Bob was stationed with the 18th Anti Aircraft Battalion and Harry was sent to San Diego for Boot Camp. The two brothers never saw each other during World War II.

Harry went aboard ship Oct. 28, 1943, where he was assigned to put bullets into cloth machine gun ammunition belts.

“As the divisions came up, we kept sending ammo,” Harry said.

The Japanese were being driven back, but the bombing raids continued. While hopping from island to island in the Pacific, Harry remembers jumping into foxholes filled with mud, water and mosquitoes when the sirens would go off. Although he survived, many comrades were lost in the bombing raids. In 1944, Harry was sitting on a 55-gallon drum in the Russell Islands when a coconut fell and hit him on the back of the neck. Harry fell to the ground paralyzed.

“I could see my hands, but I couldn’t move them,” Harry said.

The paralysis didn’t last long, but the military physician who treated Harry told him, “the swelling will go down, but it will come back to haunt you.” It did. Harry’s back hurt him for 40 years until the bone straightened itself by fusing together with calcium deposits

Returning home, briefly

On Dec. 4, 1945, when Harry stepped off the ship onto American soil, the Salvation Army handed him a cup of hot chocolate. Harry has never forgotten. He donates every year to the Salvation Army Summer Camp.

Harry was discharged Feb. 3, 1946. He returned to Peoria, Ill., to work as a welder and machine operator in the Peoria Steel and Wire Company until 1950. He married, but the marriage lasted only six months. Meanwhile Bob had met and married Carol Kellum while stationed at Camp Lejeune. The couple lived in Illinois for a while, but returned to Onslow County to be near Carol’s family.

Harry can identify with the service members serving in Afghanistan today because he was stationed in Afghanistan in 1951. Harry decided to reenlist in the Corps in 1951 when the Korean War began because he felt his country needed him. He was stationed at Quantico, Va., ready to go to war when the Marine Corps needed a quota of men to serve with the Marine Security Guard Battalion in Afghanistan. The Marine Corps picked six World War II veterans including Harry because they already had security clearances.

Harry traveled to Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass.

“It was a beautiful country back then, lots of mountains,” Harry said. “They have been fighting for so many years, at least since the Afghan wars in 1897. The tribes fight among themselves but if a foreign invader comes in, look out.”

Harry left Afghanistan in 1953. He took a government vehicle to Pakistan and worked his way by whatever transportation available to Karachi, Pakistan where his pay record has sat for two years. The State Department had paid the Marines each day, but Harry had not received his Marine Corps pay for two years. Harry put his pay in a paper sack and sent it home to friends, Robert Wurtz and his wife, to put in the bank for him.

Then Staff Sgt. Harry Lock and the colonel he was traveling with were bumped from his flight in New Delhi, India because the government had some cargo that they needed to move fast. All the seats were removed from the DC-6 aircraft to hold 2,000 screaming monkeys that were on their way to Dr. Jonas Salk to be used in the polio vaccine trials in Pittsburgh.

In 1954, Harry was stationed with the 1st Marine Air Wing in Itami, Japan. In September 1954, he was moved to Atsugi, Japan to instruct at the Atomic, Biological, Chemical School. Harry was stationed with the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune in 1955. He was not able to visit with his brother Bob long before he was sent to Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare School at Fort McClellan, Ala. He graduated third in his class and was given a new 5711 MOS.

In 1957, Harry participated in the Nuclear Test Operation Plumboa outside Las Vegas and he absorbed some nuclear radiation from tests in Nevada. Marine Corps Headquarters must be notified of the cause of death when Harry dies.

Serving in Vietnam

Harry was stationed at Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C., from 1966-69. In 1969, he was sent to the Combat Operations Center in Danang, Vietnam. Harry moved to the American Embassy in Cambodia from 1971-73. It was there that the enemy threw a charge over the spectators into the middle of the softball game the Marines were playing. Harry took shrapnel in his right arm and left shoulder. His friend, Sgt. Charles W. Turberville, was killed in the blast.

“It went right through his chest; he didn’t know what hit him,” Harry said. “It happens that way sometimes. A charge will hit 100 yards away. It will drop somebody near, but you won’t get hit.”

Afterward, Harry was flown to Saigon. He suffered from nerve damage that he said wasn’t that bad but took time to heal. He spent five days at the naval hospital in Guam. But the Navy needed the beds, so he was returned to Saigon through Thailand where the stitches were taken out.

Harry retired from the Marine Corps on Aug. 23, 1975. He built a home beside his brother on U.S. 258. Harry, a mathematician with an avid curiosity, worked for his brother in his law firm for 14 years doing bookkeeping and research.

Harry has had an exciting life. His only regret is that he never married Helen Nagay, the love of his life. Helen and Harry met in 1952 in Afghanistan where she worked as a foreign service diplomat. Their jobs kept them apart until she retired in 1970. She died from cancer in 1997.

“We were going to get married, but never did,” he said. “Every day I regret not marrying her.”

Harry spent more than two years compiling in five three-ring binders statistics of the 14,815 Marines killed in Vietnam. The books are called “Vietnam, USMC, The Bottom Line.” He compiled the information by hand using only a typewriter and an adding machine.

“I knew if the information was available was placed in order, it would tell its own story,” Harry said. “I figured if these guys died, I should try to do something to show what happened so it won’t be forgotten.”

It is amazing how Harry can rattle off from memory all the information he has collected about these brave men killed and missing in action:

– 27 Marines were killed on their birthday.

– May 1968 was the deadliest month of the war with 811 killed.

– The worst day of the war was Sunday, July 2, 1967 with 89 killed or missing.

– 1968 was the worst year of the war, with 5,066 killed or missing.

– Death took a holiday for two days that year, Oct. 20 and Dec. 25.

– The oldest Marines killed was Maj. Gen. Bruno Arthur Hochmoth and Master Sgt. Salvator Geluso at 56.

– The youngest Marine killed was Lance Cpl. Patrick Sinclair, 17 years, 8 months.

– On July 8, 1959, six mothers had 2-year-old sons that would become Marines and be killed in Vietnam.

The statistics go on and on. A person could spend hours poring over the books. It’s Harry Lock’s way of ensuring that the sacrifice of these men and women is not forgotten.

“Just think what the world could do if it quit fighting,” Harry said as he glanced over the names of thousands of his comrades that never came home.

Please remember them and all those who gave their life for their country this Memorial Day.

Thank you for coming.

Contact Carolyn Alford at calford@freedomenc.com or 353-1171, Ext. 218.