No name on the item "Get Him A Coke" but I wanted to comment back to the writer of that article. I also joined as soon as I turned 17 in 1956 only I arrived at MCRD the last week of June and due to the overcrowding we had to wait a few weeks before going on schedule of our actual "Boot" Oh, we were able to receive some advance instruction at the grinder and privileged to be allowed to exercise and double time everywhere until the day our D.I. arrived and our schedule began. Our Sr. D.I. was Sgt Essex but the real driving force and true Marine was not SSgt but Sgt D. Herbertson
If you think this is the same Sgt Herbertson as the game he played sounds like him he would have just had time to finish with your platoon in time to take our platoon 1st Bn, Platoon 1003. He could hear eyeballs click, I will say he was a Marines, Marine. I give him credit for making the Marine I became. He would give you the butt of the M1 if you screwed up and deserved it or make you put the safety on with your nose if you left it off, but you did not screw up twice! And seeing that safety clicked on with the nose made me always know that my safety was ON! When we ran on the grinder, he ran, when we did P.T., he did P.T. when he taught us Marching manual with a twirl (with fixed bayonets) and we performed it at closed ranks and a Bird Colonel saw us and called him over we thought he was dust. Then the Colonel addressed us and told us that he had not seen that maneuver performed so smartly in many years and it made him proud to see recruits doing it so well. Herbertson produced that kind of a Marine.
Art Anderson
Platoon 1003
July 1956