My
Journal of the Silent Majority has a
section on the bad part of Marine Corps boot camp, the scandalous story of Lynn
McClure, a private whose death led to a Congressional investigation. However, in my blog I want to write about the
other side of training, but I’m trying to get permission to include photos from
my 1975 Platoon 1135 year book. There is
no copyright or publisher listed in it, so I presume the government in one
fashion or another created it. In the
meantime to be safe, I’ll wait, but people like blogs with pictures. I include, however, my “green” military ID
which shows me wearing our famous Marine Corps birth control glasses.
As
we clustered around him in the barracks, the Platoon Commander read off our new
Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) destinations with obligatory parting
insults. Most went on to Camp Pendleton
for grunt training. I remember the Guide
went to Ft. Knox to be a tanker. It was
no surprise that the “Demonstrator”, the platoon’s only college graduate, was headed
to the U.S. Army Intelligence School and Center at Ft. Hauchuca, Arizona. After the graduation ceremony on the grinder
at MCRD San Diego, we boarded our buses to be shipped out the same day.
Since
it was February, we wore our Class A – winter uniforms and we all carried was
our sea bags and what we called a “ditty bag” which I still have. As the bus pulled out and headed towards Lindberg
Field directly across from MCRD, the gates of Hell vanished in the haze. Inside the terminal were hundreds of servicemen
checking in with the airlines’ service counters to confirm their tickets. I say servicemen because San Diego is a huge
navy base and their boot camp bordered ours. The USO was an oasis and appreciated by all. I’d never seen one before. I was also struck by how young these kids
were and the realization that I actually graduated with another generation.
I’ll
bet the trip to Tucson didn’t take an hour and Arizona was even dryer than
California. Since my orders told me I
had to report by the following day, I booked a room at a local motel for the
night and fell into a deep sleep. It was
so peaceful – no yelling, no hurry-up, and no punishment. The DI’s never let the reservists among us
forget that we could be called up for active duty and get killed in just a
heartbeat. They cited the Mayaguez
Crisis. In any event the hysterics of
the Platoon Commander didn’t faze me after liberation day and I hitched a ride
to Ft. Hauchuca the following day. He
was an Army Captain and a West Point graduate.
What an interesting fellow.
