War hero sees ship bearing his name christened
BATH, Maine — Marine 1st Lt. Harvey “Barney” Barnum jumped to the ground when he came under fire during an ambush in Vietnam that killed his radio operator and felled his commander in 1965.
Collecting himself, Barnum realized he was now the highest-ranking officer of a rifle company he’d just joined. He called in artillery and, amid gunfire, dragged the commander to safety, where he died in Barnum’s arms. Then he proceeded to mount a counterattack, oversee evacuation of the wounded and lead the unit’s eventual breakout to rejoin the battalion.
The Medal of Honor recipient, 83, watched Saturday as his wife smashed a bottle of wine against the bow to christen the future U.S. Navy destroyer that will bear the name Harvey C. Barnum Jr.
He said he was speechless when he learned that a warship would bear his name. “As anybody that knows Barney Barnum knows, I’ve never been speechless,” he joked.
The ceremony Saturday was a tribute to the Vietnam War hero who during his first firefight was foisted into leadership of Marines who didn’t yet know his name because he’d just joined them a couple of days earlier.
Gen. Eric Smith, the acting Marine Corps commandant, called Barnum “an icon, a legend, a Marine.”
Barnum became the first Medal of Honor recipient in the Vietnam War to return for another tour. He retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel after nearly three decades of service.
Barnum, of Reston, Virginia, was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, and studied at Saint Anselm College, a Benedictine college in Goffstown, New Hampshire. The school’s abbot delivered the invocation Saturday.