pr ay i n g t h e r o s a ry
Safeguarding and solace — one military rosary’s legacy By Marty Denzer Photos by Megan Marley
D
eacon Sam Adams reverently opened the small pouch, allowing the worn wooden rosary to
fall gently into his palm. Originally painted black, the beads are now a soft gray, interspersed with a few shiny black replacement beads. It looks wellused and well-loved. A military chaplain gave him the rosary Aug. 28, 1966, following his first Vietnam War battle. He kept it close through two tours of duty in Vietnam. It accompanied him through life as a husband, father, grandfather and later as an ordained deacon. He loaned it to three other members of the armed services in combat — a Navy officer, an Army officer and a Marine. Men and rosary came safely home each time, and each man personally returned the rosary to Deacon Sam. Sam Adams was just 17 years old in 1966 when he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps following his high school graduation. After boot camp in San Diego, Calif., he rotated to the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Mateo, Calif., for infantry artillery training. Sam was assigned to the Third Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment, composed of 83 servicemen to provide artillery and communication support
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to the 3rd Marine Division and officers. That August, the regiment was flown to South Vietnam, first to Da Nang, then to Quang Tri Province near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). They almost immediately found themselves amidst fierce fighting. Operation Hastings had pushed the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) back across the DMZ, but repeated NVA incursions attempted to lure American and South Vietnamese forces away from populated areas. Operation Hastings concluded, but just days later Operation Prairie launched; Sam’s regiment was in the thick of it. About 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 26, 1966, Sam and his fellow Marines stared across a field of waist-high grass to a tree line outside the town of Cam Lo. Suddenly, a red flare shot into the sky and a superior force of North Vietnamese aggressively attacked. Deacon Sam still remembers his fear. The night was illuminated by the heavy volume of fire from both sides. Deacon Sam’s description of the big guns sound chillingly mind-numbing to the uninitiated. The firefight lasted until sunrise. In the dawn light, the Americans counted 78 NVA casualties, while six Americans were killed in action and 12 wounded. Sam felt a surge of both relief at surviving and shock at the grisliness he had witnessed. Two days later, a Navy captain who was also a Catholic priest/chaplain was flown to the area. He said Mass, then moved among the Marines distributing rosaries and 4-way medals featuring images of St. Christopher, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, St. Joseph and the Miraculous Medal of Mary. Even non-Catholics accepted the rosaries gratefully, Deacon Sam recalled, wearing them “like a necklace.” Sam returned to Camp Pendleton at the end of his tour of duty. He was redeployed, rosary in pocket, to South Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The tour was hard, he said, but not as hard as his first tour. While his religious training as a child had been Catholic seasoned with Southern Baptist (he recalled describing himself as “Roman-Baptist-Southern-Catholic”), he knew how to pray the rosary and often did. “I remember how much comfort I got praying the rosary on those beads … a sense of peace. It gave me solace from the mental anguish of being in that place,” Deacon Sam said. His 19 months of service instilled in Sam both
