Charles McMahon was looking out the yard of a home in Hue Metropolis when a North Vietnamese Army soldier instantly walked out of the bushes.
The person had his rifle nonetheless slung, his head down. He had not anticipated an American to be standing there. McMahon already had his M16 on absolutely automated.
“He regarded up, turned and ran, and I pulled the set off,” McMahon stated. “To this present day I can see the look on his face … It was the primary time a man was proper in entrance of me and I obtained him.”
A Marine watching from the street witnessed what had simply occurred. He stated, “good taking pictures.”
It was Jan. 31, 1968. McMahon, a 19-year-old corporal from Cambridge, Massachusetts, had simply fired a few of the first pictures of the Battle of Hue, the monthlong city engagement that will grow to be the bloodiest battle of the Vietnam Battle.
“It was undoubtedly one of many first engagements,” McMahon stated.
No person at Phu Bai had informed McMahon the NVA held the town when his convoy rolled into the Hue suburbs. He and his Marines exited the realm to rejoin their unit for the approaching battle to retake Hue from the communists.
In the meantime, Firm A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was shifting towards Hue, preventing by means of fierce NVA ambushes to succeed in the town.
From Cambridge to the Marine Corps
McMahon was born in December 1948 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in close by Watertown. His grandfather had served with the Army’s a hundred and first Infantry Regiment in World Battle I whereas his father was a Marine who fought on Guadalcanal.
“I did not know anybody who hadn’t fought,” McMahon stated. “Most had been in World Battle II. My household have been all veterans of some sort.”
His parochial faculty schooling bolstered his need to function the nuns who taught him tracked the Chilly Battle as an ethical emergency. McMahon sat by means of nuclear bomb drills and listened as his academics ready him for all times. One of many nuns informed him it was higher to enlist than be drafted and if you happen to might get into an elite unit, you owed it to your self to attempt.
When he informed his father he was becoming a member of the Marine Corps, the Guadalcanal veteran warned him he might get harm.
“However he was proud,” McMahon stated.
McMahon signed a two-year enlistment in August 1966 at 17, too younger to deploy. He figured Vietnam can be over earlier than he even completed coaching. His father supplied one final sensible be aware, go to Parris Island within the fall to keep away from the summer season warmth.
Semper Fi
McMahon arrived at Parris Island because the smallest recruit in his platoon, which earned him the job of “home mouse” or errand runner for the drill instructors.
Upon graduating, McMahon, like many different Marines on the time, was assigned the job of infantryman. From Parris Island he went to infantry coaching at Camp Geiger, then to Delta Firm, 1st Battalion, sixth Marines at Camp Lejeune.
His fireteam chief, squad chief and firm commander have been all Vietnam veterans. These males, some barely older than McMahon, sometimes stopped area workout routines to stroll the newer Marines by means of what that they had survived.
“Anytime we went to the sector, they might say, ‘Hey, by no means try this in Vietnam,'” McMahon recalled them saying. “‘The NVA would probably come up this draw. That is the place you place your gun.'”
One afternoon within the communal showers, McMahon observed a healed bullet wound in a fellow Marine’s chest. The person’s flak jacket had stopped the spherical from going all through.
“That is after I realized that is severe,” McMahon stated. “You would see they have been severe as a coronary heart assault. Possibly 19, however they talked like they have been 30.”
His NCOs briefed the platoon plainly on what was ready for them in Vietnam. VC fighters who would ambush them, shoot fast then run, in addition to Predominant Drive items able to battalion-size operations. Then there have been the NVA regulars who have been skilled troopers with trendy weapons and tools.
Arriving in Vietnam
McMahon arrived in Vietnam in November 1967. Upon getting into the processing station, a clerk knowledgeable him there have been some openings in Drive Recon if he was .
“I guess you do have openings,” McMahon stated. “In case you’re on the market with them and the enemy get you, then they get the entire workforce. I made a decision no.”
McMahon as an alternative reported to Lodge Firm, 2nd Battalion, fifth Marines at An Hoa Fight Base, about 28 miles south of Da Nang.
The veterans labored newer Marines steadily into the tempo of patrols, street sweeps, and listening posts. McMahon’s first firefight got here on a patrol when an enemy instantly fired at him. He instinctively jumped behind cowl. His platoon sergeant walked calmly down the street because the enemy continued firing.
“Stand up and shoot at that asshole,” McMahon recalled his platoon sergeant saying. “Anytime somebody shoots at you, you stand up and shoot again instantly.”
By the point McMahon obtained up and returned hearth, the enemy was gone. For the primary time, he realized the enemy was actively taking pictures at him. It was private.
Lt. Kenneth Kromer, McMahon’s platoon commander, ultimately requested him to come back alongside as a bodyguard whereas he checked tunnels contained in the perimeter on Operation Auburn.
At one level throughout the operation, McMahon and his squad discovered a bunch of lacking Marines. The lads had been wounded, stripped of their weapons and executed. Their corpsman appeared to have been focused first. McMahon helped carry one of many useless towards a touchdown zone.
“Whenever you usually contact an individual, they’re heat,” he stated. “However he was ice chilly. I knew he was useless. However while you contact him and it is chilly, it actually hits you.”
One of many useless had an unsigned Pfc. promotion warrant tucked in his utility jacket.
“I keep in mind considering, ‘Jeez, a brand new man,'” McMahon stated. “I used to be indignant. I needed payback.”
The Impending Assault
In late December 1967, Lodge Firm flew north to Phu Bai and commenced working alongside Freeway 1 as American commanders rushed forces north in anticipation of a significant NVA offensive. McMahon’s patrol discovered a tree line with almost 100 freshly dug preventing holes, every camouflaged with brush and canopy stacked in entrance.
“100 holes, possibly 200 males,” McMahon stated.
The Marines realized a sizeable enemy pressure was close by. Not like the VC, the NVA would stand and battle in the event that they thought that they had an opportunity.
One of many firm’s squads, led by McMahon’s good friend Bob Meadows, quickly ambushed a bunch of NVA troopers and introduced again brand-new Chinese language AK-47s.
Meadows teased McMahon about him not entering into contact with the NVA but, saying, “Hey, when are you gonna get some?”
McMahon wouldn’t have to attend lengthy. Capt. George R. Christmas, Lodge Firm’s commanding officer and later a lieutenant basic, laid out the intelligence evaluation for his males.
“He stated intel informed him it was a coiled spring on the market, simply ready to get launched towards us,” McMahon recalled.
In those self same weeks, McMahon drew convoy safety element, driving provide runs alongside Freeway 1. He handed by means of Hue twice. It was a French-built metropolis with tree-lined boulevards, a significant college and a hospital. The Marines would typically cease and purchase espresso and baguettes from the locals.
“We did not comprehend it on the time,” McMahon stated. “However Tet was about to interrupt out.”
The Battle of Hue Begins
On Jan. 31, 1968, McMahon’s squad drew safety for a convoy hauling 10,000 artillery rounds towards the outskirts of Hue. Rolling north out of Phu Bai, he noticed two figures standing on the facet of Freeway 1 together with a small blonde girl with pigtails and a person in civilian clothes. He stopped.
The lady launched herself as Catherine Leroy, a French fight photographer who had been masking Vietnam since 1966, been significantly wounded as soon as and even parachuted into fight with the 173rd Airborne. She had acquired a tip on the bureau in Saigon and was heading towards Hue. McMahon informed her to get in.
Because the convoy rolled, Leroy requested what he had been briefed about situations forward.
“Possibly a platoon up there, some snipers,” McMahon stated.
“No, no. It is a lot worse. The NVA maintain the town,” Leroy stated.
McMahon figured his command would have informed him about that if it was true.
As they neared the town, the freeway turned empty. No civilians on the street. Out of the blue, an A-1 Skyraider banked north by means of columns of smoke. The Marines realized one thing was flawed.
The convoy was stopped by barricades on the An Cua bridge. Leroy obtained out, raised her arms and walked throughout into Hue. She was captured by NVA forces quickly after and spent a number of days as their prisoner. She talked her captors into letting her {photograph} them behind their very own strains, and the photographs ran on the quilt of Life journal’s Feb. 16, 1968, problem.
The convoy turned away from the bridge. They hit an improvised roadblock nearly instantly made from bamboo and furnishings sprawled throughout the street. McMahon fanned his squad into the backyards behind the single-story concrete houses alongside the street to safe the realm. Tet decorations nonetheless hung within the home windows with pink flowers, however no person was round.
As McMahon entered a home, an NVA pith helmet sat on the kitchen desk. When the home-owner appeared from one other room, McMahon questioned the person who claimed it was his son’s. McMahon despatched the person outdoors to fill canteens for the Marines.
McMahon then stepped into the yard when the NVA soldier got here out of the bushes.
Payback
After McMahon shot the soldier, a younger Vietnamese man got here out of the home subsequent door and motioned. He informed the Marines that eight NVA troopers have been inside.
The Marines ordered the person to get any civilians out of the constructing. After the civilians fled, the Marines launched M79 grenade rounds by means of the home windows. The Marines then stormed the home and cleared it room to room. All eight enemy troops have been killed.
“I form of remorse it in a method,” McMahon stated. “Nevertheless it was my job to kill them.”
McMahon and his Marines had lastly avenged the useless Marines that they had discovered weeks earlier.
The NVA then started hitting the convoy in pressure. Organized fireteam rushes, one factor laying down hearth whereas one other bounded ahead. McMahon had by no means seen the enemy function that method within the open.
Mortars started falling round them. McMahon positioned his machine gun in a close-by cemetery and his squad held towards a fierce enemy assault. At one level, an enemy soldier climbed over cowl along with his arms raised, although he was holding what seemed to be a grenade in his hand.
The Marines screamed at him to drop it whereas they readied their weapons on him. Upon approaching him, the Marines realized he had been wounded within the hand and was holding bandages to cease the bleeding. They took him prisoner.
Among the convoy’s drivers had been hit within the assault. Just a few of the agricultural Marines within the group who have been raised in locations like West Virginia climbed into the vehicles to drive them out.
One Marine went right into a treeline after a bunch of NVA troopers and by no means got here again. His stays have been recovered months later.
“The one motive they did not wipe out the convoy,” McMahon stated, “was that they have been shifting into the town and we form of brushed into them.”
The Marines fell again to the vehicles, loaded up their prisoner and commenced shifting out of the realm. Many of the Marines have been wounded and one man was lacking.
The Graveyard Convoy
Phrase quickly got here down that one other convoy had been ambushed on the street north of Hue. McMahon’s squad fashioned up with Lt. Stewart Brown from Echo Firm, who laid out what they have been going into. Two Army quad .50 autos would lead. The lead automobile was to cease on the ambush website and put down a base of fireplace.
The driving force did not cease. He drove the size of the kill zone at full velocity with the quad .50 going the entire method and got here out the opposite facet. The Army lieutenant within the cab was useless earlier than the truck cleared the ambush.
McMahon and the Marines fanned into the graveyard alongside the street because the remaining quad .50s laid down suppression. Once they reached the stalled convoy, the 2 Ontos autos have been sitting there undamaged. The crews have been useless. The 106mm tubes have been empty. Some order had come down prohibiting the autos from touring with rounds loaded, which meant the crews needed to get out to reload. They by no means made it again inside.
Corpsman Leroy Morin climbed up onto one of many Ontos and checked to see if the Marine on the entrance of the automobile was alive.
McMahon and the others began pulling our bodies out. Two corpsmen moved by means of the vehicles checking the wounded. Lt. Brown was on McMahon the entire time, pushing him to maneuver sooner. It was nonetheless daylight after they reached the location. It was close to midnight by the point that they had labored by means of each automobile.
Morin informed Lt. Brown they needed to go away now. The wounded would bleed out earlier than morning in the event that they stayed.
The convoy drove again at the hours of darkness, firing into the tree strains on each side as they went. They stopped just a few instances to tighten tourniquets, taking some hearth however they made it to Phu Bai.
Twenty Marines had been killed within the ambush.
‘Like Dante’s Inferno’
McMahon rejoined Lodge Firm outdoors Hue as Lt. Kromer returned from R&R in Australia. Nothing concerning the metropolis he entered resembled something he had even seen earlier than.
“After I fought within the suburbs after which entered the town, it was a shock,” he stated. “Like Dante’s Inferno. All the pieces was on hearth. Useless NVA littered the road. Rubble in every single place.”
As Firm G, 2nd Battalion, fifth Marines tried to cross the bridge into the town on the primary day, they have been pinned down by heavy enemy hearth. 5 Marines have been killed, 44 have been wounded. Practically a 3rd of the pressure had grow to be a casualty on the primary day alone.
The battalion was beneath the command of Lt. Col. Ernie Cheatham, later a brigadier basic, who gave his Marines the lead position in clearing the southern half of the town. U.S. Marines had not fought in a significant city atmosphere since Seoul in 1950, and there was no present doctrine for it. Cheatham dug up an outdated Korean Battle-era handbook on city ways and commenced placing it to make use of.
Marine doctrine referred to as for getting into buildings by means of home windows to keep away from the deadly funnel of a doorway. In Hue, each first-floor window was barred with iron. Marines went by means of the doorways and paid for it till the engineers solved the issue. Ten kilos of C-4 packed towards a compound wall blew a gap the place the NVA weren’t aiming.
Block by block, nothing about it obtained simpler. McMahon would kick a door, clear every room, then transfer to the following home and begin over. One afternoon he kicked a door and it swung open onto a household huddled in the course of the ground. A mom, a father and their kids. The daddy regarded up on the armed Marine in his doorway and made the signal of the cross.
McMahon informed him they have been People. The youngsters jumped up and began brushing plaster mud off his uniform.
“That they had large smiles on their faces,” McMahon stated. “The NVA have been taking individuals and killing them. These individuals have been simply glad to see us.”
Block by Block
Not each room held a household. One afternoon an NVA soldier noticed McMahon by means of a window and fired a B40 rocket. The spherical caught the window body. There was a brilliant orange flash. When McMahon obtained up off the ground, piles of American cash littered the ground, blown down from someplace within the rafters by the concussion.
Down by the Phu Cam Canal, close to the facility plant, Lodge Firm dug in and held the road. The plant was nonetheless operating, operated by a Frenchman no person might clarify. He dressed like a movie character in a leather-based jacket and a fedora, and twice he walked over to McMahon’s place carrying a bottle of cognac, which the Marines handed from man to man.
The NVA by no means touched him. McMahon figured they needed the lights to remain on.
The streets remained the central tactical downside. Throwing smoke to display a crossing informed the NVA precisely the place to intention. Lodge Firm labored out an answer by throwing smoke with no intention of shifting. The NVA at all times fired into the smoke. Once they did, the M50 Ontos had a goal.
The Ontos carried six 106mm recoilless rifles. Cheatham used it like a battering ram, personally strolling ahead beneath hearth to ground-guide it into place when an NVA strongpoint stalled the advance. McMahon watched him do it greater than as soon as.
“He would simply say, ‘Stage it,'” McMahon stated.
One Marine obtained the thought of utilizing the again blast of a 106mm recoilless rifle mounted on a mechanical mule as cowl to cross the road. Capt. Christmas endorsed the tactic instantly.
Alongside the waterfront, a Marine officer discovered a cache of E8 CS fuel launchers. The NVA had no fuel masks and their doctrine required withdrawal when fuel was deployed, permitting the Marines to storm the constructing. McMahon discovered a number of useless NVA troopers afterward with improvised masks long-established from banana husks and bandanas.
“If we used fuel, they retreated,” McMahon stated.
One afternoon McMahon and a Marine named Morales have been clearing a home close to the facility plant when an NVA soldier ran previous a window and threw a grenade by means of the bars.
“Morales grabbed me by the flak jacket and pulled me across the nook,” McMahon stated.
The grenade detonated the place he had been standing.
Within the midst of the hellish preventing, McMahon once more encountered Leroy. He and the opposite Marines have been lined in plaster mud from the fixed engagements and explosions within the residential areas. As he washed his face off, she came visiting to him.
“I’ve seen you earlier than,” Leroy stated. “You look rather a lot youthful with a clear face.”
On Feb. 5, with two of Lodge Firm’s platoons stalled beneath heavy hearth from a fortified constructing advanced, Capt. Christmas stood on high of a tank to direct its primary gun. B40 rockets hit round him till the NVA place was destroyed. Christmas was later awarded the Navy Cross.
The next day, Feb. 6, Lodge Firm seized the Thua Thien Province headquarters constructing, which the NVA’s 4th Regiment had used as its command submit.
Three Marines, together with Walter Kaczmarek, pulled down the Viet Cong flag and raised the Stars and Stripes. American rules prohibited it. The US was preventing in help of South Vietnamese sovereignty and solely the South Vietnamese flag was licensed over liberated territory. Cheatham knew the rule, so he despatched a transient message to Phu Bai.
“Be suggested we’ve got taken Provincial Headquarters,” he reported. “In some way or different, an American flag is flying over there.”
‘No One’s Pushing Us Round’
By Feb. 11, the officers have been falling sooner than they may very well be changed.
Lt. Leo Myers grabbed a sack of grenades, sprinted alone down an alley, and threw them over a compound wall at NVA troopers who had his Marines pinned from above. A mortar spherical injured him on the way in which again.
Lt. Kromer was additionally evacuated after being wounded. Lt. Mike Lambert of third platoon was then hit. Christmas was wounded and ultimately transferred to Philadelphia Naval Hospital. McMahon’s greatest good friend, Meadows, was wounded that day as effectively.
On a single day, Feb. 13, Lodge Firm suffered 28 wounded.
“Nobody was killed that day,” McMahon stated. “We have been blessed.”
Workers Sgt. Johnny Miller took command of what remained and gathered the lads on the Jesuit Boys Faculty close to the entrance line.
“Pay attention, we’re going again, and nobody’s pushing us round. I do know we had a tricky day, however we’re going again gradual. Preserve your heads up,” McMahon recalled him saying.
McMahon famous that Lodge Firm by that time was barely the scale of a single platoon.
Miller ran what remained of the platoon the identical method that they had been preventing for the reason that first week, gradual and deliberate, utilizing all the pieces that they had discovered about city fight. First Battalion, fifth Marines got here by means of their strains to assault the Citadel from the south.
By late February the NVA had light from the south facet of the town and civilians started streaming again by means of the streets. McMahon knew the battle was over as he noticed Army paratroopers from the a hundred and first Airborne after they helped mop up enemy forces outdoors the town. McMahon famous that regardless of the sibling rivalry between the branches, the Marines and paratroopers have been completely happy to see each other.
The NVA flag got here down from the Citadel on Feb. 24. Lodge Firm had completed its job.
McMahon famous his platoon misplaced solely round seven males killed within the battle. It might have been far worse. Golf Firm, 2/5, had been hit exhausting whereas crossing the Nguyen Hoang Bridge. The opposite items suffered heavy losses whereas taking their goals.
Lodge Firm fought by means of backyards and blown up partitions with the Ontos and Patton tanks clearing the way in which. The route of assault made the distinction.
“I do not know anyone who wasn’t harm or wounded,” McMahon stated.
About 150 Marines have been killed in Hue, over 800 have been wounded by the battle’s finish. A whole bunch of ARVN troops and almost 1,000 civilians additionally died. The NVA suffered as many as 5,000 casualties in Hue Metropolis.
‘I Stay Right here’
McMahon spent his last months with a Mixed Motion Program counterinsurgency unit south of Phu Bai. One Marine squad, a corpsman and South Vietnamese Widespread Forces troopers lived collectively inside a village. The workforce carried out evening ambushes whereas coaching the locals to defend their very own houses.
“It was hours and hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of stark terror,” McMahon stated.
At one level, a grenade went off shut sufficient to place shrapnel in McMahon’s leg, however his platoon commander informed him to remain put and preserve working with the brand new guys since he might nonetheless stroll.
One evening throughout an ambush, a few of the native fighters stopped firing and retreated. McMahon confronted a Vietnamese sergeant, demanding to know why they did not battle tougher. This was their dwelling in spite of everything.
The sergeant checked out him and stated, “On the finish of your tour, you go dwelling. I reside right here. I’ve to do that till it’s over.”
“The best way they noticed it, I solely have a 12 months right here,” McMahon stated. “For them, you’ll be able to’t be courageous all day, every single day.”
Not all native fighters have been fast to run away. On one operation a Package Carson Scout, a former VC fighter working alongside the Marines, instantly went tense and began scanning the comb. He identified a bunker McMahon had walked proper previous. McMahon threw a grenade in. Upon inspection, there have been two AKs inside and a useless VC. The scout rapidly went in after the surviving enemy whereas screaming.
In the summertime of 1968, on a routine patrol, a mortar barrage caught the unit within the open. McMahon remembers a flash. Then nothing. He woke in a hospital in Da Nang with a tracheotomy tube in his throat, shrapnel wounds in each legs and IVs in every arm.
The physician came visiting and requested how a lot time he had left within the Corps.
“A month,” McMahon stated.
The physician responded, “When you’ll be able to stroll to that door, you’ll be able to go dwelling.”
He was medically evacuated to Chelsea Naval Hospital outdoors Boston. His household was in a position to go to him whereas he recovered.
Upon seeing him, his grandmother stated, “You understand, for being within the tropics, you do not have a lot of a tan.”
McMahon was discharged as a corporal in August 1968.
Returning to Vietnam
McMahon later returned to Vietnam twice. In 1994 he walked the outdated battle websites alongside Lambert with a joint process pressure beneath Lt. Gen. Christmas, then overseeing MIA restoration efforts.
Whereas strolling a road close to the outdated MACV compound in Hue, McMahon got here round a nook and was stopped chilly. An NVA soldier in full uniform, pith helmet included, was jogging by means of an adjoining yard with an AK-47 on his shoulder, shifting quick, head down.
McMahon was frozen. For a second, he was again on the outskirts of Hue watching a soldier come out of the bushes.
One of many American Special Forces troopers from the Joint Process Drive on Full Accounting on the tour stepped over to McMahon. It was only a army guard late for his submit, he stated.
McMahon relaxed as he watched the soldier jog out of sight.
On a quiet stretch between websites, McMahon observed a Vietnamese soldier asleep at his submit, rifle throughout his lap, fully out. In a earlier time, McMahon would have been horrified on the sight. If he was the person’s commander, he would have been livid. As a substitute, he simply regarded on the soldier.
The guard regarded up on the American, nodded, then rolled over and went again to sleep. McMahon had a sudden realization.
“These individuals had moved on and have been now at peace,” he stated. “In my head, it was lastly over.”
By way of an interpreter McMahon spoke with a number of former enemy troopers throughout the journey. Many have been distant at first, however extraordinarily pleasant and welcoming to the American veterans as soon as they have been in a position to converse. Vietnamese individuals, as McMahon famous, didn’t dwell on the previous. They regarded towards the longer term.
Then, an NVA veteran requested him to hold a message again to the US.
“Inform your pals they’re welcome right here,” the person stated.
His Life After the Marine Corps
McMahon used the GI Invoice for aviation faculty at East Coast Aero Tech and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical College, however pilot jobs have been scarce. He went to the railroad as an alternative, working for Conrail and Amtrak for 38 years earlier than retiring as senior director of engineering.
Conrail even despatched him to the College of Pennsylvania for an MBA. He married his spouse Susan in 1969 and raised two daughters and a son. He lives now in Ponte Vedra Seaside, Florida.
Within the Eighties, McMahon was in a position to converse with Leroy once more for the primary time for the reason that Battle of Hue. The photographer had survived the battle and was working in Hong Kong. They talked concerning the journey into Hue, the battle, the years since. He even has {a photograph} of her with one in every of his Marines.
At the moment, McMahon is pleased with his service within the Marine Corps and the lads he served and sacrificed alongside. He’s nonetheless pals with Brown, Kromer, Morin, Meadows and most of the different Marines who cleared the town.
He additionally thinks concerning the 1000’s of civilians the NVA executed in Hue earlier than 2/5 arrived, the mass graves that have been nonetheless being found years afterward and what Lodge Firm stopped by pushing by means of the town.
“We fought outnumbered,” McMahon stated. “We killed half the attacking pressure with out leveling the town with B-52s. It was an incredible victory and worthy trigger … we fought the great battle.”
For years, the officers and crew of the USS Hue Metropolis welcomed McMahon and different veterans of the battle aboard to honor their service. Most Navy ships have been named after way back occasions and figures that had already handed. The sailors on the ship have been at all times excited to fulfill the preventing males who impressed their vessel’s identify.
The VC flag the Marines pulled down in Hue was stored aboard the guided-missile cruiser till the ship was decommissioned. It was then given to Don Swanger, a Marine who crewed one of many Ontos autos that fought by means of Hue.
One 12 months, a younger sailor requested McMahon what the battle had been like. McMahon described the preventing intimately. The sailor listened, then requested a follow-up query.
“What did the Marines do on their days off?” the sailor requested.
“I stated there have been none,” McMahon recalled.
“That sucks,” the sailor responded.
“I do know,” McMahon stated.
