A few nostalgic and, occasionally, humorous views of things I did as a Marine. And before you ask, no, I did not include any combat stories.
Some years ago I wrote a series of stories for my kids so they could understand that their old man was not a hero, just a human. I’ve included, below, a few of the anecdotes that show my sillier side.
It’s amazing how just a few months can change your attitude and actions. Summer, 1964, I’m living my normal lifestyle, just having graduated high school and I and my friends spent most of the summer at the beach. I was a surfer in those days and we nearly lived at four or five different beaches. I don’t know why, but when the surf wasn’t up we could always find waves at San Onofre. The problem was that it was located on the Marine base. Civilians weren’t allowed to surf there and when we did the nasty old Marines would seize our boards, take them to the gate, and make us swim or walk to the gate to retrieve them.
Summer, 1965, I’ve finished boot camp, had my leave, and there are three weeks before ITR (Infantry Training Regiment) starts and they put me on mess duty. I’m assigned to the laundry room and don’t have all that much to do so I take a part-time job at the club. (I’m only making $93 a month in those days and, at the club, I get two or three dollars an hour and all the cokes I can drink.) The club has two locations, one in the main San Onofre camp and the other at the beach. Suddenly I find I’m one of those nasty old Marines working at the club in San Onofre and one of my duties is to … yep, seize the surfboards of all the civilians who try to surf on OUR beach. Did my past experiences make me more lenient? Hell no, I was one of the hardest-asses in the place and was quite proud that I seized more surfboards than anyone else in the club.
Our rear-area compound was surrounded by a wall about a foot thick and fifteen feet high. Eighty to a hundred meters long and about sixty meters wide, the inside was lined with single- and two-story buildings using the outer wall as part of their structure. We were told it was an old French villa built in the early twentieth century. Our mess hall was one of those inner buildings. About fifty feet long and thirty feet wide with an adjoining building at one end we used as a galley. The only reason I mention the mess hall is that Ho Chi Minh, in early 1966, supposedly boasted he would eat his new year’s feast in our mess hall. He didn’t do it, but did he really say that? Don’t know. That’s just what Hanoi Hannah said.
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