USS MULLINNIX DD-944

28 April 1972
Mullinnix Loses a Shipmate

RIP Sailor, We've Got the Watch...

The Mullinnix suffered only one death during the entire WestPac cruise of 1972. Enroute to Vietnam, 1 seaman was lost, his name was Jackie Lee Garrion. He fell ill and HM1 McCrary kept him alive through the night with CPR. He died the next morning and was airlifted off the ship the next day via helicopter. This picture is the helicopter taking his body off the ship. The 1972 Cruise Book was dedicated to the memory of Seaman Jackie Lee Garrion.

IC2 John Ekdahl remembers, “I found Garrion collapsed in the aft head and called for the Doc. It was my understanding that his death was caused by a congenital defect in his brain and that another family member had also died from the same thing.”

A SH-34 Sea Horse and an HU-16 Albatross (amphibious aircraft) were dispatched out of Midway to the Mux, somewhere between French Frigate Shoals and Midway.


GMG2 Jim Roland watches from MT52, as Seaman Jackie Lee Garrion leaves Mullinnix






We've got the watch Sailor. RIP...

The downdraft of helicopter blades would scramble your brains. Death of a shipmate is tough, damn tough. Me, Jimmy Roland, Walter “Brew” Brewbaker, and Greg "Birdman" Berry sat on the davits on the fantail. Looking seaward in silence, as if each had the same thought and there was no more to say; and in indifference, because nothing we desired could appear. There is a reason why I keep thoughts inside my head for the most part – they are not safe to be let out in public.

If this is a taste of what Vietnam is going to be like, I'm not a big fan.

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