There are many veterans among the locals who gather for coffee every morning at Blue Water Café. Among them is former Marine Max Hinkle of Grand Marais. Hinkle’s photos of Vietnam were lost in a fire, but he has vivid memories of his time there with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
Unlike many Vietnam veterans, Max Hinkle of Grand Marais was not drafted. He entered the service willingly from his hometown of Wichita, Kansas on August 17, 1960. “I volunteered. I did it because my brother did. I figured if he did, I could do it too. That was really dumb,” said Hinkle with a chuckle. It is one of few memories of his service as a U.S. Marine that is not painful.
Hinkle said it didn’t take long after enlistment before he had second thoughts. “I knew I had screwed up when I got off the bus and saw the yellow footprints,” he said.
The yellow footprints at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) in San Diego are where the nervous newcomers are ordered to stand while waiting for a full complement of recruits. It was the beginning of “mind games,” said Hinkle.
Mind games such as climbing “Mount Baldy” in grueling heat with a full canteen only to be ordered to empty the water on the ground at the top. Or being ordered to stand guard over inanimate objects like floor drains. “When you join the Marine Corps, they have a wonderful way of breaking you down and putting you back together the way they want you to be,” said Hinkle.
After 12 weeks in boot camp in San Diego, Hinkle attended training at Camp Pendleton. It was there that he met the man who would be his partner on missions into Cambodia and Laos, Tyrone Lewis. “You see my nose,” Hinkle asks, pointing out that his nose is a little crooked, apparently having been broken at some point. “Ty did that.”
The scuffle started when Hinkle played a practical joke on Lewis. As Lewis chased him down, Hinkle said, “I made a terrible mistake. I ran into the latrine—there was no way out. We proceeded to beat the hell out of each other.”
At formation the next day, both men claimed their injuries were the results of clumsiness— and a solid friendship was formed.
When the time came for target shooting, they found another bond. They were both excellent marksmen. The top score possible on the firing range was 500. Anyone who scored over 450 points was automatically transferred to Quantico, Virginia for sharpshooter training. Looking back, Hinkle quips, “If I had known that, I would have shot at everyone’s target but my own!”
From Quantico, Hinkle was sent back to California to board the USS Enterprise for a three-month cruise. Hinkle said he was awed by the size of the ship. Although the ship was huge, the accommodations were far from luxurious, with bunks stacked five high. It was an interesting trip, said Hinkle, from San Diego to Hawaii, Australia, the Philippines and finally Vietnam. On the voyage, the USS Enterprise crossed the equator, which is a naval right of passage. “I wasn’t a ‘pollywog’ anymore,” Hinkle said.
The water journey also included a lot of target practice off the ship, in preparation for the job that was to be done. Asked if he knew what he was in for, Hinkle said not really. Vietnam had not become part of the nightly news yet, had not divided the nation yet.
Hinkle was assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. When they arrived in Vietnam, Hinkle and Lewis were told that the mission was to slow down or curtail the supply train from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. “I spent a lot of time in Cambodia and Laos,” said Hinkle matterof factly.
He said the route taken by supply trucks was a “onetrack trail.” If Hinkle and Lewis could take out a truck, it meant a delay of two or three days for the enemy.
How did the Marines reach the supply train? They were transported in by Huey helicopters, dangling at the end of 250-foot ropes. Although Hinkle said the pilots were “decent guys—damned near fearless,” the flights were rough. He said they were beaten up by tree branches and jungle vegetation.
Once they were dropped off, the men were on their own. Missions lasted from five days to two weeks and meant eating unheated C-rations and lack of sleep. Hinkle said he mastered the art of sleeping anywhere, anytime. He said he could go to sleep in a tree, taping himself to the tree to avoid falling.
Asked about spiders or snakes, Hinkle remembers dozing under a destroyed tank and waking to see “the wildest bug” he had ever seen in his life. He said he couldn’t figure out how to move without getting bitten. He finally flicked it away with his bayonet as quickly as he could and escaped.
Hinkle’s days of sharpshooting ended with the tragic death of his partner, Tyrone Lewis, who had become his closest friend. He was just 20 years old. Even 50 years later, Hinkle struggles to maintain composure when he talks about that day. “Boot camp breaks you down and makes you invincible. One of the things they teach you is not to lose control of your emotions. I couldn’t,” he said. “I saw him fall from that tree.”
Hinkle had to get to his friend. He knew that if the enemy returned with a person’s ear and dog tag, they were rewarded. He was determined to prevent that from happening and he killed the soldier approaching Lewis’s body at close range.
He then carried his friend’s body 20 miles, traveling at night because it was not safe to move during the day. It took two days. “That 20 miles seemed like 20,000,” said Hinkle sadly.
After 90 missions, his days of combat were over. Hinkle was assigned to the armory for the rest of his tour. He eventually got a flight back to the United States and was assigned to “the best duty I ever had,” driving for a company commander. He was offered an increase in rank and a $10,000 bonus to re-enlist, but he had had enough.
Back in the civilian world, Hinkle wandered a bit. He and five buddies piled in a pickup truck and journeyed to Alaska where he got a job working on the pipeline for a while. He ended up back in Kansas and became a driver for Continental Oil, a job he held for 29 years. He met and married the love of his life, Pat, and they visited the North Shore— and eventually retired here, spending a happy 20 years at their home on County Road 60 before Pat died in February 2007.
Before that, they made a good memory. He and Pat traveled to Washington, D.C. to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where Hinkle made a pencil rubbing of his friend’s name on the memorial wall. The names of three other good friends are also etched in the black stone. “It is a beautiful memorial, a wonderful tribute,” said Hinkle.
The Vietnam
Veterans Memorial
There are 58,272 names
listed on the Memorial.
Approximately 1200 of
these are listed as missing.
The names are in
chronological order,
according to the date
of casualty; within each
day, the names are
alphabetized. The list
begins on July 8, 1959.
At the beginning of the list
is this inscription:
IN HONOR OF THE MEN AND
WOMEN OF THE ARMED
FORCES OF THE UNITED
STATES WHO SERVED IN THE
VIETNAM WAR. THE NAMES
OF THOSE WHO GAVE
THEIR LIVES AND OF THOSE
WHO REMAIN MISSING ARE
INSCRIBED IN THE ORDER
THEY WERE TAKEN FROM US.
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