In a bunker in Vietnam on New Year’s Eve 1968, rockets and mortars were raining down on two Marines. Certain they were about to die, they made a pact — if they survived, they’d call each other every single year.
Master Sgt. William Cox and First Sgt. James Hollingsworth made it out. And they kept that promise for nearly 50 years straight. Every New Year’s Eve. Without fail.
They flew over 200 combat missions together on the same Huey helicopter. After every one, Cox would sign off the same way: “Hollie, you keep ’em flying, and I’ll keep ’em firing.”
When Cox found out his old friend was terminally ill, he made the trip to say goodbye. Hollingsworth had one final request — stand guard at my casket and deliver my eulogy.
Cox told him: “Boy, that’s a rough mission you’re assigning me to there.”
He kept it anyway.
In October 2017, at 83 years old, Cox put on his Marine dress blues for the first time in decades. He set aside the cane he normally needs to walk. And he stood completely at attention beside his friend’s casket for hours — without moving, without sitting, without complaint.
“I wanted to be with him as long as I could,” he said. “If it had been me, he would have been standing there.”
He closed the eulogy the same way he had ended every phone call for half a century.
“Hollie, you keep ’em flying, and I’ll keep ’em firing.”
The Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis. Always faithful.
William Cox lived every word of it