BATH, Maine (AP) — With an Irish flag overhead and bagpipes playing, three sisters of an Irish-born recipient of the Navy Cross christened a warship bearing his name on Saturday — and secured a promise that the ship will visit Ireland.
The future USS Patrick Gallagher is a guided missile destroyer that is under construction at Bath Iron Works and bears the name of the Irish citizen and U.S. Marine who fell on a grenade to save his comrades in Vietnam. Gallagher survived the grenade attack for which he was lauded for his heroism. But he didn’t survive his tour of duty in Vietnam.
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Lance Cpl. Patrick “Bob” Gallagher was an Irish citizen, from County Mayo, who moved to America to start a new life and enlisted in the Marines while living on Long Island, New York. He survived falling on a grenade to save his comrades in July 1966 — it didn’t explode until he tossed it into a nearby river — only to be killed on patrol in March 1967, days before he was to return home.
Bugs Marlowe