Ray
Clooney
Clooney
· Skull ·
In-Country Service
1969 – 1970
Home of Record
Character of Service
Archive Status
Active
Sourced from two Wall of Faces remembrances posted by Andrew Clooney, son of Ray Clooney, on May 28, 2019 (on the pages of CPL Wayne Garven and 1LT John Karr). Ray Clooney was a radio-telephone operator in D Company, 2/8 Cavalry ("White Skull"). These are his son's recollections of what Ray wrote home and later told the family; treat as a secondhand account pending any primary records or the original letters.
1969-05-25
Combat Action
Survived the trail ambush — Hau Nghia Province
One of D Company's radio-telephone operators, Ray Clooney was present at the 25 May 1969 action in which 1LT John Karr, CPL Wayne Garven, and CPL Richard White were killed by a single command-detonated B-40 rocket rigged in trees above a trail. By his son's account, a coin flip among the company's RTOs put Garven on Lt. Karr's radio that day and kept Clooney off it — and Clooney survived. He wrote home about the men who were lost, and carried the survivor's guilt for the rest of his life.
⚠ Source Notice — Multiple Accounts Exist
Secondhand family recollection posted in 2019. See the account under the May 25, 1969 event. Details may differ from unit records.
Did You Know Ray, or Serve Alongside Ray?
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