18 August

Joe Calvin Paul is born on 23 April 1946 in Williamsburg, Kentucky. He graduates from grammar school and attends high school for one year before enlisting in the United States Marine Corps on 26 April 1963 in Dayton, Ohio, shortly after his seventeenth birthday. In August 1963, after completing recruit training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, California, he transfers to the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where he undergoes individual combat training with the 2nd Infantry Training Regiment, graduating in October 1963.

Paul then joins Hotel Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Brigade, in Hawaii where he is promoted to private first class in December 1963 and to lance corporal in October 1964. With this unit, he sails for the Far East, arriving in Chu Lai, Republic of Vietnam on 7 May 1965, where his unit is redesignated Hotel Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On 18 August 1965, while serving as a fire team leader with Hotel Company, Lance Corporal Paul places himself between his wounded comrades and the enemy and delivers effective suppressive fire in order to divert the Viet Cong long enough to allow the casualties to be evacuated. He fights in this exposed position until being mortally wounded—succumbing to his wounds the next day.

Paul is interred in the Dayton Memorial Park Cemetery in Dayton. The US Navy Knox-class destroyer escort, USS Paul is named in his honor. The ship is christened and launched on 20 June 1970, and decommissioned in August 1992. Lance Corporal Joe Calvin Paul’s name is inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Panel 02E, Line 063.

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