A farm boy from Maine, Donald H. Hamblen enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1950 and soon found himself on his way to join the 1st Marine Division, then fighting in Korea. In late November of 1951, Hamblen was assigned to a rifle platoon in D Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, and just before Christmas the company gunnery sergeant sent Hamblen to the division’s sniper school, where he sharpened his marksmanship skills and returned to his unit as a member of one of its two-man sniper teams.

On May 4, 1952, Hamblen was wounded in his left leg during a mortar barrage. A four-man litter team came out to get him; as they carried him back toward friendly lines, they were ambushed by a squad of Chinese infantrymen. Diving for cover, the litter team dropped the stretcher, and the Chinese shot Hamblen as he lay helpless on the ground. A rescue team finally picked him up and brought him to a battalion aid station, where two pieces of shrapnel were taken from his leg and a rifle slug was removed from his right shoulder. After spending only 10 days in the hospital, Hamblen returned to his unit and was made a squad leader. He left Korea in late November 1952 and returned to the United States wearing the chevrons of a corporal.

During the next 10 years, Hamblen saw duty at Camp Lejeune, N.C., at New London, Conn., and with the 1st Marine Brigade in Hawaii before being assigned to the weapons platoon of E Company, 7th Marines, at Camp Pendleton, Calif. In October 1960, Hamblen was transferred to 1st Force Reconnaissance Company and was assigned as assistant platoon sergeant of the pathfinder platoon. The unit’s dual mission was to make deep reconnaissance patrols and to conduct the terminal guidance of initial helicopter waves into landing zones. As a member of the pathfinder platoon, Hamblen had to qualify as a military parachutist, even though he had made 28 jumps as a civilian sport jumper prior to joining 1st Force. He was sent to Fort Benning, Ga., and completed the U.S. Army’s Air Transportability and Aerial Delivery of Heavy Equipment course before attending the Basic Airborne course. Four weeks later, Hamblen returned to Camp Pendleton wearing the insignia of a basic parachutist and assumed duty as the pathfinder platoon sergeant.

For the next year, Hamblen’s platoon trained at the Mountain Training Warfare Center in Bridgeport, Calif., tested parachutes at El Centro, Calif., and worked in the Philippine Islands with the Negritos–aboriginal natives skilled in hunting, trapping and tracking. Returning from the Philippines in 1962, Hamblen was sent to the Navy’s Underwater Swimmers’ School at Key West, Fla., and returned to 1st Force four weeks later as a qualified scuba diver. To be considered ready for their one-year deployment to Okinawa, all members of the pathfinder platoon were required to complete a number of parachute jumps from a variety of Navy and Marine aircraft, with and without equipment.

On the morning of September 21, 1962, Hamblen and nine members of his platoon were scheduled to take off at 10:30 aboard a GV-1 (a Marine Lockheed C-130) and parachute into the Camp Pendleton drop zone known as the Tank Park DZ. ‘Ten of us made up the stick, with myself positioned as the last jumper,’ Hamblen recalled. ‘We knew we had arrived at our jump altitude when our crew chief came back and set the hydraulics in motion to open the huge cargo doors at the rear of the aircraft. Receiving the signal from our jump master, 10 of us stood up, hooked up our static lines and moved in a penguin-like shuffle toward the rear of the plane. On the command ‘Go,’ I started pushing the Marine in front of me, and the momentum carried our stick forward. We cleared the plane in seconds.’

After exiting the aircraft, Hamblen waited for the tug of his deploying canopy; when he felt the jolt, he looked up to make sure he had a good opening. At 800 feet above the ground, he realized he was being blown toward high tension lines. ‘I tried to slip against the wind and get away from the lines by pulling down on my risers,’ he remembered. ‘My efforts began to pay off, but as soon as I stopped slipping, the wind blew me back toward the power lines, as though there was a magnetic attraction between me and those lines. I changed strategy and began slipping with the wind to get past the lines, and when I was about 50 feet from the ground I prepared myself to land and let up on my risers. As soon as I let up, the wind blew my canopy upwards and me back toward the high tension lines.

‘My canopy became entangled in the 69,000-volt lines, and I was suspended directly above a lower set of three 12,000-volt lines. The momentum of being carried between the lines caused me to swing out, and as I swung back I could feel myself drop. My left boot hit the middle 12,000-volt line and pushed it against the outside line. When the two lines made contact I was the only obstacle between the 12,000- and 69,000-volt lines.’

The Marines in the drop zone stood and watched as a bluish-white flame shot up from the lines and arced against Hamblen’s left boot. The bolt of electricity traveled up his body, and an orange ball of flame shot up from the power lines, causing his nylon canopy to smoke. When the canopy melted, Hamblen fell 40 feet to the ground. The broken electrical line also fell to the ground, igniting the dry brush in the drop zone. As the fire spread, Hamblen tried to ignite his signaling flare but didn’t have the strength to pull the flare away from his harness.

‘Our training had been so repetitive that it was an instinctive reaction to try and get my signaling flare ignited and let someone know where I was and that I was alive,’ he said.

The first Marine to reach Hamblen was a sergeant named Ratliff who had exited the plane ahead of Hamblen and had witnessed the near-electrocution.

‘Ratliff reached for my harness and tried to open my quick releases,’ Hamblen recalled, ‘but he jerked back his hands after getting burned from touching the hot metal clips. He was joined by another Marine, and by that time the metal had cooled enough to enable them to pop the capewells and pull me free of my smoking harness and away from the approaching brush fire.’

Within minutes, a Kaman HH-43 ‘Husky’ search and rescue helicopter landed in the drop zone, and Hamblen was loaded aboard and flown to the naval hospital.

The badly injured Marine’s unexpected arrival at the hospital had come at the worst possible time–lunch time. The corpsmen who met the chopper had been told they would be receiving a burn victim and had no idea as to the extent of his injuries. ‘I was given a spinal [anesthetic], and all sensation of pain left me,’ Hamblen remembered. ‘It was noted on my admission form that I had been badly burned on my left leg and foot, on my right side and just below my right hip. My Colt automatic had heated up and burned through its leather holster, causing the deep burn below my hip. Wherever metal had been closest to my skin, I was badly burned.’

Hamblen was moved from the emergency room to the intensive care ward. There, X-rays, photographs and samples of blood were taken, and he was examined by various doctors and nurses. Waiting for the arrival of the hospital’s chief of surgery, a Navy captain, Hamblen fell into a medicated sleep, to be awakened later by the chief surgeon, who said: ‘Good morning, Staff Sergeant Hamblen, my name is Doctor McCullum. I’m the head surgeon here at the hospital. I don’t know what you’ve been told since you arrived, but I want you to know several things right from the start. First of all, I have to say that you must be one lucky individual. Your physical condition has played an important role in your being alive, but there are some things that I’m going to tell you that will require a greater amount of strength on your part–inner strength.’

Pages: 1 2 3 4