GARDINER — Marvin Glenn Shields, a Port Townsend native, went to Vietnam in 1965 as a Seabee, the Navy’s mobile construction battalion.
While building an Army Special Forces compound in Dong Xoai, 55 miles north of Saigon, his outpost was attacked by 1,500 Viet Cong armed with flame throwers, hand grenades and machine guns.
Picking up a rifle, he returned enemy fire and supplied ammunition to the other defenders.
Shields carried a critically wounded man to safety, was himself wounded twice, then helped knock out an enemy machine gun emplacement before he was wounded a third time — fatally.
Dong Xoai was a charred ruin after the attack — but the attackers were turned back, and the American base held.
Shields, a construction mechanic third class, was the first member of the Navy to receive the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War — and is the only Seabee ever honored with this country’s most hallowed military accolade.
A display honoring Shields is erected outside the Marvin G. Shields Memorial American Legion Post 26 in Port Townsend.
Shields was 25 when he was killed on June 10, 1965.
He is buried in the small, rural Gardiner Community Cemetery.
His grave overlooks Discovery Bay.
The marker says:
He died as he lived, for his friends.
Anniversary ceremony
On Wednesday, the 50th anniversary of his death will be marked by a graveside remembrance ceremony honoring the heroic actions of Shields; the other members of his unit, Seabee Team 1104; and Army Special Forces Detachment A-342.
All Seabee veterans and their families as well as the general public are invited to attend.
The outdoor ceremony at the Gardiner cemetery will begin at 11 a.m.
Presiding will be Capt. Mark Geronime, commanding officer of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Northwest, headquartered in Silverdale.
Invited guests include Navy and Army dignitaries and Joan Shields-Bennett, Shields’ widow.
Following the ceremony, there will be an open house with “food, drinks and camaraderie” about 20 minutes away at American Legion Post 26, 209 Monroe St. in downtown Port Townsend.
Scholarship funds
In addition, money is being collected to increase the $7,000 CM3 Marvin Shields Scholarship offered annually by the Seabee Memorial Scholarship Association.
For more information on this effort, email smsa@seabee.org.
Shields’ Medal of Honor was bestowed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966.
“The courage and daring of Seabee Marvin Shields indicates that every hero does not wear an infantryman’s badge or pilot a fighting plane,” Donald L. and Helen K. Ross wrote in their book, Washington State Men of Valor.
“Some are forced to exchange the tools of construction for those of destruction — a hammer for a gun — as was Marvin Shields.”
A Navy frigate was named in Shields’ honor, and the bachelor enlisted quarters at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton bears Shields’ name.
Shields’ Medal of Honor was one of 259 bestowed on servicemen for action during the Vietnam War.
Like Shields, most died as a result of their heroism.
READ MORE about Shields and other Medal of Honor recipients from Jefferson and Clallam counties, Wash. — “TRIBUTE: Medal of Honor heroes of the North Olympic Peninsula” — https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20141111/NEWS/311119992
