Vietnam Vets Mark Anniversary at Des Plaines Gravesite

First Vietnam vets mark anniversary at Des Plaines gravesite 
Daily Herald
Burt Constable
June 16, 2015

The pain still fresh enough to elicit tears from some Marines, five dozen people gathered Tuesday around a simple gravestone in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines.

On the 50th anniversary of combat Marines arriving in Vietnam, the ceremony honored Michael Badsing, the first local Marine killed in combat in the Vietnam War.

"Mike will be in our hearts forever. My children and grandchildren know who Mike Badsing was," said John Miller, a 69-year-old retired Los Angeles police officer who served on a machine gun crew with Badsing in Vietnam and flew in to Chicago to lead Tuesday's service.

"I just give credit to all of those fellows in his troop," said Bernadette Badsing, the dead Marine's older sister and a member of the religious order of the School Sisters of St. Francis in Barrington.

"They all stayed in touch even after my brother died. They were so good to my parents."
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