I left for R&R. Yet on the other hand I really wasn't either. He was a natural as a platoon leader, truly fearless. His men trusted him and would follow him anywhere. He was one of the few people I met who seemed to be actually comfortable in "the bush".

When I returned to the 1/46, the "hill" was unrecognizable, both from a physical and a personal one. Hooches and CPs had been leveled and almost all the staff including my boss, Col. Doyle had been relieved, if they hadn't been killed or wounded.

As the years have gone by there are many, many days I think of my friend with his boyish smile and irreverent humor and wish we could drink just one more of those warm Falstaffs together.

-- Gene Murphy (B-2), 4/10/11

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Here is the article [ref earlier eulogy by John Inselman]:

http://d27vj430nutdmd.cloudfront.net/3914/60281/60281.9.pdf

-- RM 4/10/11

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