Vietnam War
Cimarron continued her service into the Vietnam War during Western Pacific deployments to Subic Bay between 1965 and 1967. But her claim to fame as the oldest US Navy ship in continuous active service ended abruptly after being side-swiped by the USS Hornet during an underway replenishment port-side approach along the San Diego, California, coastline in September 1968. Cimarron was decommissioned and struck from the Navy List in October 1968 and sold for scrap in 1969.
As a tribute to many dedicated crew members, Cimarron's key artifacts were donated to Cimarron, New Mexico, which was located closest to the Cimarron River's headwaters at Eagle Nest, New Mexico. Her ship's bell became the village high school's bell.
Cimarron received 10 battle stars for World War II service, seven for the Korean War, and 4 campaign stars for her Vietnam War service.
Read more about this topic: USS Cimarron (AO-22)
Famous quotes containing the words vietnam war, vietnam and/or war:
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“That’s just the trouble, Sam Houston—it’s always my move. And damnit, I sometimes can’t tell whether I’m making the right move or not. Now take this Vietnam mess. How in the hell can anyone know for sure what’s right and what’s wrong, Sam?”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not children’s lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)