After being plucked out of the quaint little village of Khe Sanh on January 23, 1967, I spent the next few months bouncing from one hospital to another – Danang, Cam Rahn Bay, Clark AFB in the Philippines, the Naval Hospital on Guam, Travis AFB, San Francisco, Lackland AFB, San Antonio, then on to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station and their hospital. I was there for about two months. After a couple of weeks, I was allowed to go home on a ten day leave. My parents met me at the airport in Tulsa, and we went home. I was never so happy to see anyone in my life.
I bought a car while I was home on leave. A 1966 Buick Special Deluxe Sport Coupe. It was red, with a black vinyl top, white interior, and styled chrome wheels, with a V-6 engine, power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, air conditioning, tilt wheel, remote mirror, AM radio with front and rear speakers. It was beautiful. It was one of the best cars I ever had and I would give anything to have it now.
Back in Corpus Christi, now that I had a car, I was able to get off base and do things. Three or four of us ran around together, and one time we went to Padre Island, which wasn’t too far away. There was a bridge crossing over to it, and when you got on the island there was a gas station, a little restaurant, a motel, and miles and miles of sand dunes and empty beach. It was beautiful. Now, I understand, there are miles and miles of condominiums on those beaches.
Corpus Christi celebrated something called Buccaneer Days in March or April. There was a parade, with floats and bands, and then there was a fair. Pretty neat.
In May, I got orders for Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I got another ten day leave, plus three days travel time, so I went home again. About the only thing I remember about that leave is going to Tinker Air Force Base to get paid.
When my leave was up, I got on US 64, which pretty much paralleled the future I-40, and headed for Camp Lejeune. At the end of the first day, I stopped in Memphis and got a motel for the night. The next morning, I ate breakfast and found an automatic car wash and got rid of the bugs and dirt of the previous day. On the road again. I loved to drive, especially on winding roads and hills. Unfortunately, driving across Tennessee is almost like driving across Kansas, until you get to the eastern part of the state. The highway was as straight as a string and as flat as a pancake. There was nothing memorable about it. I don’t remember a single feature. The only good thing about it was the speed limit. 75 mph, so you could get across pretty fast.
When I got to Chattanooga, the scenery improved dramatically. Chattanooga is on the western side of the Smokey Mountains and from there, all the way to about the eastern third of North Carolina, is some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. I found a motel and, after I checked in, drove around the city for a while. I used to be a real Civil War history buff, and I remembered that a major battle was fought there at Lookout Mountain. It was there all right, just like the history books said it was, and it looked like it would be a tough nut to crack. Worse than 861S, even. There was a tram going up it, and once at the top there are statues and monuments to all the Confederate and Union units that fought there. Also, a lot of posh homes. Great view of the city from up there, too. The next morning on the way out of town, I passed a shoe store called the Chattanooga Shoe Shoe.
The next day was the best part of the whole trip. Winding mountain roads, great scenery, and lots of little towns that had probably been there since the Revolutionary War. Every one of them was built around a town square, and every town square had a statue of a Confederate soldier, or an old Civil War cannon, or both. I found out something real quick about driving in those mountains. When a curve sign has a speed limit posted on it, it means what it says. If it says 20 mph and you try it at 25, you’re likely to take the ride of your life down the side of the mountain.
Asheville, Raleigh-Durham, New Bern, and finally, Jacksonville, home of Camp Lejeune. I was a day early (poor planning), and got a motel for the night. I could have gone ahead and reported in and saved a little money, but I wasn’t nearly as stupid as I used to be. One thing you learn early on in the Marine Corps. Never, ever, report in before you absolutely, positively, can’t think of any way out, have to. You won’t impress anyone, but you will let them know right away that you aren’t very bright.
I got up early the next morning, got into the khakis they had given me on Guam, and headed for the base. At the main gate, the guard hassled me a little, then pointed to the visitors center. Seems like I had to get a visitor’s pass for my car , until I reported in. Then, I could get a permanent sticker. They screwed with me in there for a couple of hours, finally gave me a visitor’s pass, and I went off to hunt down Headquarters, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. I finally found it and went to report in.
I got jumped by the battalion First Sergeant, first thing. Him: “Why aren’t you in uniform? Are you looking for brig time?” Me: “No, sir,” Him again: “Then why are you in khakis? Where are your greens?” Me again: Well, I, uh…” Him: “When’s the last time you saw a barber?” Me: “Uh…” We finally got it sorted out, sort of, and he sent me over to H&S Company. H&S Company, same thing. Them: “Why…” Me: “Duh…”
For the next several days, until I got my uniforms issued to me again, I had to stand in platoon formation in my khakis, while everyone else was in utilities. Four years. I had to sign up for four years. Four. Years. After all, wasn’t I going to make it a career?
I did get my car taken care of though, and every time I could get liberty, I took it. See, in the Marine Corps, when you get off duty, if you don’t grab your liberty card and make a run for it, someone will surely find something for you to do. And it’s always something you don’t want to do, too. They almost never let you get off duty and go back to the barracks and relax. If you let them, they worked you right up to lights out at ten o’clock. Weekends were the worst. You absolutely had to get away on weekends.
I was in what they would call today, the Old Corps. Our barracks at Lejeune were two stories high, and had four squad bays, two on each floor. Each squad bay held about eighty men. Two rows of twenty double-decker racks., spaced three or four feet apart. You had one foot locker and half of a metal wall locker. You had a white cotton laundry bag tied on one side at one end of your rack, a white towel hanging on the other side. The Marine Corps figured you couldn’t possibly need any more room than that. You had a stained, three inch thick mattress, one thin pillow, also stained, two blankets, a pillowcase, and a top and bottom sheet. Every Thursday, you turned your dirty sheets and pillow case in for clean ones. You weren’t allowed to lay, or sit on your rack during duty hours. Today, I understand they have two and four man air conditioned rooms, with closets, desks, and lamps. Bunch of sissies.
Everyone had one week of mess duty each year. Today, I understand there are civilians running the mess halls. They aren’t even called mess halls anymore. That’s just wrong!
Every morning we were up at 5:00 am. Shower, shave, dress (What shall I wear today? Hmm… guess I’ll wear the green outfit. I think I look pretty sharp in that.), and clean the squad bay. Then, after a three mile run, over to the mess hall for breakfast. Then back to the barracks to police the area. Pick up trash, cigarette butts, and so on. Then, morning inspection. If everything went well, we marched off to work.
From 8:00 am until noon, we did a lot of things that didn’t need to be done, since we had done it all the day before, and the day before that. At noon, we marched over to the mess hall for chow. We would straggle back, and at 1:00 start doing the rest of the things that didn’t need to be done. Mostly, it was doing preventive maintenance on our radio gear. At 5:00 we marched back to the barracks and were dismissed. We would run into the barracks, change into civilian clothes (no blue jeans, no shirts without collars, no tennis shoes) get in line for our liberty cards, and head for the gate. That was pretty much the routine every day of the week, except Thursday. We had field day on Thursday.
Field day. What that meant was, before we went to work, we would take our mattresses outside to air out during the day. After we got off work, we cleaned the barracks. Really cleaned it. All the racks, footlockers, and wall lockers in the squad bay were pushed to one end, then the other end was swept, swabbed, waxed and buffed. Then all the racks, footlockers and wall lockers were carried back to that end and the other end was done. Everything was dusted. Light fixtures, racks, wall lockers, window sills. Windows were cleaned with old newspaper. Door handles and hinges were polished with Brasso. Then we waited to fail the inspection. Which we would. Do it all over again. We would. Then we would send someone over to ask them to come fail us again, which they did. Then, we usually sat around for an hour or so, with a lookout posted, to make sure they didn’t sneak up on us, then sent someone to get them again. We did that a couple of times until they finally said they were satisfied. If we had done it right the first time, we could have been on liberty hours ago, they told us. We would tell them we were sorry, we would do better next week. By this time, it was 11:00 or 11:30 and nobody was going anywhere.
Sometime during the summer of 1968, I got a three day pass. I decided to go visit my cousin Jan, who was attending a music seminar at the University of the South. It was in Sewannee, Tennessee, just south of Chattanooga. I took off right after work on Friday, and drove there that night. I got there the next morning, Saturday, and looked her up. The campus was the most beautiful I had ever seen. I don’t know when the school was built, but I’m guessing the late 1800's. It didn’t look like it had changed much since then, either. And that was fine with me. I loved all the old buildings, ivy, and huge trees. It looked like a college campus ought to look, I thought.
I don’t remember what all we did while I was there, but Jan somehow got a dorm room for me, and I remember watching an intramural baseball game. Monday afternoon I headed back to Lejeune. It was a nice break.
In late September, they told us we would be going on a Carribean cruise. We spent most of the month crating up our equipment and stenciling our unit on the crates. Wow! A Carribean cruise! I always wanted to go on one. I put my car in storage in Jacksonville and I was ready to go.
On October 10, we trucked and jeeped up to Morehead City, and after waiting on the dock for several hours, loaded our equipment and ourselves onto LST 1175, the U.S.S. York County. I remember reading a plaque in the mess hall that said it was 302' long and had been commissioned in May, 1944.
There were about a hundred and fifty in our company, and I don’t know big the crew was. All I know is, it was crowded. The crew’s quarter were okay, they had more room than we had in our barracks back at Lejeune. They were on the starboard side. We were crammed into the port side. There were several compartments about 20' long by 15' wide, and there were maybe fifty or sixty of us jammed in each one, stacked five racks high, with 18" between rows. No footlockers or wall lockers. We lived out of our seabags. They were on the deck, in between the racks and we had to walk on them. To sleep down there, you had to decide if you were going to sleep on your back or your stomach, because there wasn’t room to turn over. Our equipment was hung on the walls… oops, I mean bulkheads. Radios, mortars, machine guns. Other assorted junk.
I don’t think I slept more than two or three nights down there. It was just too hot and crowded. There was no air conditioning, it was built during WWII, remember, and the ventilating system might have been okay on the crew’s side, but it couldn’t do the job on our side. I would always try to find a place on deck to sleep. Usually in the back of a truck, if it didn’t rain.
The Navy liked having us on board, although they would never admit it. After all, we scraped the rust and painted that tub, inside and out for them. And swept and swabbed the decks, and polished the brass. All they had to do was run the ship. They had to have hated to see us go.
Every chance I got, I would go up to the bow and sit and watch the dolphins race the ship. They were there nearly every day, it seemed like, and I never got tired of watching them. I couldn’t believe the stamina they had. They would stay with us for hours, and they never seemed to get tired. Every once in a while, a school of flying fish would come out of the water and skim along for a couple of hundred yards, too.
We went to several islands in the Carribean. San Juan, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands (some of the ships went to St. Thomas), Aruba, in the Dutch West Indies (some went to Caracas, Venezuela, Curacao, Dutch West Indies, Vieques Island (Puerto Rico), and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I can’t remember which ones we stopped at when, but we usually stayed a few days at each port. We went to San Juan first, though.
San Juan was a nice place in those days. There is the New Town, and the Old Town. Old Town was by far the more picturesque, and I spent most of my time there. There was Castillo de San Cristobal, the ancient Spanish fort that guards the harbor, lots of narrow, winding, cobblestone streets to get lost in, shops, stores, and bars. Tourists were all over the place in the daytime, but at night, there were mostly Marines, sailors, and locals.
In New Town, I went to a McDonald’s a few times. Pretty much like in the States, but they didn’t have french fries. Instead, they had deep fried plantains. Plantains are like big bananas, but they aren’t quite as sweet. Anyway, they sliced them as thin as potato chips, deep fried them, and salted them. They were good.
We spent about a month on Vieques, at Camp Garcia. The Navy and Marines use one end of it for bombing and gunnery practice. They’ve used it for years, as far back as WWII, maybe even earlier. Anyway, there was a huge stink about it in the late 1990's. All the crazy left-wing types were trying to shut it down. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why. What little population there was, was way on the other end of the island, and there weren’t very many of them. The only place that was used as a bombing and gunnery range was on the very opposite tip of the island. There are a few square miles where the Marines ran around with their tanks and amtracks and practiced landings, there’s Camp Garcia, and then, at the very end, the range. It’s down at sea level with a cliff overlooking it, and that’s where the controllers worked from. It was the ideal place for the Navy and Marines to practice. It’s out of the shipping lanes and no civilian airplanes fly anywhere near it.
What I think happened was, a bunch of left-wing America haters discovered it and went down to see what was going on. They found a few happy folks living on the other end of the island and raising cattle. I’ll bet they said something like, “You know what’s going on waay over there on the other end of your beautiful island? You know, waay over there? Where you never go? Where you probably never wanted to go? You know that noise you can hear sometimes, if the wind’s right and you listen real hard? Kind of sounds like distant thunder? Well, that’s not thunder, Comrades! It’s bombs and guns! The Imperialist United States Navy and Marine Corps are bombing and shelling your island! They’re harming your children and your cattle, Comrades! You’ve never heard anything, Juan? Well…it doesn’t matter. We will protect you, anyway. Wake up, Pancho! We’ve made up all these protest signs for you to wave around when CNN shows up. Yes, Pedro? What’s CNN? Well…never mind. And the Reverend Jesse Jackson is on his way! What’s that, Manuel? Who’s Jesse Jackson? Well, never mind. Just wave those signs. And yell, “Yankee go home!” over and over. We’ll rehearse it before CNN gets here. And Comrades, the Yankee Imperialist Warmongers will have to pay you damages for what they have done to your children. And your cattle. Yes, Gomez? You haven’t noticed any damage? Well, never mind. Just wave the sign.”
Maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, but I’ll bet it’s close.
Like I said, we spent about a month on Vieques, and it was really pretty nice, except when we were practicing landings. We even had cookouts on the beach on weekends. I don’t know what made the Marine Corps spring for it, but we would have hamburgers and hot dogs and even steaks a couple of times.
I think we went to Panama, next. For jungle training, of all things. Everyone of us had already been to Vietnam. Marine Corps logic. Anyway, the army had a jungle warfare school down there, out in the middle of nowhere, and they let the Marines use it. The instructors were all army personnel and they were good. It was really interesting, and kind of fun. They had sort of a zoo, where they showed us some of the animals that live in the jungle down there, and they had classes showing us what plants and animals and bugs you could eat, if you had to.
One night they took us out in the middle of nowhere and split us up into teams. Each team was given a map and a compass and a list of checkpoints we had to go to. We were supposed to wind up back where we started by morning. They spent most of the next morning looking for us.
One day, that day maybe, we went through their sniper course. They had a bunch of snipers hidden out along trails, armed with BB guns. Daisy slide actions. They had us wear gloves and plastic face shields. They gave us our own BB guns and we were supposed to walk down the trails, spot the snipers and shoot them before they could shoot us. Fat chance. Those guys were camouflaged and hidden so well, nobody could have seen them. Ever get shot with an old Daisy slide action BB gun? It hurts! We played along the first time, but the second time down the trail, as soon as one of them shot at us, we would run over and shoot him to pieces. The last time down the trail, they wouldn’t shoot at us.
From Panama to Aruba, I’m pretty sure. Nice place. I had dinner one night at a real nice restaurant with a covered patio looking out over the sea. I remember there was a huge oil refinery on the island, Shell, I think, screwing up part of the scenery.
From Aruba to Curacao, I think. I was a beer drinker back then, and there was an open air bar just a couple of blocks from where we were tied up at the pier. Quart bottles of Heineken’s for a quarter. Sometimes we never made it any farther. But when we did, it was an interesting place. Old Dutch Colonial architecture, lots of places selling tourist junk. One hotel was pretty interesting, too. The Crystal Hotel. It was a brothel, and the girls would parade around on the balcony in sexy nightgowns, calling to us to come in. I had never seen anything like that before, except maybe in the movies.
From Curacao to Cuba. Guantanamo Bay. We were only allowed off the ship during the day to go on work parties. They were having race riots on the base and it wasn’t safe to go ashore. They would load us into trucks in the mornings and take us out to the perimeter to rebuild their bunkers. There are hills on the western side of Guantanamo, overlooking a plain, and our bunkers are on these hills. The plain is several miles wide and we could see Cuban tanks running up and down on the far side. We would stay out there all day, filling sand bags. Box lunches were brought out at noon, and the trucks would come back late in the afternoon to take us back to the ship. We were there for three days, I think.
Cuban civilians came to the base every morning to work, and every evening they would go back home. They were searched coming and going. I don’t know what our side was looking for during the searches, but the Cuban side wouldn’t let them bring home anything that Fidel didn’t approve of. They were probably allowed to take back things like a couple of packs of cigarettes, candy bars, and maybe a few cans of food, but no American books, magazines, or newspapers. No American money. Nothing that would rot their little commie minds.
From Cuba, we went back to San Juan. We were there for Christmas, and I called home on Christmas Eve. One night a few of us went to the Americana Hotel, in New Town. We were really out of place, but no one ran us off. We went into the casino, and I sat down at a blackjack table. It didn’t take me long to lose what little money I had, and just as I was about to leave, the woman next to me smiled and slid a pile of chips in front of me. Her name was Tody Fields, and she was a comedienne performing in the club. She gave us tickets to her show, too. Really a nice lady. And a great comedienne. She was pretty well known back in the ‘60's and ‘70's. Several years later, I heard she was diabetic and had to have both of her legs amputated.
We left San Juan for St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, our last stop before heading back to the States. To tell the truth, I don’t remember a whole lot about the place. It was hilly, like most of the islands in the Carribean are, I remember that.
The Virgin Islands are duty free ports, which is why we stopped there last. There was no duty on liquor, up to one gallon, and the officers wanted to stock up.
Finally, we headed back to Morehead City. On the way back, we had to skirt a tropical storm and just caught the outer fringe of it. Most of the other ships had no trouble, but the LST’s did. See, an LST wasn’t really designed to take heavy seas. They have a flat bottom and roll a lot. During that storm, we were confined below so no one would get washed overboard. Every once in a while, they would tell us over the intercom how many degrees of list we were taking. We were taking forty-eight degree lists at one point, and we were all in our racks, hanging on to keep from falling out. Machine guns and mortars were hanging straight out from the bulkheads, and every now and then something would break loose and go sailing across the compartment and slam into the other side. Nothing we could do about it. Guys were getting seasick again, and were puking in their racks. I got queasy, but didn’t throw up, thank God.
At last, we made it back to Morehead City, and got off that miserable tub. I don’t remember the date, but it was around the last of January or early February.
We unloaded all our junk, got in our jeeps and trucks, and headed back to Camp Lejeune. When we got back, the fun of unpacking all that crap began. Uncrate it all, inventory it, try to make up plausible lies about the stuff you couldn’t find, and put it all back where it belonged.
In 1969, there were race riots going on all over the country, and there was trouble in the services, too. We had to be careful on base after dark, because the blacks were roaming in packs, looking for whites. There were actually three white Marines hanged on base near our barracks. There was a story about it in Life magazine.
Occasionally, I would get stuck being the Duty NCO at the Enlisted Men’s Club, and I hated it. I would be given a nightstick and my .45, and it was my job to make sure there wasn’t any trouble in the club. What if there had been? What if I’d had to shoot someone?
One of my occasional duties at Lejeune was that of brig chaser. Another job I didn’t care much for. What it entailed was escorting prisoners to and from their court marshal. I would pick them up and sign for them at the brig, march them to their court marshal, wait outside until it was over, then take them back to the brig if they were found guilty of whatever they were charged with. The prisoners were handcuffed, and I had to call the brig whenever it was necessary to remove the cuffs. For this duty, I was given a nightstick and a loaded .45. I was instructed to use whatever means I considered necessary to prevent the prisoner from escaping. That was it. Whatever means I considered necessary. Fortunately, I never had a prisoner try to get away from me, but if they had, I truly believe I was allowed to shoot him.
Like I said, I didn’t care much for that duty. I hated going anywhere near the brig. I didn’t like seeing the way prisoners were handled in there. At that time the Marine Corps ran what was called “red line” brigs. There were red lines painted on the floors and the prisoners had to stay within those lines. If they stepped outside the lines, for any reason, they were beaten with night sticks. Severely beaten. Brigs in those days weren’t for the faint of heart. The prisoners also turned big rocks into little ones with sledge hammers. It was definitely a place you didn’t want to visit.
We also trained for riot duty during the summer of 1969. They told us there might be race riots in Washington, DC, and if there were, we would go. There weren’t and we didn’t, but there were several weekends that we were confined to the company area and ready to go. That sucked.
As often as I could, which was almost every weekend I wasn’t stuck with some kind of duty, I would drive down to Carolina Beach, or Wrightsville Beach. Down by Wilmington. Three or four of us would load into my car right after work on Fridays and head down there. We stayed in a sort of boarding house a block off the beach. It was owned by an older couple and it seems like we paid them seven dollars apiece for the weekend. Couldn’t beat it. I loved the beach.
I had a friend named Rouse, from Hagerstown, Maryland, and sometimes we would go up there for the weekend. Rouse would call his parents just before we left, telling them we were on the way, and when we got there they would have a bushel basket full of boiled crabs and a case of beer waiting for us. Mrs. Rouse would make cole slaw, and we would sit at the kitchen table at two o’clock in the morning with Rouse’s parents and sister and eat crabs. They were very nice people and treated us like family.
I really liked Hagerstown. At least the way it was back then. I hear it has really grown since then, so I probably wouldn’t like it as much now. It will have lost a lot of its colonial era charm. Rouse knew everyone in his neighborhood, and we would go down to the firehouse and shoot pool with the firemen on Saturdays. They were all volunteer firemen, and the firehouse was ancient, with an old fire truck that was made in the 1920's. It was like new, though, and the firemen probably only drove it in parades. Nice people, nice town. Rouse took us out to the Antietam battlefield once, and I really enjoyed that. I was still a Civil War buff.
I was a forward air controller, and every month or so, we would go to the bombing range and practiced calling in air strikes. The range was on the other side of the inter-coastal waterway, and we would send someone upstream and downstream to watch for boats. F4 Phantoms from Cherry Point would come up and practice their bombing, while we would practice calling them in on old trucks and tanks out on the range. Our tower was on the opposite side of the waterway from the range, and when the planes arrived they would cut their engines and dive on us. They would come down and when they were about a hundred feet above the tower they would hit their engines and scream, “We’re heeere!” We usually didn’t have a clue they were there until they nearly blew us out of the tower. I never met any of those guys, but they were a lot of fun. They would bomb anything we asked them to, and we thought about calling a strike on the battalion commander’s office.
In July and August of 1969, we went to Little Creek, Virginia, just outside of Norfolk, to practice amphibious landings. Now that always looked like fun in the movies. Going down a cargo net off the side of a ship into a landing craft and storming a beach. Just like John Wayne. Well, this was real life, and not nearly as much fun. For one thing, it’s a long climb down the net when you were loaded down with thirty or forty pounds of gear. And, since I was a radioman, I had an additional twenty-five or thirty pounds of radio and batteries to carry. For another thing, the landing craft is bobbing around and if you don’t time it just right, you can get crushed between it and the side of the ship. The way it worked was, the boat crew grabbed the net and pulled it as tight as they could into the boat. Once the first group of Marines came down and were safely in, they would relieve the boat crew and pull on the net. The next group would relieve them, and so on. The problem was, no matter how hard you pulled, the net still sagged a little between the boat and the ship, and you wound up jumping the last few feet, or your legs might slip through the net. Lots of ways to get hurt.
Once you were in the boat, the fun continued. You couldn’t see over the side, and it was bobbing up and down. It would pull away from the ship so another boat could come in and load. It would circle until all the boats were loaded, then they would all head for the beach. Took a long time. Almost everyone got seasick and started puking. By the time we got to the beach, just about all the fun had been used up and we still had to run out of the boat and do our thing on the beach. We would make two, and sometimes three landings a day. By then, we could barely lift our arms and legs, much less climb down the net and pull it tight. That’s when people got hurt. One day I was coming down the net and got to within about four feet or so from the boat. I couldn’t hold on any longer and I fell. Landed on my back. It was about a ten foot drop from where I fell off the net to the bottom of the boat. I had a PRC-41 ground to air radio on my back and I landed on top of it. It scared the gunny half to death. He yelled down to me, “[expletive deleted] Woolverton! Did you break that [expletive deleted] radio?” Radiomen were a dime a dozen, but radios were hard to get.
Once we made it to the beach, we put on quite a show, I guess. We landed at the south end of Virginia Beach, and there were bleachers set up so the tourists and locals could watch the landings. And I’ll have to admit, it probably did look pretty cool. The engineers had rigged up strings of explosives in several places and when the Phantoms came down to strafe the beach, they would set them off. Looked pretty real. We attacked bunkers with hand grenades and flame throwers and shot blanks. The had grenades were dummies, just like the guys throwing them, but the engineers had set explosives in the bunkers and touched them off to look like the grenades were exploding. The flame throwers were real. I’ll bet it did look impressive.
Do you remember where you were July 20, 1969? If you were alive, I’ll bet you do. I was in the barracks at Little Creek watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. A television had come from somewhere, and we were all crowded around it. We had been given part of the day off to watch the event.
We spent as much time in Virginia Beach as we could. There was a bar called the Raven, that was popular with college kids and we went there a lot, hunting for girls. It was a block or so from the beach. There was a boardwalk on the beach, with neat little tourist shops and eating places. At one end of the beach there was a big hotel called the Cavalier. I really liked Virginia Beach.
Back to Camp Lejeune and the old routine. One change, though. NCO’s were allowed to live off base if they wanted to, and four of us decided to rent an old mobile home just outside of Jacksonville. I don’t remember how much it cost us, but it wasn’t much when we divided it four ways. We decided it was worth whatever we paid to be away from the Marine Corps when we weren’t on duty. Staying on base meant never knowing when you would be shaken awake at 2:00 am , and told they needed someone for guard duty, or they needed someone for duty NCO down at the Enlisted Men’s Club. Plus, on weekends (and sometimes during the week) you were always woke up by the drunks that rolled in after the downtown bars closed. We still had to maintain our racks and lockers, just as if we were living on base, and we had to be there for Thursday field days, and inspections, and roll call, but other than that, if we weren’t on duty, we were free.
We even had a three legged dog we named Phideaux (pronounced Fido). I don’t remember where he came from, but after a tough day it was nice to come home to a dog. Actually, Phideaux had four legs, but he had been hit by a car and one of his rear legs was stiff and he couldn’t use it. I had wanted to name him Tripod, but since he technically had four legs, I got outvoted. Didn’t matter, he was a good dog. A German shepherd mix of some kind.
Late that summer, I applied for enrollment at Northeastern State College (now Northeastern State University) in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The Marine Corps would let you out up to three months early for school if you could get into a college and though it may not sound like much, believe me, three months in the Marine Corps can seem like a lifetime.
In November, I was attached to the 5th Marines when they went to Fort Bragg, N.C. for artillery practice. I had hoped to be a spotter, but was assigned to the headquarters group. We were there for two weeks and it rained most of the time. And it was cold. We were living in tents, and there is nothing colder in the winter than one of those old canvas tents. We had cots, rubber mattresses (rubber ladies), and our two blankets. We had oil stoves in the middle of the tents, but we still nearly froze to death at night. We built fires in fifty-five gallon drums outside the tents and stood around them trying to keep warm. Someone had a radio and we listened to music around the fire. Why, it was almost like camping out! I remember listening to Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds”. We all thought that was a great song.
The days and weeks dragged on, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year 1970 came and went, and I finally began to believe I was actually going to get out of the Marine Corps.
In January we began getting ready for an IG. An Inspector General’s Inspection. I had been through one before, and let me tell you, it is no fun at all. All the officers and senior staff NCO’s worry about some little thing going wrong, and they get even crankier than usual. The big day was set for January 16, the day I was getting out, so I wasn’t worried about it all that much. I started giving away pieces of my uniforms to guys who were missing things, because I planned to have no part of that inspection. I would be going here and there checking out.
As it turned out, it was a near thing. The inspection team decided to have a personnel and clothing inspection (junk on the bunk) the morning of the 16th, and I had given away a lot of my stuff. There was no way I could pass the thing, and I was starting to sweat a little bit. Actually, I started sweating a lot. I started worrying that instead of getting out, I might be heading for the brig. I finally decided to talk to my comm chief about it, and he told me not to worry. Just disappear. If anyone asked about me, he would tell them I was on duty somewhere. Poof! I disappeared. I went over to the PX snack bar. I bought a camera and started shooting pictures of the base, and in general, just goofed off. And stayed clear of the battalion area. As soon as offices opened up, I began checking out.
Finally, it was done. I was a civilian. Almost. I went back to the barracks and loaded all my stuff in my car. Then I drove over to the comm shack where I worked, I mean had worked, took a few pictures and said goodby to everyone.
I drove through the main gate for the last time and headed for our mobile home to load up the rest of my stuff and say goodby to the rest of the guys. One, John Leto III, got out that day, too. I had been worried about what was going to happen to Phideaux, but John wanted to take him home with him. He had bought a 1962 VW Beetle the previous summer when we had rented the mobile home, so he loaded all his stuff into it, put Phideaux in the passenger seat, and away they went. I hope Phideaux liked cold and snow, because John lived in Oswego, New York. His mother had sent him a newspaper clipping the year before when they had gotten fifty-eight inches of snow in one twenty-four hour period. Unbelievable. I have a picture somewhere of the mobile home and my car out front.
When I said I was almost a civilian, it was true. For forty-eight hours after separation, they could still nail you if you screwed up. That’s what they told us, anyway. Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t. I decided to believe them, and until I saw Jacksonville, North Carolina disappearing in my rearview mirror, I took no chances.
I drove up US 17 to New Bern, then over to US 64 and headed for Oklahoma. It was winter, but I didn’t run into any bad weather until I got to Arkansas. Then it started snowing and got worse the closer I got to home. I made it, though. I was finally free. In four years, I hadn’t spent one birthday or holiday at home. Not Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Easter, Fourth of July, none of them.
I had driven non-stop all the way, only stopping for gas. I would get a bottle of pop and stretch my legs while the attendant filled the tank (they still had full service stations back then). It was about an eighteen hour drive, so I just went to bed when I got home, I think.