Marine awarded Navy Cross at battle of Hue remembered as 'magnificent,' humble leader
As a captain in charge of a Marine rifle company in early 1968, Myron Harrington earned a Silver Star and, a week later, a Navy Cross for bravery and leadership under fire in the city of Huế, one the fiercest battlegrounds of the Vietnam War.
“We didn’t have any concern that we were being lured into a killing zone,” Harrington said in a later interview on the urban combat of Huế, letting out a resigned chuckle. “The whole city was a killing zone, so we knew we were already in a killing zone.”
Harrington, 86, died Wednesday, Feb. 19, in Charlotte, North Carolina, his son, Mike Harrington, confirmed to Task & Purpose, though the retired Marine colonel and his wife of nearly 60 years, Ann, spent nearly all of their post-military lives in Charleston, South Carolina. Harrington’s death was first announced by retired Marine Col. Thomas Gordon, the commandant of the Citadel, the college in Charleston from which Harrington graduated in 1960. Harrington was a prominent member of the school’s community in the decades after he left the Marines, mentoring generations of students.
“I can say emphatically, I wouldn’t be a Marine today, or I wouldn’t have ever been a Marine, if it wasn’t for Col. Harrington’s personal intervention,” Gordon told Task & Purpose. “He just invested in all of us.”
https://taskandpurpose.com/history/myron-harrington-marine-hue-city/
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RIP Capt. Myron Harringtonn
