US Marine Sylvester V. Sekne,
1949-1969

By Jerry G. Zupan

Green everywhere. Every shade of green. Wet everywhere. Wet leaves, wet camouflage of a Marine search-and-destroy patrol in slow steps through the jungle. Leeches on their sweaty bodies must wait till later to be pulled off. Leeches as black as the M16 rifles they gripped. Black, quiet – like this tangled growth. Too quiet. In a second, wet red splattered the wet green. The rat-a-tat from an invisible machine gun raked the foliage. Tracers of death whizzed into or past fifteen boys, the heavy responsibility of their platoon leader Lance Corporal Sekne. But at age 19, he already had more combat experience than any of the frightened boys hugging the muddy ground. He had only 100 more days left in his tour in Viet Nam. No time for such thoughts. Syl barked orders. They were pinned down. The white flashes from the machine gun must be silenced. 

Sylvester Sekne was born on December 31, 1949 in a refugee camp in southern Austria. The birth date explained his uncommon name. The last day of the year was the Feast Day of St. Sylvester. The Slavic world even nicknamed New Year’s Eve partying as silvestrovanje. Syl’s parents, Florian Sekne and Mary Sladič, were still single when they joined the flow of thousands of Slovenians fleeing communism on VE-Day in May 1945, while the rest of the world was celebrating the end of WW2. To remain in Slovenia meant certain death, since communism didn’t tolerate any opposition. “Practicing Catholic” was enough to sentence you as an “anti-communist”. The exodus of 12,000 anticommunist soldiers (Homeguards/Domobranci) and an equal number of civilians hurried toward the British Army in southern Austria, with the communist Partisans in hot pursuit. Florian and Mary, age 21, raced the 12 miles from their homes in Tržič to the border. They reached the British lines, but not safety. The double-crossing Brits returned all the Homeguards, and all were quickly murdered. The surviving civilians were settled across DP camps (Displaced Persons) in Austria. Florian and Mary were now stateless refugees, never to return home. A limbo to last 5 years. They quickly married in DP Camp Spittal, where their two children were born: in 1947 a girl, Flori, named after her father. Brother Syl was born in 1949. One year later, Nace Vaupote, their USA angel, sponsored their immigration to the Collinwood neighborhood in East Cleveland. A tiny apartment on Hayden Avenue, near “Five Points”, so named where St. Clair Avenue, E. 152nd Street, and Ivanhoe Road met to form a 5-point star. The thriving industrial center here was hiring the influx of Slav immigrants: Fisher Body (Ford Auto), General Electric, and the Collinwood RR yards (Railroaders was the school nickname for nearby Collinwood High School). Mrs. Mary Sekne got a job at GE, making vacuum cleaners. Soon, a single-family wood-frame house was available at 1144 Norwood Avenue (E. 62nd Street), in the shadow of the spires of St. Vitus Church, the new mecca for Slovenian postwar DPs. Flori and her brother Syl enrolled in St. Vitus Elementary School, Syl in Grade 1 in 1956.

Syl was smart. He could play the piano by ear and sketch fantastic drawings. Oh, he made a mark in school, but not for his brains. His forte was making kids laugh. Laugh always. Laugh at anything. To the strict disciplinarian teaching order of the Notre Dame Nuns, classroom comedian was synonymous with troublemaker. Little they knew Syl’s humor just a cover. Funniest people have the saddest lives. The community knew Syl’s father as a strict disciplinarian. An understatement. Since the days our country’s founding, spanking was accepted as normal discipline: Spare the rod, spoil the child. We kids understood the lesson: transgression entails punishment. The occasional red backside did us no psychological harm. But in their responsibility to raise good children, a few parents crossed the line – angry beatings, whipping with a belt. A vicious circle for Syl: comedy in class was followed by punishment at home. Syl joked to conceal the pains on his body and in his soul. But nobody saw beyond his mask. Syl once, welts across his back so bad, went to the police station to seek relief. A policeman drove him home, opened the door, and told Syl to go inside and thank his father. In this era, spanking or beating was nobody else’s business. The neighborhood merely pasted labels, reputations: Sure, the father was strict, but then, the son must be incorrigible, so kids, stay away from troublemakers. When Syl tried to get a part-time job at Smrekar Hardware, some neighbors dissuaded the owner, that Syl was no-good, a bum, a loser. But, as Father Flanigan of Boys Town said, there is no such thing as a bad boy. Sure, Syl talked tough and joked all the time, but on the inside, he craved peer acceptance and true friends. Syl enrolled in Benedictine High School in 1964. To avoid the lash as much as possible, he did his homework at a neighbor’s house and stayed away until bedtime. In April of 1967, with only 3 months till the end of his junior year, Syl had enough. He brought home the Marines enlistment form. He needed parental signature because he was a minor. He told his father, if you don’t sign, you will never see me again. His father signed. Syl at age 17 and 3 months, enlisted in the Marine Corps, “Second to None”. Boot camp was hell, a weeding-out. Either drop out or survive. One boy, to avoid the ignominy of being booted out, stepped in front of a car to get a medical discharge. After 13 weeks of hell in boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, Syl graduated as a Marine, PFC 1st Class, age 17 ½. He wrote home: “I’m glad you’re all proud of me. I’ll try to make you even more proud. I can’t tell you how much I miss you all, but I guess it’s for the better… I pray for you in church every Sunday. Your loving son & brother.”

The summer of 1967. His one and only leave. He visited his beloved Pristava recreation area in Geneva. We young non-military bucks realized Syl was different. His olive-drab t-shirt and pants set a sharp contrast to our Madras shirts and Bermuda shorts. The formerly skinny, wiry boy now stood tall, pure muscle, a fuzzy-top scalp. He talked, never bragged. He still made us double over in laughter, but he now had an invisible serious side. At age 17, he was more mature than the rest of preppies put together. Another incident later at a Pristava bonfire reaffirmed this fact. Mike Rihtar had just returned from Viet Nam. An unobserved jokester threw firecrackers into the blaze. At the first explosion, Mike hit the dirt under his bench. All of us, still sitting on the benches, laughed hard. We were such naive college-age kids. We never had anyone shoot at us. The last time I saw Syl, he was at the Pristava pool in tight olive-drab swim trunks. Hands and feet tied, he dropped from the diving board into the deep end to demonstrate how to drown-proof oneself. We admired him, but simultaneously thought, why would we ever need to know this? What did we know of survival? Of life? Of death? 

That autumn, Syl resumed his training stateside. Expert marksman. Karate. He could snap a person’s neck from behind. He earned a high-school equivalency certificate. He did so well, he was recommended for Naval Intelligence. Having blood relatives within communist Slovenia disqualified him. But he was slated for the Communications Program. A bright future loomed. Humans plan their course, but God sets their steps…

The communist surprise Tet offensive in Nam on Lunar Year Day, January 30, 1968, caught the overrrun USA completely off guard. Syl had just turned 18, and the USA needed bodies for the counteroffensive. Syl was shipped to the Philippines and Okinawa for jungle training. On December 7, 1968, 3 weeks shy of his 19th birthday, Syl stepped onto Viet Nam soil. He wrote home often in beautiful cursive: “Hope you are proud of me… Get someone – anyone – to write to me, I’m beginning to think everyone forgot me… Please don’t worry about me… This is what I’m in the Marine Corps for, and God willing, I’ll be home before you know it… Pray for me.” Nostalgia tinged other handwritten letters, about the Pristava leaves changing color, about his sole happy boyhood memory: fishing at Lake Erie with his father. Other letters hinted of depression: Sleeping waist-deep in rice paddies… ambushes… feeling rounds whizz past without a scratch… buddies killed… enemy kills… and oh, the nightmares. On January 13, 1969, he survived a helicopter crash. He saved everyone aboard before saving himself, hurt bad enough for 30 stitches. Only 2 weeks later, he was back in the field with his platoon, his brothers, in combat. He was promoted to Lance Corporal. A seasoned combat veteran at age 19. Every Marine counted his exact number days remaining in Nam. At 125 days to go, from his $180 monthly pay, his reward for serving in Nam, Syl purchased a 1969 Pontiac Bonneville, a sleek luxury car, V8 engine… A new car, his own big car, his lifelong dream. Proof that “he made it”. He would pick it up when he returned stateside in California and drive it to a glorious welcome back home in Ohio. Syl did drive back home. Not in a shiny Bonneville, but in a flag-draped coffin. 

April 12, 1969. Operation Oklahoma Hills in Quang Nam province. Nobody in the USA, only the soldiers, knew the location of these exotic Viet Namese names. Syl’s Echo Company was on a search-and-destroy mission, to secure an area near the huge Da Nang air base. Reportedly, an enemy base camp was at the lower north slope of Hill 1081. Syl’s platoon was ambushed, pinned down by machine gun fire. He crawled forward, firing his 8.5 lb. M16 rifle, and silenced it with grenades. One wounded brother lay exposed. An easy fatal target for any sniper. Syl left his cover to drag his wounded brother to safety. Crack… crack… sniper bullets exploded into Syl’s head and torso. His platoon brothers Bill Dyer, Doc Wilkinson, and Jim Starr dragged Syl to cover. They knew he was already dead and could not save him but continued to work on him. Chest compressions, mouth-to-mouth, finally pounding his chest in vain and anguish. The greenery was red. Some cried openly. “The saddest day in my life” one brother wrote. David Mazzi, Paul Nicodin – everybody of the platoon – wrote identical tributes: He was the life of the platoon… always upbeat… I miss him to this day… my darkest day of the war… he kept the platoon laughing when we were down (jokes like: Those are my dago boots. Da-Go where I go)… he was a good soldier and my best friend… 

Syl was 19 years and 3 months old. In another world, he would have just finished high school. 

A Marine for 1 year and 10 months. In Nam for 126 days, with exactly 100 days left to go. A true Marine, Semper Fi: Always faithful, to duty, to honor – the very qualities Jesus stressed in His followers. Soon, his 45-year-old mother collapsed in wailing and tears at Norwood Avenue. Her hand held the same official letter received by 58,479 other Nam mothers: “We regret to inform you…”  She lived for another 28 years with an empty place at her table, an ache in her heart, the perpetual pain of your child ripped from your womb. His married sister Flori in California remembered the last time they talked. Syl phoned her from guard duty on her wedding day. She lost her only brother. Her children never to enjoy an uncle. Syl’s father imprisoned himself in an inner hell for the rest of his 36 years: self-pity, regret, depression. Nobody to carry on the Sekne family name. Syl once wrote he wanted to go fishing together upon his return. No chance. 

In the end, a funeral with full military honors at St. Vitus Church. Syl’s body rests at All Souls Cemetery in Chardon OH, Section 26, Lot 1160. At the grave site, his mother pressed to her heart her twin rewards: a triangle-shaped folded flag and Syl’s Silver Star Medal for his gallantry. She would rather hold him. 

Whenever I look at the red-white-and-blue Old Glory waving in the wind, I know one of the 50 stars stands for Ohio. But for me, that one silver star represents Syl Sekne. The Marine with a sad past wrote home so often: “I hope you’re proud of me.” Oh Syl, you’ll never know how proud. 

No greater love has man than this,
to lay down his life for his friends. (Jn 15:13).