Thirty-four years after sustaining injuries in battle, Highland resident and Marine veteran Allen Bailey was honored with a Purple Heart last Saturday.

Although the award came late, it was rife with meaning for Bailey, 53, as well as for his wife, Tina Bailey, who worked doggedly to secure the award for her husband once she learned the extent of his combat experience and his newfound willingness to accept the award so many years later.

In an interview before Bailey’s June 6 Purple Heart ceremony, he called the experience “overwhelming.”

“I’m proud that I’m an American, that I wanted to serve my nation like so many people before me,” he said. Bailey was honored on the day our country was commemorating D-Day, the 65th anniversary of the Allied invasion at Normandy.

Allen Bailey fought in the Battle of Koh Tang — the United States’ final engagement of the Vietnam War — in May 1975. His unit, Company G, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, was called to action after Cambodian communist forces hijacked the U.S. merchant ship S.S. Mayaguez in the Gulf of Thailand.

During the battle, which took place on a small island off the coast of Cambodia, Bailey was injured by grenade shrapnel and by a 12-inch tropical thorn that pierced his knee.

After the battle, an onslaught of intense emotions — particularly about those who were killed or injured worse than himself — led Bailey to refuse a nomination for the Purple Heart, which is awarded to members of the armed forces injured in combat.

Bailey said he now considers his decision to reject the award as a 19-year-old a mistake. His wife, Tina Bailey, has worked over the past four years to track down her husband’s military records and veterans who witnessed her husband’s injuries in an effort to prove his eligibility for the Purple Heart.

Her efforts paid off Saturday, as Bailey received the award in a ceremony at U.S. Marine Corps 4th Combat Engineer Battalion headquarters, in Baltimore. 

In an interview before the ceremony, Tina Bailey said, “He’s deserving of it, and his young pride turned it down. I helped correct that mistake he made.”

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