Chasing History (Draft) PT I

Chasing History

Few of us make history. We all live through it though. It shocks us, shapes us, strengthens us and gives us direction. We survive the great events of our time, learn from them and move forward. Within the march of our personal histories, we see thousands of events, big and small. We experience great things, technological breakthroughs, personal tragedies and triumphs. Often, we simply shrug our shoulders and move on. We expect others to analyze and chronical the events of our time. We are rarely asked what we did during the war or how some natural disaster or economic upheaval affected our lives. Most pf us love our lives without documenting our stories. Those who follow us are left with no understanding of who we were or how we reacted to the things that shaped our lives.

         This work is my personal account of some of the life-shaping things I have experienced in the last 8 decades. I submit it as a challenge to others to document their own personal histories.

Fair warning. Some of what follows is raw and personal.

Chapter 1

Glasgow

         I was born in a little town on the Northern Plains of Montana. It was a center of railroading and agriculture. Everywhere there were the golden wheat fields with the brown strips of plowed summer fallow between them. These fields undulated over the gentle rolling hills surrounding the Milk River Valley. Much of the valley itself was irrigated by a big ditch carrying water from Vandalia Dam. The mosquitos were awful.

         My father’s family had settled in some fine Missouri River bottom land southeast of Glasgow about 1912. Around the same time, my mother’s people, the Wilsons, started a ranch about 20 miles north of Malta, Montana. With the construction of Fort Peck Dam, my Grandparents sold their soon to be inundated Missouri River place and moved on. The Wilsons held on through the Great depression and eventually achieved some prosperity during World War II. My older brothers had the experience of spending part of their early childhood at the Wilson ranch.

         My dad was a cowboy and rodeo rider turned railroader. His rodeo career overlapped his railroad career by a dozen years. I still have the championship bronc riding buckle he won at the Western Wyoming Cowboy Days Rodeo in 1937. Mom and dad were married in 1938. They lived on remote ranches and followed the rodeo circuit in the summers.

         By 1940, they had two kids, John and Virgil. Dad got a job with the Great Northern Railway at the roundhouse in Glasgow. He apparently stole a hammer marked GNRY that I inherited. During his time at the roundhouse, he built a buzz-saw using a 1927 Model T engine and chassis with bearings he poured on the job. (In the 1960’s we returned to the old Wilson place and recovered the saw. Dad replaced the Model T engine with a 9 horse Briggs and Stratton and cut firewood on it for years.) The folks bought a house at 227 Mahon Street in Glasgow and began to enjoy some stability. Before long, dad became a Fireman on the Great Northern. When the war began, railroading became an essential job. That job and having two kids kept him from being drafted. Two of my uncles, Bob and Jim Thill served in the Navy during the war.

         I was born at the Francis Mahon Deaconess Hospital in 1944. My parents didn’t have far to go to bring me home. We lived across the street. Also across the street was the Nurses Home, a dormitory for single nurses. Glasgow had an auxiliary air base during the war where B-17 bomber crews trained. The pilots liked to buzz their girlfriends at the Nurses Home which my parents found rather annoying. The buzzing stopped when a crewman fell out of a bomber and was killed. One of my earliest memories was after the war when a big hanger at the base caught fire. Later, I would play in the burned-out ruins of the hanger. There was the remainder of a two-seat trainer aircraft inside that we would pretend to fly.

         After the War, the air base became the municipal airport. Its paved runways allowed our little town to stage some impressive air shows. I remember 5 national Guard F-51 Mustangs making an appearance at one airshow along with the first helicopter I had ever seen. At a later air show 2 F-80 shooting Star jets landed. It was a hot day and both fell through the asphalt as they stopped at the end of the runway. Not even the National Guard’s tank could pull hem out. Later, in 1957, they bult a new Glasgow Air Force Base about 20 miles north of town. Initially, it was a base for F-89 Scorpion interceptors. The Cold War had come to the Hi-Line. One crashed killing the pilot and radar operator not too long after the base opened. Later on, the runways were expanded to handle big refueling planes and bombers.

         Our house was very close to the Milk River. A quarter mile path through some wild rose bushes led to Bare Butt Beach. We spent many happy hours swimming in the river. The gooey mud of the bottom clung to our feet and sometimes we had to pull a leech off an arm or leg after swimming. The river had a lot of Muskrats and the occasional deer. One Winter, I spooked a deer who swam across the half-frozen river leaving a big trail in the broken ice. The river would freeze hard in the brutal Montana winters. This opened up a whole new world on the other side for hiking and hunting adventures. The spring thaw would cause huge chunks of ice to break up and flow down the river. We loved to watch them crash into things, especially the old cars placed that linbed the banks to stop erosion.

         In 1952 there was a huge flood on the river. At first it was pretty exciting watching the water rise. My brothers would place sticks at the water’s edge to monitor the advancing flood. We felt completely safe behind the dike that protected the town. Then one morning we got up to check the sticks. We climbed the dike, which was literally in our back yard. As we reached the top the sight took our breath away. There was water everywhere! The Bailey house a quarter mile beyond the dike was completely surrounded by water. We rushed down the dike to check on our cousins’ place, which was even farther out in the inundated landscape. One of their neighbors had tried to get out on a combine. It stalled in the high water. A tow truck went after it. It stalled. Then another tow truck went in. It stalled too. A third tow truck finally began to unscramble the mess. Later we got a boat ride out to my Uncle Jim’s place. We drove the boat completely around the house. School was called off and my brothers went to work filling sandbags. Our family briefly re-located to the north side of town where a nice older lady took us in. After we returned to our own house there were an abundance of bull snakes displaced by the flood along the dike. I was terrified. One day, I jumped into a pile of half burned leaves. I cut an artery in my wrist on a broken bottle. My oldest brother John stuck me on his bile and rushed me to the hospital. Blood spurted everywhere. The doctor fixed it with a clamp. Later, my brother Virgil pulled me out of a swimming pool to save me from drowning. Then I got stuck hanging on to an exposed electrical switch. Virg knocked me loose. Big brothers are good to have.

         Because of Fort Peck Dam, Glasgow became a stopping place for presidential visitors. FDR had been there twice during construction. In the late ‘40s Harry Truman showed up to dedicate the new powerhouse. My parents got me out of bed early in hopes of seeing him. Harry took one of his early morning walks on the streets of Glasgow accompanied only by two Secret Service agents. My parents didn’t recognize him! Realizing their mistake, they positioned themselves on his return route. Then they shoved me out to shake the president’s hand. He was just a kind old man to me. He bent down and offered his had. Not being used to shaking hands, I stuck out my left arm. Harry looked at me quizzically for a second, then smiled and held out his left hand. I proudly shook it not knowing my error. During the 1952 presidential campaign,Truman returned to Glasgow to stump for Adlai Stevenson from the rear platform of his rail car. As an eight-year-old, I hung on every word of his speech.

         In 1959 I went to work for Markles Hardware store. This turned out to be a transformative experience. I began to develop my work ethic and a love for tools and service. Markles went far beyond hardware. They had the International Harvester and Packard dealerships, sold boats and Mercury outboards, had an agricultural warehouse and grain elevator and they serviced what they sold. I bought a Moped with my earnings and was soon terrorizing the streets of Glasgow with my buddies. With the new air base expanding we kept very busy. A group of old-timers liked to congregate in the front of the store every morning. I loved their humor and their stories. During school days, I came in early to sweep the store. One morning I had a confrontation with some old guy who was doing my job. Turned out he was Tom “T.H.” Markle, the founder of the firm and one of the town’s leading citizens. Though retired, he liked to stay busy. We worked out a compromise where he swept the back of the store while I swept the front. He told me a fantastic story from his early days about the Great Glasgow Jail Break of 1903. Years later, I would reconstruct this epic old west event by researching old Montana newspapers.

         One night in 1959 I awoken in the middle of the night by a gentle shaking of my bunk bed. I assumed one of my brothers had come home and climbed into the top bunk. The next morning at work, I learned that there had been an earthquake in far-off Yellowstone Park the night before. Radio reports were painting a grim picture of casualties from a quake-related landslide. About that time a low-flying jet decided to buzz our town for the first time ever. I dived for the nearest door frame.

         In 1960, my  parents decided to move to Havre, Montana. I wasn’t too excited about leaving my friends, but Havre did have a college. It was sort of humbling that my folks would uproot themselves so their youngest son might have a shot at a higher education. Their other reason for moving was that they expected the Great Northern would soon close their Glasgow terminal. My Thill and Espeseth cousins also joined the exodus to Havre.

Chapter 2

Cars

         I got my first car in the summer of 1960. It was a non-descript 1939 Ford Standard Coupe. It had first belonged to my brother Virgil, then dad used it as his hunting car. Like many of the fine things that crossed my path, I did not appreciate this classic set of wheels. It was a faded black with light brown upholstery. All four fenders had cracks in the edges, some of which had been inexpertly welded back together. The cavernous trunk was held down by a bicycle inner-tube looped around the rear bumper. Instead of vent windows, the entire windshield cranked out from the bottom. Over the years, the mechanism had rusted. The windshield knob in the middle of the dash was badly gouged from opening it with a pipe wrench.

         Probably the thing that was most special about my coupe was that it had come from the factory with the optional 85 horsepower engine. This rare $25 option meant that the car had cost the same as the much more desirable Deluxe Coupe which came standard with the bigger engine. Making things even better, at some point in its life the coupe had been upgraded to a ’48 engine and transmission. This gave my lightweight little hot-rod a solid 100 horsepower. It even had a radio, that kind of sort of worked, along with dual antennas. Someone had added 3 chrome stars to the back fenders and 3 equally gaudy chrome circles to the front. I stripped them off and sprayed the fenders with some cheap black paint. I managed to pass my driving test on the third attempt. I was ready for the road!

         My friends were all starting to get cars about the same time. The Nelson boys had a ’41 Ford Sedan. We took it out on Glasgow’s abandoned stock car track to see how it performed. As we rounded a turn, the right rear tire blew, sending the car into an awkward skid. I could feel the rim biting into the dirt as the car skipped along sideways. We were very lucky it didn’t roll. After installing the spare, we noticed things were a bit off. The transverse rear spring had moved about 2 inches off-setting the rear axle. We loosened the bolts, bounced the car up and down while pushing the rear end sideways. It actually corrected the problem. I never raced the ’39, but it was quite zippy. The floor board was rotted and loose. It would go about 75 with the pedal all the way to the floor. Then you could push the floor down another ¾ inch and top 90.

         Near the end of the summer of 1960, I loaded my stuff into the coupe and headed west. My parent’s house outside of Havre wasn’t ready yet, so I just kept on going. I stopped at Uncle Bob’s house in Fort Benton and picked up cousin Mike. We decided to head for Glacier Park. We could see the mountains as we approached Fairfield. About that time the Ford began to overheat. I pulled over to check things out. The pulley on one of its twin water pumps had fallen off. We limped into town and found the Ford garage. After some effort with borrowed tools, I decided that fixing it was beyond my skill level. The kid at the gas station let me park it in the alley behind his house. We took off hitch-hiking. By the time I got back to the car, the battery had been stolen, so I sold it.

         Back in Fort Benton, Mike decided to head off to Havre where his folks now had a house. I inherited his job at Uncle Bob’s drug store and entered Fort Benton High school as a Junior. Aunt Doris taught me how to dance and I had my first date with a girl named Irene. She was a senior and had her own car.

My bank account was pretty flush from all the working I had done, so I eventually got a ’49 Ford Sedan. It was a solid car in good shape. One day I got off work and to find the car was gone! I went back to the store and my uncle called the law. Within the hour, the Sheriff called back and said they had found the car near Carter on Highway 87. When we got there the hotwired engine was still running and the tank was full of gas. I didn’t do a very good job of sorting out the cut-up wires on the ignition switch, but except for coming apart once and leaving me stranded, they mostly worked. That car got me through high school and into college.

I first got interested in politics during the 1960 presidential election. Nixon had kind of a sinister look about him. Kennedy looked more upbeat during the debates. I think our high school class straw poll picked Nixon. Fort Benton was a bastion of conservatism. I remember a classmate accusing the Farmers Union of being Communistic. During the campaign, Irene and her friend drug me to an event for some Republican running for state office. Though I got myself out of there as quickly as possible, The River Press mentioned my name as a youthful participant. If only they knew!

After a few months, the house in Havre was ready, so I returned to my new home. It was across Beaver Creek from Fort Assiniboine about 7 miles southwest of town. Dad got a retired racehorse from Uncle Bob and raised a big garden down by the creek. He had me dig a big square hole for a well in the middle of the garden. By the time I got to the 5-foot level, I wasn’t hitting any water. Dad had an idea. We used a post hole auger to drill ha hole in the bottom for about 3 more feet. We were now below the water level of the creek, but the hole was still dry. Dad got a better idea. Hel shoved a piece of stovepipe into the hole and dropped in three sticks of dynamite. It went off with a bang and the stovepipe shot into the air like a rocket! Still no water. Tired of the digging and drama, I was glad when he finally gave up on the project. The next spring, he was plowing the weed-filled garden plot with his Farmall tractor when he dropped a rear wheel into the hole I had dug. I struggled to keep a straight face.

Not satisfied with my reliable ’49 Ford, I decided I needed a second car. I got a ’51 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe convertible from a friend for $90. Black, with a white ragtop and red leather seats, it was quite a machine. Did I tell you it had a Hemi? I now owned one of the most powerful cars of the early ‘50s and I couldn’t wait to show it off. This led to one of the wildest days of my life. I went to Fresno Reservoir with Tom Jones in his ’49 Oldsmobile one day. The car had the legendary 303 cubic inch overhead valve motor and a 4-speed Hydramatic in it. To top that off, it was a sporty 2-door hatchback in a menacing dark metallic green.

Tom decided to show me how fast the car was on the way home. He got it close to 110 miles an hour. Pretty impressive. Not to be outdone, I talked him into swinging by my place to show off the Hemi. We took it out on Highway 87. At first it sort of bogged down, maybe the automatic choke was sticking. I turned around and headed back. This time the Hemi had found its legs. I began calling out the speed, 90, 95. 100! I was about to yell 105 when the right front tire blew. I froze in terror for a second. Then the steering wheel jerked right on me. The car left the road at over 100 MPH. I wrestled the wheel and managed to get it headed straight, but at an angle to the road. We passed underneath a set of power lines, then over a dirt road into a stubble field. Finally on flat ground with no obstacles in my path, I began to breath again. As the car slowed to about 60, I gently tapped the brakes. It immediately began to slew like a harpooned whale. I let it coast some more. We were a long ways from the highway when I finally got it stopped. Tom was unruffled.

We limped back home on the shredded tire and switched to Tom’s car. About half way to town, our buddy Bob Shaw’s ’50 Chevy came sliding through a stop sign onto the highway. We wondered what the hell was wrong with him. As we headed toward Highland Park, Bob’s girlfriend and her sister frantically flagged us down. They had just broken up and they feared Bob was suicidal. Could we chase him down. Tom decided he needed gas, so we headed for Northern Tire. We had to push another car out of the way to get to the pump. As we roared past jis girlfriend’s home, we saw Bob’s car sitting in front. We did our best to calm him down and as darkness approached, we headed for Chinook. Tom decided to give us a lesson on how to elude cops at night. He shut off the lights and zoomed down the highway at 90 MPH. In Chinook we got stopped and nearly thrown in jail for throwing firecrackers out of the window. It didn’t help that the cop also found a 5 gallon can and a syphoning hose in the trunk. Good times!

Chapter 3

High School

My high school career was unspectacular to say the least. I was a good student, but I rarely had to work at it. Though I occasionally made the Honor Roll, I never earned any scholarships. I hurt a knee on a trampoline in junior high, then reinjured it when I went out for freshman football. I left the team before the season even got started. . My spare time after the 9^th grade was taken up working and cruising around town. I didn’t have time for sports or other extra-curricular activities. I cheered the team on at the home games and enjoyed the school’s theatrical productions. Once, I had a bit part in the play, Inherit the wind, which qualified me to attend the cast party.

I was fortunate to have good teachers, some of whom were World War II veterans. Mr. Blumberg, my German teacher was from Norway. He had spent the war as a merchant seaman in the Atlantic. I never knew until years later that that was the most dangerous civilian job of the war. Tens of thousands of his fellow sailors died from U-boat attacks. My Sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Sterhagen, was as tough as her name, but she encouraged my writing. I was good at math and thought about becoming an engineer. I didn’t much care for the biology teacher, “Bugs” Nelson. He had an aquarium full of rattlesnakes in the lab. He’s lucky someone didn’t turn them loose.

My brothers went into the service while I was in school. Johnny joined the Navy and worked on airplanes. He did a cruise on the carrier USS Hornet. Virgil was a mechanic in the Marines. He had a prestigious assignment with a Military Advisory and Assistance Group in Korea. I was very proud of them.

Attending 3 different high schools was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, my cousin Mike preceded me to Fort Benton and Havre. My first friends in both towns were his friends. Mike became quite a basketball player and a star baseball player as well. His career nearly ended in the summer of 1961 when he got run over by a loaded cement mixer truck in Glasgow. By the time of the state basketball tournament, he was suited up and playing again. In spite of numerous surgeries related to his injuries he is active in coaching softball to this day.

In Havre, I worked at Anderson Hardware. The boss was a bit lazy and liked to play cards across the alley at the Elks Club. As soon as he figured out I could handle the meager traffic through the store, he disappeared. The store had the Gold Bond Stamp redemption center in the back. People could exchange their carefully collected books of stamps for merchandise. I would have to check their books to ensure they well completely full of stamps. After they left, my boss would carefully tear out a couple of pages and make new books to redeem himself. I knew where he kept the stolen stamps, so if a customer came up short, I would give them a few purloined pages. Seemed only fair to me!

I remember a few pretty cool things from Havre High. First, there was the time during the performance of the play, The Importance of Being Ernest. My buddy Bob Shaw was on stage with Terry Brix. The Butler, played by Bob Wilson, was supposed to bring them tea. Bob missed his cue. He suddenly rushed in pouring boiling water all over the table. The unflappable Bob Shaw calmly pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, sopped the hot wat erup and squeezed it out over his cup. The audience roared. I suspect some of them thought it was part of the comedy plot.

Bob Wilson gave me another high school moment I will never forget. We were just getting ready to start Mr. Stenson’s Psychology class. The usual boredom of the class was interrupted when Bob showed up late.

“You’re late Bob!” exclaimed Mr. Stenson.

Bob slammed a satchel he was carrying down on a desk and pulled something out.

“I hate you and this whole darn school!” he screamed,” pointing an automatic pistol at Stenson.

Before anyone could react, Bob started shooting. Stenson tried to duck behind his desk as the .22 caliber shots were fired at him. Then it was over.

Bob put the gun away, Stenson adjusted his tie and jacket and we all started breathing again.

“Take out a sheet of paper”, Stenson intoned, “then write an account of what you just saw. Be sure to include how many shots you heard.”

It was an exercise in perception. Only one guy got the number of shots fired right. He also gave a pretty good description of the gun to include the model and manufacturer.

The third thing I remember was the final exam for our American Government class. One of the students, Bob LaFontaine, was in danger of failing the course. If he failed, he wouldn’t graduate. That would have been a major problem as Bob was in the Navy under a special program that allowed him to return home to finish high school. To make matters worse, he was living with the teacher, Mr. Quanbeck, and his family while he finished school. If that wasn’t enough, Bob was a Native American whose roots were at the nearby Rocky Boy Reservation. Havre High had reputedly never graduated an Indian student.

With no time to tutor Bob for the test, Joe Almas came up with a plan. He approached me as I prepared to enter the classroom. Could I sit one seat to the front of Bob in the next row over. Joe would do the same in another row. I greatly admired Bob for his stories and achievements. Helping him by cheating for the first time in my life was a no brainer. I took a seat on the row to his right. I made sure to keep my left arm out of the way and slid my test paper to that side of the desk. Afterwards Bob thanked me and explained that he had copied only from my paper. He said he changed a couple of answers so our actions wouldn’t be so obvious. When the grades were posted, Bob got an 86 and I got an 84. Life is not fair, and sometimes you have to do what you must to even the odds.

Nearly forty years after the incident with Bob in Mr. Quanbeck’s class, I found myself in a similar situation. I was substitute teaching in a nighttime alternative high school class. The program was self-paced with individual lesson modules. One of the students failed a Math test. He asked to retake the exam. I, at first refused. The policy was you had to wait a day before you retook a test. The Aide stepped in and pointed out that this was the last test of the last module before the student completed his graduation requirements. I sent the young man back to his desk to study for the retest. Then I took another look at his test paper. He had barely failed. I noticed that some of the questions he missed involved adding and subtracting minutes, hours, days, months and years. I brushed myself up on how to do that type of problem before setting down with him and walking him through a few examples. When I was satisfied, he took another test. This time he passed! I’m pretty sure the only one in the school that was happier than me that night was him.

On graduation night in 1962, I volunteered to be the designated driver. We skipped the party at the bowling alley and headed out to Bull Hook. When it came time to return to town, my passengers got the idea to sober up by running a footrace. It was a moonless night and visibility was poor. I lined them up and hollered, “One, two, three, Go!” I could see their white shirts in the dim light as they ran. Then all three of them disappeared. They had run off a dirt embankment that was part of a flood control project. They hollered and laughed as they struggled to climb back up.

Chapter 4

College Dropout

         1962 was not a good year to graduate from high school. The Cold War was raging, we were behind in the Space Race and the local economy wasn’t doing all that well. The hardware store was going down-hill fast, so I got a job at a supermarket called Supersave. In August, I turned 18 and signed up for the Draft. Good jobs were not available for guys who might be drafted. My best options were to go to college or join the military. Grandma Wilson made the choice easy by paying my first quarter’s tuition. Against the advice of my high school counselor, I enrolled at Northern Montana College. When I signed up for classes I found out why it was the wrong place to go. As a Freshman, I could not get the Calculus class that I needed to start an engineering degree. This would put me behind by a whole year.

By 1962, I had also soured on your young president, John F. Kennedy. The year before we had totally botched the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba. Though the planning had begun under Eisenhower, the execution was based on the bad intelligence assumption that the Cuban people would join their invading brothers against Castro. Someone forgot to tell the Cubans and the anti-Castro invasion force was defeated with most of them captured. We soon leaned that the planning and training had been led by the United States. We had let a bearded tin-horn Communist dictator kick us in the ass. Then, he demanded we ransom the prisoners with a bunch of tractors. Kennedy caved and gave them the equipment.

We were also used to seeing our rockets blow up on the launch pad while the Russian Space Program was circling the earth with actual human astronauts. In February of 1962, we finally started to catch up as John Glenn managed to make a few orbits. I remember going to the school auditorium to watch the liftoff. I suspect most of us thought the rocket was going to explode again. We cheered as it disappeared into the heavens. In September, Kennedy said we were going to the moon by the end of the decade. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” he said. I was skeptical.

I settled into college and quickly found my study habits were barely up to the task. That, coupled with the year of math I was wasting dampened my spirits. Engineer Drawing became the only class I really liked. In October, the sky began to fall in. Nuclear-armed Russian missiles were spotted in Cuba. For the first time, the world was threatened with nuclear war. Suddenly Montana’s air bases and nuclear missile silos were targets. Someone brought up how devastating the flood would be if the Russians hit Fort Peck Dam.

People huddled around televisions. I was transfixed by the news. The possibility of being a defenseless civilian in a nuclear onslaught crossed my mind. Kennedy played tough, with a naval blockade of Cuba. Troops were mobilized. The Guard and Reserve were called up. My brother in the Marines had his enlistment extended. Behind the scenes some masterful diplomatic negotiations took place. Khrushchev backed down. The missiles got shipped back to Russia. The world breathed easier. I made up my mind that the next crisis would see me in uniform with some kind of weapon. It wouldn’t be long.

A full load at college and the job at Supersave were wearing me down. I had one class that I had to get to on my lunch hour. I had to race back and forth to make it on time. As the weather turned cold, I got my hours cut. My progress was stalled and the future looked grim. Though I passed all my classes I dropped out of college at the end of my first quarter. I had to make some changes.

About that time, Virgil came home on leave from the Marines. Having just returned from a cushy assignment overseas, he was all Gung Ho. In January, I jumped on a bus and headed for the Marine Recruiting Office in Great Falls. I hoped I would learn some marketable skill, but I mostly just wanted a place to escape from the bleakness of my world.

I told the recruiter I wanted to join up.

He looked at my scrawny 128 lb. frame and asked, “What for?”

“For three years,” I answered. It was a pretty good answer. Most recruits sign up for four years. I had given myself a bit of a cushion in case I didn’t like the Corps. When I returned home, my mother was not pleased.

Chapter 5

Marine

         A week later, I was on my way to Butte for my physical. The prodding, poking and peeing must have gone well. I returned home by way of the recruiting office in Great Falls. My recruiter had brought in a Marine Reserve Captain to swear me in. They seemed a lot prouder of my skinny ass than before. They hinted I had done very well on the entrance exam. Though I was far from being able to call myself a Marine, I was officially sworn in to the US Marine Corps Reserve. I returned home to await my report date for Boot Camp. It only took about 6 days.

Soon, I was on a DC-6 bound for Salt Lake City. The dreary snow covered and wind-swept plains of Northern Montana faded beneath the wings. I was on my own. Sort of.

I seriously screwed up at the Salt Lake Airport and missed my ride to town. The recruiter had said something about catching a limo, so I approached what looked like what I thought a limo should look like. I asked the driver if he could take me to the designated hotel. He told me to get in. When we stopped, he demanded the fare. I was broke. After explaining myself, he shrugged and let me out. I guess he had a soft place for GI’s, even naïve ones.

At Salt Lake, I joined 4 others bound for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego. The other guy from Montana had one leg about an inch longer than the other one. He wobbled when he walked, but it didn’t slow him down. There was a Mormon kid from Salt Lake. Another guy named McDaniel had a scar on his face and a missing front tooth. By way of explanation, he would pull out a newspaper photo. It showed a ’55 Pontiac going off the end of an incomplete overpass on an LA freeway. I never quite believed the story.

We changed planes at LA. This time it was a Boeing 707 jet. The acceleration was awesome as it thundered down the runway. It seemed only minutes before we landed in San Diego. We were told to get off the plane last. Waiting for us were two Drill Instructors wearing their iconic Smokey Bear hats.

“Look what those blanking recruiters did to us this time!” bellowed one as they loaded us into an enclosed shell on the back of a pickup. “Don’t talk!” he roared as he slammed the back door shut. We stared out the tiny windows in silence as the truck made its way to the Depot. We were about to spend the next several weeks in shock. We would be stripped of our civilian clothes and our cheap civilian ways.

MCRD San Diego turned out to be a charming place with tile-roofed Spanish Colonial buildings lining three sides of a huge parade field called “The Grinder.” It was right next to Lindberg Field, San Diego’s airport. Jets and other noisy aircraft were constantly taking off and landing. Mostly hidden from view were rows and rows of World War II era Quonset huts. I would spend most of the next year in them before finally landing a billet in in one of the beautiful pre-war buildings.

At the Receiving Barracks, we were unloaded and told to stand on sets of footprints facing the entrance. There was a big red sign with gold letters. (All Marine Corps signs are red with gold letters, even on tanks.) It read, “The More We Sweat in Peace, the Less We Die in War.” I wasn’t in the mood for either, but the former sounded better than the latter. Very quickly, we got a haircut. We were told to point at any growths or sores on our heads while they were shorn clean. We were issued a pair of green utility trousers, a yellow sweatshirt and white Indian Head tennis shoes. Somehow, none of us felt like mean, green fightin’ machines at that point.

We got a short orientation, which was mostly big, mean guys yelling at us. Then they gave us wrapping materials to send our civvies home with. Anyone who donated all their clothes to Navy Relief got to smoke a cigarette. I donated my clothes, but mailed my new shoes home. That selfish act did not earn me a smoke. We were finally hustled off to our bunks in the Receiving Barracks. All night long, frightened new recruits joined us. I was very lucky that my new platoon, 304, filled up that night, so I wouldn’t have to spend another night in that hellish place. For the next 3 months Quonset huts and GP tents would be our home.

The next day, we got the rest of our utility uniforms and two sets of combat boots. Marines are known for having spit-shined glossy footwear, but our boots were a disappointment. They were constructed rough side out so they would breathe better. This made it impossible to shine them. Some would later improvise by rubbing the rough leather off with the top end of a small bottle with water and copious quantities of shoe polish. Others would spend their own money to get Army style boots. The zip-up Paratrooper boots were the best.

The first 3 weeks of boot camp are all about discipline and drill. We were grilled on our General Orders. It was a very big deal the first night our platoon stood guard duty. Woe be to the recruit who couldn’t recite any of his General Orders. The first was “To take Charge of this post and all government property in view.”

Very early on, we we’re issued our M-14 Rifles. There was no palace to shoot at the Depot, but we learned to disassemble and clean our weapons. There was a handy cleaning kit in the back of the stock. We rubbed hot linseed oil on the wooden parts.

We had a PtT(Physical Training) test about the 3^rd week. McDaniel couldn’t pass and was sent to a Special Training Platoon. Then he went over the hill. I next saw him six months later as I passed the Separation Barracks. He had never gotten past the 3^rd week of Boot Camp. If he had, his trousers would have been bloused at the tops of his boots.

After 3 weeks we headed for the Rifle Range at Camp Matthews. We spent the next 3 weeks learning how to fire the M-14 from the offhand (standing), sitting and prone positions. Most of us got pretty good. A couple days before our final rifle qualification, one guy got a little to close to his rifle when he fired. The recoil shattered his glasses. This must have rattled him as he was the only one of us who failed to qualify. He got a big chewing out for denying our Head DI the prestige of having a platoon with a100% qualification record. Though we were also denied that honor, we never took it out on him. At the end of qualification, we got to unbutton the top button on our utility jackets. With our bloused boots we were starting to look like Marines. Our sixty pairs of corded heels clicked as one as we drilled back on the asphalt Grinder at MCRD.

We ran a lot and did the obstacle course where one guy fell off a rope into a muddy pond. Drilling on the Grinder got increasingly more precise. Eventually, the DIs would be rated on how well we drilled. On Sundays, we were marched to church with separate services for Catholics and Protestants. The one guy who didn’t want to go was assigned the job of assisting the Chaplain. We were issued compact New Testaments provided by Gideons. I carried mine in my hind pocked, but rarely had the time or inclination to look at it. A few Saturday evenings, we got to see a movie. In Dr. No, Sean Connery told someone if things didn’t work out, “You better get your American Marines!” It brought the house down.

About the 9^th week, we got to go on a forced march and overnight bivouac. It was fun, like a Boy Scout outing. The DIs told a few war stories around a fire. It was cold. A couple days later, I came down with pneumonia. I reported to Sick Bay with a raging fever. They threw me I a cold shower to cool me of. Then they took me to Balboa Naval Hospital. The Pneumonia Ward was full of really sick people. Someone died that first night. I got little sleep with Doctors, Nurses and Corpsmen running back and forth. After a few days of Penicillin, I was feeling better. The Pneumonia Wing had two more wards. The second floor was devoted to patients who were beginning to recover. The third floor was for those who were almost fully recovered. They got to wander around the hospital grounds and go to the Gedunk. A Doctor came by in the morning, looked at my chart and asked me how I was doing.

“Just fine, Sir!”

“OK, I’m going to send you up to the second floor.”

I grabbed my stuff and headed upstairs. I had barely found a bed when the same Doctor came by.

“How are you doing?”

“Just fine, Sir!” I said as he scribbled something on my chart.

“Well then, I think it’s time to send you upstairs.”

I couldn’t believe my luck! An hour later, I was enjoying my first Coke in 3 months at the Gedunk. Feeling like we needed to get back into shape, a couple of us started running about the grounds. I seemed a bit breathless on the uphill sections.

Pretty soon, I was on my way back to MCRD. I had been gone too long to return to Platoon 304. I found myself in 309 instead. They were two weeks behind 304 in their training. Gunny Buell was the Head DI. He was a grizzled, leather-tanned Korean War veteran with a chest full of ribbons. He looked at my records and couldn’t believe I could do 19 chin-ups. He took me out to the chin-up bar and told me to show him. The last time I had done 19 chin-ups I had clear lungs and about 20 lbs. less body mass. I barely managed to crank off 14. The Gunny seemed satisfied.

That afternoon the DI’s took us for a run. For the first time, I fell out of a run gasping for breath. A kid named Private Beers fell out as well. We caught holy hell from the Gunny. The next day I toughed it through the run while Beers fell out again. My lungs no longer felt like they were on fire. To my joy, we were now scheduled to make the same forced march and bivouac that I had enjoyed so much before. The 8-mile forced march with full pack and rifle was a breeze. As we rounded what I remembered as the last turn, someone aske a DI how much farther we had to march.

“Eight miles!”

Beers fainted dead away. I almost fell over laughing.

Boot Camp finally ended with a graduation ceremony on the Grinder. The Company Guide and 4 of the squad leaders got promoted to PFC. The platoon honor Man got a set of Dress Blues. The rest of us wore our spiffy, well-tailored greens. Our only graduation perk was 4 hours of base liberty. A few of the guys from Southern California got to see their families for the first time in months. At the designated hour we returned to our Quonset huts for the last time and changed back into our utility uniforms. They loaded us on bus-like trailers that we called cattle cars for our trip to Camp Pendleton.

Chapter 6

Training

At Camp Pendleton, we were assigned to the Second Infantry Training Regiment. Every Marine is an infantryman, and before we acquired any other skills, we would have to master some infantry weapons and tactics. This was going to be fun! We played war for a week and got our first liberty. To keep us out of trouble, the First Sergeant signed us up for a trip to Disneyland. We had as blast.

In ITR, we were equipped with the venerable old M-1 Garand riffle of WWII fame. Our Company Guide, Corporal Ronny Bracket, had been in the Army before and knew all about the M-1. One morning, we were heading out for an exercise. One of the guys was having trouble feeding a blank round in his rifle. Bracket grabbed the weapon and boldly proclaimed, “Gimme that! I’ve been handling M-1s since you clowns were in diapers.” The damn thing went off! Lucky it was a blank.

Pendleton has a reputation for having lots of Rattlesnakes. It wasn’t unusual for the word to be relayed through the ranks that there was a Rattlesnake on the right. One morning, we were forming up after a bivouac, when the guy on my right started stamping his riffle butt on the ground. Then we heard the unmistakable sound of a small Rattler in his death throws. We reformed our line and the Platoon Leader called us to attention and marched us off.

We got hands on experience with some weapons and were given demonstrations of others. Flamethrowers are damn heavy. A modern frag grenade weighs a fraction of what the old WWII Pineapple grenade weighs. A BAR doesn’t kick like an M-14 on full automatic. Oceanside is a crappy liberty town. The line, “I want to go home” from Bobby Bare’s song Detroit City became our theme song. After a month of training, we finally got to go home on Boot Leave. Some homefolks didn’t even recognize me. My old buddies were a bit put off by my status of being a “Buck Private”. My orders said I was going back to San Diego for Electronics School. Fixing radios did not sound very exciting.

Chapter 7

Down the Tubes

MCRD looked a hell of a lot different from the other side of the Grinder. Bright, colorful with nobody yelling at me. I checked into the school and immediately got put on a month of Mess Duty. Up at 4AM, long days of scrubbing pots and dishes seven days a week with only a small break in the afternoon. Most of us napped through the break. I was really ready for school when this inordinately long sh!t detail ended.

Basic Electronics consisted of 16 weeks of instruction, mostly on the vacuum tube technology that was rapidly being displaced by transistors. There was some math involved and I did well in my studies. We had nights and weekends off. I knew some guys from Boot Camp and ITR that were in different weeks of the school. Ron Dickenson, from my old home town was also a student.

The school was located at the end of the main runway at Lindberg Field. Each time a jet took off, we had to stop classes for a moment due to the noise. The Convair Aircraft factory was located at the airport. They had an F-101 Test Plane that was painted white. Several times, I saw it take off with full afterburners on. Barely clearing the end of the runway, it would shift into a vertical climb. It went straight up until it literally disappeared from sight. At first, I thought it was a rocket plane. One day we were in class when there was a horrible screeching noise followed by a strong smell of burnt rubber. When we got out of class, we found an East Indonesian Airlines jetliner sitting just short of the fence with 8 flat tires. Pilot error. One kid in another class turned out to be a sleepwalker. They found him one night marching down the main runway in his skivvie shorts. Sleepwalking is not a good habit on ships or in combat. He was discharged against his own protests.

It wasn’t long before I found my way to Tijuana. A 19-year-old needs his night life. I avoided the bawdier places like the Blue Fox and hung out at a quiet baseball themed bar called the Bate Club. My Rum and Cokes got weaker the longer I stayed. One time we stopped at a nearby restaurant called Tonis. It turned out that the Waitresses were part of the menu.

One weekend 4 of us went to Ensenada, farther down the Baja California peninsula. It wasn’t seedy and raucous like Tijuana. We stayed at a small hotel ran by a Chinaman. One guy even helped him fix his plumbing. We went to a minor league bullfight. It was about as exciting as going to a slaughter house. I rooted for the bull. It lost.

I was doing great in my classes with an average grade well into the nineties until I hit Week 13, Antennas and Transmission Lines. The instructor was new and unsure of himself. We had our test for the unit on Friday, November 22, 1963. I was uneasy about the test. So were most of my classmates. We waited anxiously outside for the results.

Suddenly a ripple of conversation rolled through the assembled classes. President Kennedy had been shot!

Someone had a transistor radio. The Prez was being rushed to a hospital in Dallas. It didn’t sound good.

We were still digesting the news, when our class was summoned back into the building. Only a couple of us had passed the test. Normally this simply meant a good ass chewing and having to retake the class with the next week’s students. But with so many failures, we had totally screwed up the schedule. One by one we were reported to the Commandant’s Office to be grilled on our failures. It appeared the instructor was in more trouble than we were. We did our best to cover for him. After an eternity a decision was finally made. We would all advance to the next class. Our failures all but guaranteed, however, that we would never, ever work on field radio equipment. I was good with that.

We retuned to our huts much chagrinned. The radio announced the President’s death. As an emergency precaution, the border was closed. We couldn’t even drink away our sorrows. My buddy, Mulliner, who was in another class, did manage to get across the border before it closed. He got drunk and rowdy an ended up in the Tijuana Jail. The US Counsel who got him out was not amused. Over the extended weekend I found a TV room on the other side of the base where I could keep up with events. The killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been a Marine. Then someone shot him. The new President was Lyndon Johnson whom I knew nothing about. The world had changed in an instant. America had lost its innocence. My faith in the future was shaken.

After Electronic Scholl I got stuck on Mess Duty again. This crap was getting old. Finally, I got assigned to a six-week Cryptographic Equipment Repair Preparatory Course. We would be fixing something called the “Mighty Mite” or A/N TGC 14 v(ictor). Not to be confused with the AMC produced Jeep of the same name, this was a lightweight teletype machine. Like the AMC product, it was no damn good. Instead of the wheels falling off, the machine would rattle itself to pieces requiring constant adjustments to its fragile mechanisms. Someone finally got a very large Suggestion Award for adding a 15 lb. lead weight to the machine to dampen its shaking. The good part of the class was that we finally got out of the Quonset huts and into a proper barracks.

Immediately after the teletype course we were on our way to Mare Island Naval shipyard for our Crypto class. None of us had any idea what the hell a Crypto machine was. At Mare Island we were billeted in the Marine Barracks overlooking San Francisco Bay. The First Sergeant believed we were in the process of becoming some of the most important people in the Corps. We were expected to keep our squad bay in order with no other duties except our studies. The food was incredible. Eggs cooked to order in the mornings, self-serve ice cream and outdoor barbeques on the weekends. The MPs stationed there had their own Club where the bartender never checked IDs. We had landed in paradise!

The Crypto school was in a big vault-like building with no windows. We were told we would be working on a classified machine that encrypted and decrypted teletype signals. This was Star Trek stuff to us. It would be another 5 years before anyone would even learn that the Germans had such a machine, called Enigma in WWII. We were told that what we learned there would stay in the building. There would be no homework. Damn! This is a cool school!

On weekends, I finally got to see some of my family in nearby Modesto. There were trips to see the sights of San Francisco and to the wine country around Napa. One weekend I pulled butts for a civilian riffle competition. These guys went out to 800 yards and they were really good. At the end of the 6-week class we were all wondering where we would be assigned to. They fell us into one of our few formations and called my name and a couple others. We were to report to Sick Bay for shots. We were going overseas!

Chapter 7

Travelin’ Man

Okinawa could wait. I was entitled to 30 days of leave. I took a bus to Reno, walked all the way to Sparks and put out my thumb. I caught some good rides and made it home in two days. The folks were expecting me and my old ’49 Ford was ready for one final ride. Several of my buddies were still in town attending college at Northern. I stopped by and voted for a friend for class office. He laughed and said, “What if I win by one vote?”

The town seemed full of unattached women. I met a cute French and Indian girl named Margaret. We had a brief fling before my time to go. We made no promises and didn’t even bother to exchange addresses. When the Dear John letters started arriving overseas, my name would never be called.

 I flew back to LA where my brother Virgil picked me up. He and his roommate were driving a dual-control Rambler. The friend was a driving instructor. We drove down the Freeway with the guy on the right driving. This would be good training for when I arrived in Japan several weeks later and had to ride on the wrong side of the road. Virg took me straight to the overseas processing center. For the week I was there, I had a cushy job as a runner for the Company Commander.

After a really perfunctory mass physical, we were loaded on to more cattle cars for the trip to San Diego. Our ship was a big gray Military Sea Transportation Service vessel called the Patrick. The first day out, we began to hit some swell. Lots of us got seasick. I was queasy, but never threw up. There were some soldiers bound for Hawaii on board. We Marines were had a good laugh when two of them came by to dump a can of garbage. There was an Army fatigue hat on top. It was full of puke. We offloaded the Doggies and their family members in Hawaii. Hell, some of them even had cars in the hold! Speaking of cars, we had been under great pressure to buy Navy Relief raffle tickets at Pendleton. Some guy won a brand-new Nash Rambler while we were sailing for the Orient.

I decided not to get off the ship in Hawaii. I was too young to drink there and there wasn’t much else I wanted to do. We docked opposite Battleship Row. I had expected to see the twisted, battered superstructure of the USS Arizona. Instead, I saw the white banana-shaped memorial they had built over it a few years before. The next morning, we were back out to sea, this time with much more of the deck area available to us. Dolphins played in the wake and I saw an occasional flying fish. We cleaned our mops by dangling them on a rope off the stern. I lost more than a couple. Marines finally learned to duck when the stepped through a hatch on their way to chow, A couple of them had been knocked out cold.

The vastness of the Pacific swallowed us up. We saw no other ships and no airplanes. There was a big initiation ceremony when we crossed the International Dateline. We dressed up as weirdly as our seabags would allow and went searching in a garbage can full of cooking gunk for the day that we had lost.

Our next stop was Yokohama, Japan. There had apparently been a typhoon recently. There were streaks of dirty red soil runoff far out into the ocean. I pulled liberty there and got my first ride in a Kamikaze Taxi on the wrong side of the road. Like most cities, I hated the chaos of Yokohama. Finally, we headed for our destination, the island of Okinawa in the Ryukyus Chain. Nineteen years before, it had been the scene of one of the most horrific battles of World War II. There had been over 100,000 civilian casualties. Another 100,000 plus Japanese soldiers died defending the island. More Marines and Soldiers were killed there than in any other Pacific battle. It was the only place in the Pacific War where our troops suffered from significant combat fatigue, now called PTSD. The Post-War Island was still under occupation, with an American General as its Governor. The island used US currency and cars drove on the right side of the road. The economy was mostly agrarian and fishing. The people were friendly and most spoke English. There was a growing movement for the return of the island to a prefecture (state) of Japan. We were told to stay away from their demonstrations.

We docked in Naha. I noticed all the other ships in the harbor had “Maru” tacked on to the end of the foreign-sounding names displayed on their sterns. I said goodbye to buddies who were going to different outfits. We were going as individual replacements for troops rotating out of headquarters and support units. Only our infantry battalions travelled overseas as a unit. We loaded ourselves and our seabags into the back of a Six-by truck. The salty PFC who was driving decided to make a speech. He welcomed us and said we were bound for Camp Hanson, half-way up the island. Then he said don’t expect to advance much in your career here. Rank is frozen. Sh!t! I had been told I would make Lance Corporal the minute I got to my first duty station.

Chapter 8

McNamara

Robert S. McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He had a background as an analyst determining the effectiveness of the bombs dropped on Europe in World War II. Most people would call him a bean counter. McNamara had been President of Ford Motor Company when the Edsel was introduced. We hated him for his efforts to make the Marine Corps more like the Army. I had joined the Brown Shoe Corps. Our dark brown dress shoes took on a much deeper shine than black shoes. McNamara changed the color to Army black. They issued us some dye and told us to change the color of our shoes, covers (hats) and buttons. We never looked as sharp as we had before. Worse yet, he put Marines in baggy Doggie fatigues. We hated the cuffless tops with their uncovered buttons and square flaps. The trousers weren’t much better. I bought a couple pairs of Doggie Utilities at Mare Island to use for Junk on the Bunk inspections and never wore them. On Okinawa, everywhere we went we were greeted by signs saying stuff like, “This Command spent $23,411 on toilet paper in FY-’63- CONSEERVE!”

McNamara’s greatest failure came a couple days after we arrived in Okinawa. The US destroyer Maddox had been mistakenly attacked by 3 North Vietnamese Torpedo Boats in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964. The North Vietnamese had been looking for South Vietnamese saboteurs being infiltrated by sea. The Maddox suffered no casualties and the North Vietnamese tried to defuse the situation with an apology. Two nights later, the Maddox was joined by the C. Turner Joy. In the dark, they made a false sighting of another attack. They fired furiously into the emptiness and claimed several hits. The next morning, there was no wreckage from the boats they claimed to have sunk.

President Johnson used these incidents to get Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. This basically gave him carte blanche to use American forces in any way he saw fit to counter North Vietnam’s “aggression” on the high seas. By the time the resolution was written, McNamara knew that there had been no second attack. He remained silent until he wrote a book about it in the ‘90s.

I had hardly checked into my new outfit, Headquarters Company 9^th Marines, when the word came to pack up. We were sending a whole damn Regimental Combat Team to Vietnam! The Message Center Chief pulled me aside.

“You’re Crypto, right?”

“Yes, 2782” I answered with my Military Occupation Specialty Code. (The Marine Corps kept changing my MOS code while I was in. I suspect they were trying to conceal what I really did for security reasons.)

“You’re staying behind. 2/9 is taking over the Message Center and they need you to fix the Crypto gear.”

“What he hell!” I protested. “You are going to an effing war and leaving me behind?”

In the Marine Corps there is no use arguing with someone who is a higher grade. I would stay on the “Rock”. It all turned out OK. My unit spent the next 57 straight days floating off South Vietnam without landing. It was hot and miserable. One guy went nuts and tried to paddle ashore on an air mattress. The highlight of their cruise was stopping at Subic Bay in the Philippines for liberty on the way home. Meanwhile, I was having a blast being my own boss. I was on call 24 seven, but could still go on liberty if I let them know where I was. They called me out of the base movie theater once. The rest of my outfit were not happy with me when they got back. Then the Company Commander had to chew them out for having the highest VD rate in the whole effing Marine Corps. Vietnam continued to simmer. We sent aviation units, but no troops to the Danang area.

Chapter 9

Helicopter Assault Ship

In December my buddies would wreak their revenge on me for missing the cruise. Our First Battalion, 9^th Marines was headed for Vietnam waters. They needed a Crypto Tech and a Radio Relay Team from the Headquarters. Everyone chuckled when I got the nod. I would have the last laugh. My cruise was a hell of a lot more interesting and comfortable than theirs had been. I already had a pretty good working relationship with the 1/9 Message Center crew. One guy loaned me a nice camera to take some pictures.

As we waited to board the USS Henrico at White Beach, Al Chiodo, the Radio Relay Tech asked me if I wanted to play some Crazy 8’s to pass the time. We ended up playing 1300 hands, some lasting an hour or more on the cruise. The Henrico was a World War II Era troopship. It had been at Normandy on D-Day and Okinawa in 1945. At Okinawa a Kamikaze crashed into it, killing several high-level officers and wounding dozens of soldiers. By the time we boarded, it was well past its prime. It took us to Subic Bay where we offloaded to a much bigger and better ship.

The USS Princeton was a WWII Essex Class carrier that had been converted to a Helicopter Assault Ship. It carried a Marine helicopter squadron and about half of the men and equipment of a Marine Battalion Landing Team. The rest of 1/9 would be stuck on the troopship, USS Bexer County. The “Sweet Pea” was big and spacious. All 18 helicopters could land on its huge deck at the same time. There was plenty of room on the hanger deck for the helicopters, movies and a boxing/Judo arena. I lucked out on billeting. I was in a compartment just bellow the flight deck in the back of the ship. Unlike a troopship, our racks were not staked 5 high. They were just 3 high with the middle one available for our sea bags. My front porch was a gun deck with a 5.38-inch gun and lots of room where other weapons had once been. On the other side of my quarters was a catwalk that ran underneath the flight deck. I sometimes napped there hanging 60 feet above the water.

It was Christmas Eve, 1964 when we boarded the Sweat Pea. Rumor had it that we were getting the Bob Hope Show on the flight deck on Christmas Day. That never happened. By Christmas morning there was a sense of urgency on the ship. Something had happened in Vietnam. A hotel serving as a BOQ in Saigon had been blown up on Christmas Eve. Two Americans were dead and another 60 military and civilian personnel wounded. Within hours, the Princeton was ready to roll.

We left Subic about noon. Though half of the ship’s boilers had been removed in its conversion, it was still damn fast. Someone said we topped out at 32 knots before slowing to 28. The wake boiled and churned all the way to the horizon. We left the sluggish Bexar far behind. We arrived off the Vietnam coast the next evening. All was quiet.

We would spend the next 37 days floating off Cap-Saint-Jacques near Saigon. Our helicopters were piston-engine UH/CH-34s armed with rocket pods. They flew daily missions in support of the South Vietnamese operations. At one-point, General Westmoreland came aboard to give an award to the helicopter squadron for aiding flood victims. Sometimes in the night we could see flashes from artillery. I hung out with Al and his team in the Radio Relay Room on the island. We played cards, lots of cards. Movies on the ship were much better than the ones supplied by the Army on Okinawa. They showed A Shot in the Dark with Peter Sellers one night. I fell in love with Elke Sommer. One morning we awoke to find white paint all over the helicopters which had been left outside on the flight  deck. A sailor had left the lid loose on a five-gallon bucket of paint. The wind had blown it over and two of the choppers were pure white, windshields and all. We always called the aviation Marines “Wing-wipers”. That day I got to join them wiping off white paint with mineral spirits and plastic scrapers. Another incident on the ship was when some fire extinguisher fluid fowled the quarters of the Navy Chiefs. They came out with goo up to their waists.

Things had calmed down a bit and the Sweet Pea headed for Hong Kong. Wild stories circulated about the bawdiness of the place. We sailed right by the Chinese Island of Hainan. That did not seem like a good idea to me. When my brother had been on the Hornet, the Red cines had fired on one of its planes that strayed too close. That 5 incher started to feel like a puny little gun. Before we got to Hong Kong, there was another flap in Vietnam. We turned around and resumed our slow cruising up and down the coast. The war was becoming both annoying and boring. From time to time, we high-lined supplies from other ships. This is a complex process where two ship s at sea run close to each other and sting lines and pulleys between them. Sailors and whoever else is handy pull the lines that move the cargo back and forth. I pitched in on the ropes a couple of times. On Sundays we high-lined the Chaplain between ships. He got wet once.

We finally returned to Subic for a rest and resupply. Subic Bay is at the northern beginning of the Bataan Peninsula where US troops made their last stand during the Japanese invasion of WWII. Now it was a major US naval base surrounded by jungle. We got to participate in an overnight jungle survival course. They issued us each a sock full of rice and took us out in the bush. The instructors showed us how to find and use water bamboo. The water was sweet and pure. Then we cut a section out of the top of a large bamboo and used it as a pot to cook our rice in. It worked, but we could have used some salt. Back at the ship the next evening we were served more rice. Yuck!

Before going on liberty in Olongapo we had to endure a one-hour orientation. The instructor asked for the Marine with the reddest hair to step forward. The two of them then unveiled a large picture of a red-headed Marine that had been fished out of the Olongapo River. His face was all black and swelled so badly his eyes seemed to pop out. The moral of the story was don’t take any red pills while in Olongapo. Everything in the city was bad. Any place off the main street was Off Limits. The VD rat e was atrocious. The Jeepneys were the only way to get around, but the drivers were all crooks. They might stiff you with worthless Japanese Occupation Currency. The club served all drinks in paper cups. Seems the Navy and Marines had just had a big fight where lots of bottles and glasses got thrown around. Fun times!

Our next rip to Vietnam was more serene. By early March it was time for our relief. After 24 days at sea, we returned to Subic. The battalion transferred to 5 LST’s that made their way separately back to Okinawa. On the way, we hit a tropical storm. An LST is a fairly flat-bottomed vessel designed to land troops and tanks directly on the beach. It has two big clamshell doors on the front to drive thins out of. The Windham County was a good ship, but riding out a storm on it was like riding every ride at Disneyland at once. The bow would rise up out of the water and the ship would literally shake. Then it would plop back down making a huge splash. All the time it was rolling from side to side. It wasn’t long before the Captain ordered us to get our asses below deck. We felt a bit trapped inside the pitching, yawing hull. At one point the ship turned to secure the leaking tank doors better. We thought it was capsizing. Finally calmer waters returned. Nobody had gotten sick. We all had our sea legs by then.

Chapter 11

Landing!

       While I was away at sea, my Company Commander, Captain Jordan, had volunteered for advisory duty with the South Vietnamese Marines. A week into his assignment, he was killed by hostile fire. When I got back to Okinawa, I was told that several of my buddies had extended their overseas tours in hopes of avenging the Skipper’s death. I went straight to the reenlistment NCO and asked for an extension. He looked at my records and said I didn’t have enough time left in the service to add an extension. I would have to extend my enlistment by 6 months! I balked at that. I had other plans. College, a job, the unemployment line, it didn’t matter.

Feeling a bit like I had let my CO down, I settled back into the daily routine of garrison life. Okinawa was a poor man’s paradise. The tropical weather was great for beach combing and snorkeling. The waters were crystal clear with colorful coral formations and lots of fishy critters to see. My equipment rarely broke down, so I spent much of my time helping out in the Message Center. My typing was lousy, so I rarely originated any messages. If I did, the teletype and tape machines would rattle a lot over the letters that I had had to punch out and retype. I was generally the designated messenger when classified messages had to be hand-delivered. Our driver didn’t have a clearance, so I would arm myself with a .45 and carry the material in a locked box.

I liked carrying the .45. it wasn’t my assigned weapon, but it made me feel sort of macho. For message runs, I wore a nifty shoulder holster instead of one hooked to my webbed duty belt. The .45 had been in the inventory for a half century and some were showing their age. In spite of multiple safety mechanisms, there wee lots of accidental shootings. Guys on duty sometimes cocked them and fired pencils across the room. One guy fired his pencil and a bullet through half a dozen walls in a headquarters building like ours. One day Bill Barnes and I had just gone off duty from an overnight shift. We were walking in Kin Village near the main gate of Camp Hanson. We heard a loud sound that could only have been a gunshot. Startled, we looked up toward the guard shack. One MP was leaning against the wall while the other was frantically dialing for help. They had been playing quick draw with their .45s. One had shot the other’s weapon out of his hand. Barnes was a short-timer. He grabbed my arm and headed us away from the scene. He didn’t want to be a witness.

One night, I had duty in the Headquarters. It would normally be a boring night of handing out and collecting Liberty Cards. The Officer of the Day went to sleep leaving me on my own to read and drink cheap instant coffee. Just as I was about to go off duty in the morning a Jeep roared up. A very shaken PFC asked for the OD. I pointed toward the back where I had heard the Lieutenant stirring. He went in to tell his story. Next thing I knew the OD was frantically calling for help. Six Okinawans had been scavenging brass on the tank range. They had found an unexploded 90 mm round. It blew up, killing 5 of them. The sixth needed help. I stayed on duty until the situation stabilized.

The battalion that had replaced 1/9 back in March had immediately landed in Vietnam along with another battalion that came in by air. The ground war had begun. More troops would be fed in during the ensuing months. Finally, our headquarters, along with one of our 3 battalions, were the only troops from the 3^rd Marine Division left on Okinawa. It seemed weird. I was 11 months into my 12-month overseas tour, but I was destined to go in with my outfit. I would not have had it any other way.

Back at White Beach, we prepared to board the USS George Clymer. The driver and I made one last message run to the rear headquarters of the division. On the way back we stopped in the Red-Light district of Ishikawa. He went into one of the gaily lit establishments while I sat outside with my .45. At least I no longer had any classified messages!

That night we practiced climbing down cargo nets into landing craft. On the way back up, I cussed the guy in front of me for being too slow. He apologized profusely. When I climbed over the ship’s railing, I realized he was the damn Chaplain. Oops!

We spent one more night in Okinawa. A couple of buddies and I joined the driver in a final tour of the island. The Jeep actually belonged to the Communications Officer, Major Henn. Our tour took us over some pretty rough coral roads. The next morning, the Major’s Jeep was scheduled to be airlifted to Vietnam. I heard it had a couple of flat tires.

Sometime in the darkness, the “Greasy George” pulled out of the harbor. Apart from our trip in the Jeep, everyone was supposed to have stayed at White Beach. Several missed the movement, getting themselves and the NCOs who had reported them present in trouble. All would catch a second ship, and be high-lined back to the Clymer before we reached Vietnam. We held the lines a little slack and took pleasure in dunking them.

The George Clymer had one unique feature beside the lack of proper ventilation and the never-ending soot from its antiquated boilers. The enlisted head had a trough instead of commodes. Congregants sat on a couple of parallel boards to do their business. A steady stream of sea water washed their deposits out the other end. One devious Marine decided to sit on the upstream end. He wadded up a bunch of toilet paper, lit it on fire and dropped it into the rushing stream. His downstream neighbors were not amused. He escaped before they could pull their trousers up.

We pulled into Danang Harbor after dark. We were told to grab our weapons and 782 field gear. I was anxious to get off the ship. At White Beach we had spent 3 days loading large caliber ammo into the hold. Much of it was lowered through my sleeping compartment. A group of about 4 Marines worked hard moving the ammo about inside the ship. They were changed out every hour or so. They came out sweaty, often with their utilities torn. Nothing like entering a combat zone on a ship full of explosives!

Then they issued us each ten rounds of 7.62 mm ammo for our M-14s. TEN ROUNDS! What kind of a scumbag outfit sends you into combat with ten rounds of ammo? Each of us had two 20 round magazines for our rifles.(The automatic Riflemen carried more.)  I decided to split my ten rounds between my two magazines. If the VC saw me reloading, they might think I had a full 20 rounds left to shoot. Then it got worse. We were told not to put a magazine in our weapons unless we were out on patrol. We could only chamber a round when we were under fire. Now I wasn’t quite so anxious to get off of the Greasy George. Again, we climbed down cargo nets into the darkness into waiting landing craft. It wasn’t much of a feat since we were anchored in the calm waters of the harbor. Still, I have bragging rights to the claim that I once made a combat landing.

Once in the landing craft, we cruised slowly about the harbor in the night. There was a bit of water sloshing around in the bottom. I finally sat down in it cradling my rifle next to my helmet. I probably dozed off for a couple of intermittent cat naps. At dawn we pulled up to a ramp and staggered off. A caravan of vehicles was there to meet us. We got into a small 4×4 truck with the 1^st Marine Division logo on it. How the hell did they beat us to ‘Nam? (Their moto was “First to Fight.”) The truck had at least one bad cylinder and struggled to get up the few inclines we had to negotiate. We headed south from the town with Danang Air Base on our left. Even the damn 1^st Marine Air wing had gotten there before us! As the sun rose people began lining the road to greet us. They waved happily, making us feel like the liberators of Paris in the Big War. At last ,we pulled into a compound on a low hill overlooking a river. A bridge across it had been blown up.

Our Command Post was set up in an area called the Old French Fort. The fort was really not much more than a concrete pill box. It offered a great view of the surrounding terrain. General Walt, the Division Commander, did not believe in defensive fortifications, so we set up an observation post on TOP of the fort. GP tents were quickly erected for our CP and Comm Center. We Jarheads would sleep under our shelter halves. I found some poles and pitched mine near a corner of the complex. It never dawned on me that I was within grenade throwing range of the surrounding wire. A couple of days later, the Engineers brought in a digging machine and dug a trench BEHIND our row of shelter halves. Naturally the dirt pile was between us and the ditch ensuring we would be silhouetted going over it in case of an attack. I decided to spend most of my time away from my humble abode. By hanging out in the Message Center I could avoid work details as well and sometimes even make myself useful.

For the first few days, we at C-rations. The boxes they came had a notice that the cheese was unfit for human consumption. Some threw theirs over the wire. The Vietnamese would eat anything. After a few days the cooks set up burners in big barrels to cook our food. It was better than C-rations. We carried our rifles through the chow line. Someone had had the foresight to bring a window air conditioner from our headquarters building at Camp Hanson. We rigged it up in the Message Center. Electronic equipment must be kept cool. So do Marine communicators.

Our troops had a few small firefights in the valley below. Once they called in an F4 Phantom jet to attack a ground target. This massive supersonic airplane looked like a box car in the attack mode. An A-4 Skyhawk would have been a much better plane for the job. In one action three Marines, all Second Lieutenants got wounded. So much for all that hero BS they were taught in Platoon Leaders Class. Another time a First Lieutenant earned a posthumous Medal of Honor for a failed attempt to rescue a wounded Marine. After dark, the Marine crawled back to safety. There were numerous reports of accidental gunshot wounds. One Marine was told to throw a grenade out to mark a helicopter landing spot. He threw a frag grenade instead of a smoke grenade. Everyone else ducked for cover as he gawked about taking some shrapnel in in his neck. Someone relieved a machine gunner near my shelter for lunch. Unfamiliar with the M-60, he worked the bolt setting off a round. This scared the hell out of our already jumpy CP. At another CP, an artillery round fell short wounding a couple of Marines. Another Marine went nuts at the airfield and tried to steal a B-57 bomber. The Air Force was not amused. I started to worry about our allies when a ARVN Lieutenant was caught moonlighting as a Viet Cong.

Sergeant Anderson, our Message Center Chief scored a supply of frag grenades. He stored them in the top drawer of a filing cabinet with the Thermite grenades we were supposed to have if we needed to destroy our equipment and files. After I left ‘Nam someone noticed smoke coming from the cabinet. Everyone dove out the entrance before the whole place blew up. Then they had to pick up all the classified messages, papers and manuals that had been blown all about the compound. Somewhere else in Vietnam a Marine shot the other 3 members of his fire team after they returned from the wrong direction from checking out a noise.

The Chaplain held evening services at the same time as Beer Call. Everyone got 2 warm beers each evening. The Chaplain said it was OK to drink them during the service. One evening I went through the Beer Line 3 times and got about half drunk. That night, a VC sniper fired two rounds into our compound. The machine gun near me fired back. I slept through my only real combat experience.

I managed to spend just short of 2 weeks in Vietnam before my tour was up. Along with about a dozen others I had come overseas with, we boarded a C-130 at Danang. We sat along the side of the cargo plane with our seabags strapped down securely near the rear ramp. There was no in-flight movie. At futima the pilot did a tricky landing that invoved standing the big plan on its wing and flattening out at the last minute. He was good. At Futima we immediately boarded a truck for Camp Butler. It was the fastest, smoothest movement of my entire military career. We were billeted once again in Quonset huts. It took us n no time to sh!t, shower and shave. Then we were bound for the Ville. It was like we had never left. Some went to the Hong Kong Tailor shop for new threads. I hocked my 35 mm Petri camera, expecting to never want to take another photo with it. I had screwed up loading it and didn’t get any pictures of Vietnam. (I did have pictures I had taken with the borrowed camera on my voyage on the Princeton.) Most of us got drunk.

A few days later, Al called me aside to show me something in his locker. He pulled out his brand-new clothing bag with a big Chinese dragon and the Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor on it. He unzipped the bag and pointed to a small pocket sewn inside. So what, I thought.

“It’s for my grenade,” he whispered.

The Son-of a-Bitch had stolen a grenade and was going to smuggle it back to the world! He had some vague plan about pulling the pin and dropping it on a downtown Minneapolis street some late night. I shook my head and told him what a stupid effing idea that was. He just grinned his nerdy electronic wizard grin.

Then a typhoon blew in. Our Quonset huts were no place to weather out a storm. We cleaned out our lockers and boarded cattle cars for the modern, concrete barracks of another camp. When the storm hit, we were close enough to see the waves crashing into the rocky shore. Turned out it was a pretty low-grade Typhoon. We were on our way back to Butler the next day. When we got back to our hut, Al cautiously opened his locker. Then he turned white as a sheet. He had panicked and left the grenade on the top shelf. Now it was gone. Nobody ever said a word about it, so we suspected a member of the Okinawan cleaning crew got. Hopefully, he used it to kill a ton of fish. Al would return to Minneapolis to join Mensa where he belonged. I finally tracked him down after he died in 2016.

We boarded another MSTS ship at Naha for our return voyage. Shortly after leaving our destination got changed from San Diego to San Francisco. This took us through the cool waters south of the Aleutians. That was a problem. The ship’s fresh water system had broken down from carrying too many troops to Vietnam. We were stuck with cold, salt water showers. You can’t even lather up with soap in salt water. I mostly took sponge baths in the sinks.

One of my buddies on the ship was a Public Affairs guy. A Lieutenant grabbed him and a couple other guys to put out mimeographed newspaper. It was journalistic gold. They would summarize the news of the day and tell us what was going on with the ship. One day a civilian crewman died and they stuck him in the meat freezer. The journal had some excellent editorials. One speculated about what a Vietnam Era GI Bill might look like. A year later some of us would be using those benefits to go to college. Another editorial discussed the possibility of an extension of our enlistments due to the war. Extensions were not all that unusual in times of crisis. There had been one during the Cuban Missile Crisis and another when we intervened in the Dominican Republic. The day after the editorial we crossed the International Dateline. It was Friday, August 13, 1965. We got the day back that we had lost the year before when we crossed the other way. On the second Friday the Thirteenth we got the word that our enlistments had been extended by 4 months. NCO’s and Officers got a year. I was pissed. I was no longer a Short-Timer with a few months left to serve.

We hit Frisco a few days after my 21^st birthday. The Golden Gate looked pretty good as we passed under it. An Army band greeted us at the Oakland Army Terminal. We got on buses and headed for Treasure Island underneath the Bay Bridge. On the way we gawked at round-eye girls in passing cars. They dumped us on a lawn as we waited for our orders. Until we got them, we had no idea where our next duty station would be. Finally, a Sergeant began shouting out names and handing out orders. I opened mine. I had 30 days leave coming and then I would be reporting to Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro, near Santa Ana, California. Earlier in my career, I would have jumped at the chance to be in an air wing. I had been told when I signed up that I could get an “Aviation Guarantee” if I signed up for an extra year. Sorry but 3 years, err… 3 years and 4 months, was enough for me.

We were told that our orders weren’t good until the next day. We would have to wait there until Midnight to leave. I leaned against my Sea Bag as a group of Naval Reservists serenaded us with the Marine Corps Hymn. Tired as we were, it buoyed our spirits. I dozed of in the afternoon sun. When I awoke it was dark. Almost everyone was gone. It was about 11PM. All my buddies had ignored the admonition to not leave until Midnight. I grabbed my Sea Bag and rushed to the last remaining taxi.

“Where to?”

“Greyhound!”

A half hour later I bought my ticket for the 1AM bus to Reno. Then I headed for a bar for my first legal drink.

NOte: the rest of the story is on a private page. If you want to see is leave a comment or contact me by direct message.

LDT