1971 Marine Messhall, in DaNang

First Marine Regt was pulling out, all the men there the longest were being sent home, all the "new guys" stayed and were transfered to a different unit. I walked accross the rice paddy to Division QH,, just a mear 400 yards, my new unit. Well that messhall was trying to use up as much chow as they could so they didn't need to give it away or send it back to the States.  They served lobster and steak about four times a week…yup we were served Officer food. The only place in the Corps where I ate like that, all the lobster tails you wanted. I gained weight for a month….but all good things came to an end. To bad they were not trying to get rid of the beer. which only came in two brands, Black Label and Falstaff, I never knew why till years after when a high well placed Army buyer finally got busted on "kick backs". Someone with more rank than me wanted to know why also….and speaking of beer, I was in Phu Bai in a rocket attack and when they hit a huge building next to us, the quards for the First Division beer took off for safety, we on the other hand started a relay race from that building to our bunker, had lots of leaking cans from the rockets, …later than next day they knew they lost about 20 cases of beer, they looked at us very hard, (being next door),. Well we put months into building that bunker of sandbags, steel runway matting and timbers. it had a false ceiling, just held 20 cases of beer and the MP's didn't find it. They did take our still, we were making "Raisen Jack" in the time honored tradition or my Marine uncle in WWII.   read more

Battalion Field Meet

Came upon push ball photos in an earlier Sgt Grit News Letter and would like to submit push ball, dizzy izzy, fireman carry and mile relay from battalion field meet Camp Foster. Would like to add that at the beginning of the push ball there had to be close to 100 Marines competing near the end you can see about 20 remaining.
Added two pictures of my cousin John  Fox in Alphas and holding an impressive Moray eel in Okinawa after returning from Viet Nam. Seems our family had a tie to Okinawa, both of our fathers served in the Navy off of Okinawa in WWII. Both of our fathers' had passed way when then Lt John Fox FDNY was awarded the highest medal for valor from the FDNY after the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.  read more

If there was any work involved, the officers would have me doing it for them.

The commanding officer of a regiment in the U. S. Marine Corps was about to start the morning briefing to his staff, battalion and company commanders.

While waiting for the coffee machine to finish its brewing, the colonel decided to pose a question to all assembled. read more

Strange MOS’s

I had lots of MOS's while in the Corps,, can't carry more than three back then. I was a recruiter, we even had our own ribbon for a completed tour.. The two strangest I came accross is CID and the other even more rare. A weatherman, he told me that the Corps had two back in the 70's in Viet Nam. He would get up and stick his finger out the door of the hooch, then call the cannon cockers and tell them it his finger was wet or if it was breezy…and he didn't know the other weatherman. read more

Some of it I recall,some of it I don’t

MCRD San Diego (Plt 244 July 2, 1961- Sept 20, 1961) I don't recall yellow footprints, they could have been there. I do recall standind rigid as possible for two days waiting for the rest of the maggots to arrive to form a platoon. I do recall a screaming voice coming from a upper floor of a building close by but how in the devil could they see our eyeballs moving at that distance??  I do recall running completely over the DI from the platoon on the next street over on the mad dash to the head one morning at 0 dark thirty when the lights went on. What was he doing on OUR street anyway at that hour?  If I had not been rescued by my own junior DI, I might still be in that  s–tcan,he got REALLY pizzed after breaking his swagger stick beating on the lid which  was on top of my head.   Maybe I should thank him as I think that could have been the start to condition I am now drawing 20% service connected disability for. The 155 SP's running without exhaust hooked up in blg 2000 at the stumps  and the Phantoms practicing carrier landings night and day (hitting afterburner ) at k-bay getting ready for nam in 1964 also probably led to my loss of hearing. I was in USO in Hollywood one weekend in 1962 when all 29 Palms personel were ordered back to base,seems a Mr Kennedy was having a disagreement with a Mr  Kruschev on the placement of some missles.THAT WAS A CLOSE ONE. I was on a island (San Clemente) off the coast of San Diego (mar 65) unloading LST'S when a second lewie comes out at two in the morning and says put it all back on!  WTF,WE JUST GOT HERE. He says shut up and put the shite back on the boats (we had three T's unloaded) we are going back west.Twelve days later we were back in K-Bay getting anything we might have left. 3 wks later we were in Naha,after that was lot of confusion,1st Brigade broke up with outfits going all directions, Carriers, Chu Lai,Da Nang.Iwakuni,Futema,I ended up in Iwakuni (shorttimer I thought) as I had two years outside CONUS. I Rotated back to the World Oct 65 with intentions of getting out and going to school back in Oklahoma. That sort of changed on my way back,the way I had it figured with crossing the international dateline when I got back to El Toro I would have 59 days left so they  would cut me loose rather than process me to a new duty station. It seems Mr Johnson and Mr Macnamara had some other plans,they said they had this little thing going on in SE Asia would probably take 3 or 4 months and they needed me for 4 more months. Well f–k it,now I got 6 more months to do,if had known that would have stayed on other side of pond.Only thing to do now is get drunk (and I did)     ONCE A MARINE-ALWAYS A MARINE    Sgt James B Callis 1930xxx 1341  7/2/1961-5/2/1966 read more