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Bio
Dennis Mannion was born in 1946 in Springfield, Massachusetts. The son of an FBI Agent, he lived in numerous states until the family settled in New Haven, Connecticut in 1959. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in West Haven, CT in the spring of 1964, and enrolled as a freshman at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend that fall.  After  two years at Notre Dame and with mostly failing grades, he returned to Connecticut in the early summer of 1966 and began working construction. As summer turned to autumn and his friends returned for their junior years of college, Dennis decided to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. In his words, "Call it foolish, reckless, even naive, but I wanted to go to Vietnam. I wanted to know what war was about. So, I figured the Marines were my best chance of doing that."

Flash forward to the fall of 1967. Dennis arrived in South Vietnam and was assigned to Charlie Battery, 1st Battalion, 13th Marines, but within weeks he was attached out as an artillery Forward Observer to Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines. By Christmas of that same year, he and other members of Kilo Company found themselves at Khe Sanh as part of the buildup in response to a large NVA presence in that area. Just after Christmas, Kilo Company took over the responsibility for the defense of Hill 861, and they would weather the 77 day Siege of Khe Sanh on that hill.
 
Dennis Mannion resides in Connecticut with his wife Joan and their three sons, Jake, Blake, and Devin, and he also has a daughter Brooke who lives and works in NYC. Now retired, he was a high school English teacher and football coach for 30 years in Wallingford, Connecticut.  Running the house, hiking, reading, and speaking to high school and college audiences about his Vietnam experience constitute a major portion of his retirement time.
  Journal

Rank in Nam... went over as a PFC (E-2) in Sept 67' and by Nov 67', I was a Cpl. (E-4). I was in Vietnam from September of 67' to October 68'.

I received two Purple Hearts and the 26th Marines were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for the Siege. A Forward Observers job was to coordinate artillery support for the company. The FO job involved map reading and compass skills as well as an ability to think, speak, and reason while being fired upon.

The trip back in 2000 was to be able to return to Hill 861 and to try to come to terms with what had happened up there all those years before. It was a chance to quietly say goodbye to the Marines and Corpsmen who died up there. Those were the formal farewells that I did not have the chance to say back in 1968. The trip to 861 was not a trip to just visit or relive the past; it was more for a chance to catch up with the past.