Graduation & Ft. Hauchuca

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.

Memoirs of a Revolutionist

Vera Figner: Memoirs of a Revolutionist

Introduction by Richard Stites, Northern Illinois University Press, 1991, 314 pages, no index

I assumed by purchasing a first edition (1927) that I could forgo the predictable editorial bias which unnecessarily abounds in the introductions of reprint biographies.  Amazon listed the book as a first edition when it is a reprint done in 1991, but it’s just as well because I learned the first edition would have cost well over $100. I’m still satisfied because I’ve always been curious about one of Russia’s most notorious early revolutionaries who peaked in 1881 with the assassination of Czar Alexander II. Released in 1904 after spending 21 years in the Peter and Paul Fortress and Schlüsselburg Fortress, she lived to the ripe old age of 90.

Richard Stites appears to be a kindred spirit of Figner’s: “Vera Figner’s path to radicalism was very slow and by no means predetermined by something in her character”; she harbored a “Christian vision of heaven”; she exhibited an “early and sincere Christianity”; she was “driven into revolt.” On the other hand, Figner wears the Christian cloak too comfortably. She reminisced about: “my childhood Christian traditions”; her love for humanity and mankind; Christ’s “self-sacrificing love”; saintliness; spiritual qualities; altruism; “my spirit”; “my soul”; “a place sanctified”.  She even uses “verily”and rehashes the old leftist heresy that Christ was the first revolutionary who was, theoretically, on the same level as any bomb thrower.

Stites must have fallen for all this either because he believed her or was a Leftist himself, but there is a chink in Figner’s saintly armor.  She said the Gospels, “. . . did not satisfy my mood” and “. . . I read words, phrases, but without comprehending their meaning and significance. . . .”  At last, she confessed: “But I, too, had my God, my religion: the religion of liberty, equality, and fraternity.” Could this have been another installment of the fashionable Social Gospel engulfing Europe?  If so, Figner’s version, as a member of the Executive Committee of the People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya), is instructive. Its by-laws forbade love and friendship and dethroned marriage.  The end justifies the means in the Kingdom of Man.  Her exploits center around dynamite and nitroglycerin, stabbing, the revolver, and blowing up people.  Words like extermination, assassination, terror, and annihilation are used liberally. 

And why does Vera Figner wear the Christian cloak when she was a Jew?  The word is not found in the book much less any coverage of Jewish disproportional involvement in People’s Will, in its Executive Committee, or even in Russian terrorism in general that preceded the assassination of Alexander II.  The list is long: Sofia Ginsburg, Vera Zasulich, Paul Axelrod, Leo Deutsch, Mark Natanson, Sofia Perovskaya, Gregory Goldenberg, Gesya Helfman.  The roots of Russian anti-Semitism are deep and it would be instructive to explore their reactionary origins.

Implicit in the Figner story is her deception and the elevation of Saint-Simonism, a heresy affecting both Jew and Gentile that popularized Socialism and led to Communism which killed over 100 million people.Vera Figner was the forerunner and model for the new Social Gospel which went on to justify the antics of America’s 1960s SDS, Weathermen, militant civil rights leaders, and continues to animate our hoards of anti-Christian Progressives.

Ozark Snakes

Rufus lived in the old barn Grandpa built in 1919, more accurately on ground level where the rats and mice are.  I first met him as I was entering one of the smaller doors on the north side that led to the stalls.  Who knew “black snakes” could cling to the walls on eye level about a foot from my head?  Nothing happened because Rufus had a reasonable disposition and I knew black snakes are good for the farm.  I told the roofers not to harm him.  They are part of the animal scene in the Ozarks which is not always benign as Bamby or Thumper.  Dad told me of the story of a black snake discovery he made when he removed a fence post.  Underneath was a cavern fill with balled-up snakes which I presume were Rat Snakes.  (He said the smell was terrible.)  They also congregate in winter in my pump house which is perpetually damp and cool from the well water.

In the late 1950s my brother and I chased a blue racer called an Eastern Yellowbelly Racer.  They can reach 50 inches and are so fast we couldn’t keep up.  All I remember is the sight of the grass moving as he escaped.  They are harmless.  However, about the same time, I may have stepped on a Cottonmouth when I was fishing.  He slid under my tennis shoes in the reeds and grass by the pond. Although Cottonmouths are common in Southern Missouri, I don't recall seeing one.

Copperheads are another story.  I’ve named one of my fields after them.  About ten years ago with the aid of a Conservation Department’s flyer, I determined that the snake I picked up in the field with my pitchfork was indeed a small copperhead.  It’s confusing because when they are young, they aren’t copper color, but tan and brown.  They live mostly in the timber near streams and sometimes venture into the pasture.  Last year when I was mending the fences, a two-footer slithered by me – enough to kill a man, but the Conservation Department says “There is no record of a human death caused by a copperhead bite in this state (Missouri). . . .”    Still, common sense tells me to leave them alone and besides, in my retirement I respect animals  more and don't hunt.

There are Timber Rattlesnakes in Missouri, but I’ve heard scant stories about them from the old folks; they are rare.  Before I forget, there was an article in the local paper a few days ago about a man in Missouri who made the mistake of picking up a fully grown Copperhead.  It didn’t say if he used a pitch fork like I did, but it bit him three times and killed him.  It was 18-20 inches long and Missouri’s Department of Conservation will have to revise its flyer.

Inside Private Pyle's Foot Locker

Remember Full Metal Jacket and the jelly doughnut?  Gunnery Sergeant Hartman yells: “They paid for it, you eat it!”  He’d already thrown the unlocked foot locker’s contents on the deck and is chewing out Private (Lawrence) Pyle, a “fat body.”  It used to happen to me all the time, except I never pushed my luck by hiding food.  I never saw an individual get caught like that.  Usually, the Drill Instructors would call a surprise inspection and nab several privates at a time.  All the combination locks would be locked together and we’d have to play “Football” with “Bends and Thrusts Forever” until the whistle blew and the fighting heap would attempt to unlock them.  Dumping the foot lockers of 10-15 recruits may have taken too much time in the cleanup.

What else was in there?  The time frame for Pvt. Pyle was roughly B.C. (Before Camouflage) and so was my time in MCRD in San Diego in 1975.  I remember the other contents well and they bring back a lot of memories - most of which aren’t pleasant.  Marines remember them well too: Em-Nu, a black paint in a nail polish type bottle used to darken brass like chevrons; corn starch and a paint brush for starching covers (hats); boot bands; skivvies; Barbasol shaving cream; clothes pins (we always washed our clothes by hand); Kiwi boot polish, black and neutral (neutral for polishing the deck before final inspection; cover block; and other standard issue things suitable for DI hurling.

Then there were the ill-used items.  Listerine (yellow) served as a mouthwash – sometimes.  The other times, stressed out privates would drink it.  The same would have been the case for brass polish like Brasso except for Dura-Glit, a British polish used for tie clasps and belt buckles.  Suicide was almost impossible because the liquid was absorbed by cotton balls.  We were permitted only Trac-2 razors because suicide became much harder.  (One private actually came close on my Fire Watch.  It was a bloody mess and I had to clean it up.)  I still use my Bassett nail clipper after all these years and I actually use it as it was intended.  Our Drill Instructors would use them as surgical instruments during inspections.  I vividly recall the private’s wart.  “Clop!” and it fell to the floor.  Remember the Mohel scene from Seinfeld? 

Our old olive drab Marine Corps foot lockers - I remember them well.  How many hours did we stand on them awaiting inspection like Private Pyle did when Hartman found his unlocked?  That jelly doughnut cost Pyle plenty even though he managed somehow to graduate from boot camp.  When I was there, our foot lockers also contained ordinary items with unpleasant, novel, and sinister uses that ex-Marines vividly recall and about which the movie-going public knows nothing.

Getting Mexico's Attention

On the federal level there is no solution.  Democrats shed crocodile tears over the border crisis involving women and children.  When they link up with the other 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. the Left has cemented its demographic coup.  Our President knows when they are legitimized they will vote overwhelmingly Democrat completing the clever strategy and it seems unstoppable. Obama will do nothing because it’s not in his interest to do so; he has only two years to go in office.  The Republican leadership likes the cheap labor because they are businessmen whose class has chased cheap labor before the Industrial Revolution was thought of.  Threatening to cut off foreign aid to the sources of illegal alien hordes won’t work either.

But there is hope on the state level.  So far, there has been a failure to communicate with Mexico, the facilitator of our border deluge.  The governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, like President Obama, can also use their pens.  They have the power to issue conditional pardons to criminals in their states on the condition of immigrating to Mexico.  It’s a win-win for all Americans, especially our criminals who want freedom.

The concept is simple; fight fire with fire.  Each border state activates its national guard and establishes tent cities along the Mexican border.  Even if it’s in the desert, they’re no big deal.  I lived in one at 29 Palms, in the Mohave Desert for a month.  There is no need for elaborate or expensive fencing or walls because the desert is the fence and the maneuvers of the National Guard are accounted for and budgeted.   Who wants to go anyplace when the surface temperature in the afternoon is 144 degrees? On the other hand, there is freedom.  When our criminals arrive at the border they do so with the understanding that they will permanently become undocumented immigrants to Mexico (or any other country besides the U.S.).  If they break the terms of the pardon and return to the U.S., extra time will be added to their original sentence.

Before they go, our criminals should be properly outfitted:  two gallons of water, plenty of breakfast burritos and hot sauce, maps (for those who can read), an English-Spanish language book, rendezvous locations so that they can hook up with the gangs (MS-13) or cartels of their choice, the phone number of the local Mexican chapters of the ACLU or Hispanic civil rights groups, and plenty of Colorado pot and confiscated cocaine for trading stock.  If that sounds ridiculous then so is the very real crisis on our border with Mexico.   It’s time for our governors (all of them) to live up to their oaths of office and confront Mexico and the other nations south of us who use us as a dumping ground.