Marine Who Served in Vietnam Retires

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Marine Who Served in Vietnam Retires
Associated Press
July 2, 2005

QUANTICO, Va. - When he enlisted in the Marines in 1969, Randall Arnold had to fight his way past a friend to get to the recruiting office. Thirty-six years later, Master Sgt. Arnold had no regrets as he retired from the Corps as its last enlisted Vietnam War veteran.

At a retirement ceremony Friday at Quantico Marine Corps Base, Arnold said his reasons for signing up were "purely selfish. It was just about travel and adventure. I was 18 years old, and I wanted to see the world."

His friends preferred he find a safer outlet for his wanderlust. Ray Sedgwick, who graduated with Arnold at Coolidge High School in Washington, grabbed his friend and physically restrained him when they walked past a Marine recruiting station on Pennsylvania Avenue.

"I told him, 'You gotta be crazy,'" recalled Sedgwick, who attended Friday's ceremony. Sedgwick relented when Arnold made it clear he'd made up his mind.

In an interview after the ceremony, Arnold said many factors influenced his decision. He had been successful in the Junior ROTC in high school and had enjoyed the marching, the uniforms and other trappings of military life. But he did not enlist immediately after graduation "because for a while I was being guided by public opinion," which was turning against the war.

But the military was never far from his mind. One day, he tried on a dress-blue uniform his older brother, also a Marine, had left at home.

"I stood in the mirror, and said, 'Oh yeah, this is it,'" he recalled.

After enlisting, he volunteered for service in Vietnam, and served there in 1970 and 1971 as a radio telegraph operator.

Arnold, a Charlottesville native who now lives in Stafford with his wife and two children, left active duty as a sergeant in 1973, and served in the Marine Corps Reserve from 1973 to 1975 and in the D.C. National Guard from 1976 to 1978.

He met his wife Kim in 1977 when he was out of the Corps.

"He's always loved the Marine Corps," she said. "When he was out, he went from job to job. It wasn't that he wasn't good at those jobs, it's just that he wasn't happy. When he rejoined the Corps, that's the happiest he's been."

After returning to active duty in 1983, he served in Grenada, South Korea and Somalia, among other stops. Arnold spent much of his second stint training other Marines.

He's retiring now because he has to, as he approaches the mandatory retirement age of 55. He hopes to find a job that will allow him to continue working with the Marines.

"Once a Marine, always a Marine," he said.

Semper Fi