I guess my favorite sea story occurred while I was a young Grunt with the 4th Marines in Hawaii back in about 1962. We had been doing the unthinkable…drinking in the squad bay. My little Cajun buddy Ralph Dagle ad been getting really hammered and was snooping and pooping around, over and under the bunks and footlockers when Taps sounded. We were still pretty well wired and laughing our butts off about Ralph’s antics when the OD came in to do his squad bay check. He made it about 15 feet into the squad bay, just where it started to get really dark. He evidently heard a noise from on top of the wall locker. He flashed his light up to check it out. There was Ralph, on hands and knees, bare a**naked on top of the wall locker growling at him. The ODs only remark was “Well, I guess you guys are safe tonight.”
We also pulled one of the best pranks while in the 4th. A Corporal would sleep in and we would all hang for his sloth. We decided to fix him and brake him from his wicked ways. He slept in a single bunk toward the end of the squad bay closest to the stairway going to the battalion parade ground. Slept real heavy too. He woke up still in his bunk at morning formation in the middle of the parade ground. The gunny didn’t think it was too funny.
Semper Fi
Bob Granberry
1961-1968
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Bulls— That could never have happened. Floyd 1860619
Had a similar incident, while I was attending Communications Electronic school at MCRD San Diego. It was 1965, early one Sunday morning, and one Marine was a little ” Hung over ” and was sleeping in… CRASHED is a much better term, as this guy just was really busy sawing logs… The rest of us tried to wake him… But he was OUT !!! We were wondering what we could do to get him up… Someone came up with an idea, and the plan went into effect… This Marine was woken up to the sound of the band and the raising of the colors … He jumped out of his rack, which had been placed in the vicinity of the base of the flagpole… HE wasn’t very happy. But the rest of us got quite a chuckle over it… It was an easy task, because back then, the C & E Bn. had its quarters in the quonset huts alongside the Parade Deck next to the Recruits huts… Needless to say, this Marine was out of uniform… Those were the days…
I think I remember this happening, but I can’t remember if I was in BES or TTY school. Was it very early in ’65, like Jan-Feb? I left for 2nd Skivvy Divvy in Mar ’65.
My first duty station in 65 was the Marine Barracks at Port Chicago Naval Weapons Station. One of the guys was in the habit of going to town sober and coming back hammered almost every night. One night after he left we took his rack apart and threw it out a third story window into the grass courtyard below. We moved his wall and foot locker across the squad bay and respaced all of the racks and lockers the length of the bay on the side where he had been. When he came back that night, he simply didn’t exist. Young Marines eat their own. Gotta love it.
I was in C-1-4 from 1961-63. Our company commander, Captain Steel, found out the NCOs were not making morning muster. They were sleeping in. The Captain came in one morning and dumped every one of their racks over. The NCOs started making muster. We also had a guy that came in stoned one morning and wouldn’t get up. Some of us carried him to the showers. It took several minutes for the cold water to wake him up.
When did a “rack” become a “bunk”?
Right On!! Harry