Oxford resident Hugh Syron is on a mission to honor the memory of a deceased comrade from his Vietnam War days by having a United States Navy ship named after him.

“He was a hero as far as I’m concerned,” said Syron, who spent close to 14 months in Vietnam from 1966-67 with the U.S. Marine Corps. “He was a very upstanding, honest, caring, loving individual.”
Syron is urging everyone reading this article to please sign an online petition to have a destroyer named after U.S. Marine Corporal Patrick “Bob” Gallagher, a decorated war hero who was killed in action on March 30, 1967 near Da Nang. He was 23 years old.
The petition can be found at www.ipetitions.com/petition/patrickgallagher. The goal is 18,250 signatures and so far, 5,548 have been collected.
In February 1967, Gallagher, an Irish citizen from County Mayo who had been living in the U.S. since 1962, received the Navy Cross for saving the lives of some fellow Marines. The medal is the second-highest military decoration given for extraordinary heroism in combat.
He earned this honor through his courageous actions on July 18, 1966.
A March 1, 1967 front-page story in Sea Tiger (see photo right), a weekly newspaper distributed in Vietnam during the war and published by the III Marine Amphibious Force, provided an account of Gallagher’s heroic deeds in the heat of battle.
He was a member of H Company, 2nd Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division.
Gallagher was in a foxhole with three other Marines near Cam Lo when they were attacked by Viet Cong guerilla fighters during Operation Hastings.
The Viet Cong pitched a grenade into the foxhole, but Gallagher kicked it out of the area before it exploded, harming no one.
A second grenade was tossed by the enemy and it landed between two of the Marines. Without hesitation, Gallagher threw his body on top of it to shield his comrades from the anticipated blast.
As he laid on top of the grenade, the three Marines with him were ordered out of the hole. As they were running to safety, two more grenades landed in the area and exploded, but still no one was harmed.
The grenade Gallagher was laying on did not detonate, so he rolled off of it, picked it up and threw it into the nearby river, where it exploded on contact with the water.
Gallagher’s bravery was no surprise to Syron. “He cared about others,” he said. “He was the type of guy who would give his life for anybody out there. That’s the way he was.”
Syron got to know Gallagher in the field.
“We were on several operations together,” he said.
Gallagher was an ammunition carrier for a machine gun team. Syron described him as “a very serious individual” and a “by-the-numbers type” of soldier who was “excellent” at his job.
“Anything he was told to do, he did it without question,” he said. “He was very, very proud of being a Marine.”
To Syron, naming a navy ship after Gallagher would be a very fitting tribute.
“He was concerned about our country, even though he was new to our country,” Syron said. “He loved our country dearly. He was an outstanding Marine. I think he stood head and shoulders above a lot of people.”
Gallagher was killed on March 30, 1967 in a Viet Cong ambush while on patrol in Dai Loc near Da Nang, according to a January 2015 story in the Irish Daily Mail.
Gallagher was due to return to his hometown of Ballyhaunis in April, which he did. But instead of a joyous celebration, there was one of the largest funerals the town had ever seen.