Chapter Five (a)
Retread
In August 1946 I reported to Camp Lejeune for duty and was assigned to Headquarters Co., Marine Corps Base. After a month I was assigned duty to the camp library. I was in hog heaven, working among the books I loved.
My boss was a civilian, a Miss Irene. There was only she, Mary and I. Because I was low man on the totem pole, I was chief gofer, truck driver, and all-around handy man. I enjoyed my work, adored Miss Irene, and got along well with Mary. I don't think there was ever a cross word between the three of us the whole time I worked there.
I got a chance to take the high school GED test and passed satisfactorily. About six months later they asked us if anyone wanted to take the college GED. Four of us took it. Two had regular high-school diplomas, and the other two of us had GED equivalents. When the results came back, the other GED man and I had passed. The other two didn't and cried, "Foul!" but there was nothing they could do about it.
Fair-leather belt
A Marine from Conyers was in my company, and as it turned out I went to school with his sister before the war. One night, he and I went to Jacksonville, NC to a couple of bars and he got drunk (I wasn't feeling much pain myself, but I was in still in pretty good shape). He got me into trouble with six sailors at the bus station on our way back to the base. He picked a fight and when they all jumped him, I took it up and he disappeared.
I pulled off my "fair-leather" belt (a two-inch wide, heavy leather belt with a heavy buckle) and started fighting them off. One got behind me and was choking me, so I swung behind me and the buckle caught him on the cheek and opened it up (I've regretted that ever since). He let me go and about that time the MPs came up. One of them was a friend of mine and he asked me if I used my belt, and I admitted I had. He then asked me why. I told him there were six of them and only one of me.
"Why didn't your buddy help you?" he asked.
"Look at him," I replied. "He couldn't hit the deck with his hat."
"Next time, don't use your belt. Call me," he said. I never heard anything about it at the base, yet when I came home on leave, everyone knew about it. My buddy had been there on leave and the tale he told at home had me fighting 10 sailors, all of whom I supposedly laid out.
I bought a new Marlin .22 rifle and brought it home on leave. I was walking down the road with three of the boys from home when a crow landed in the top of a tree about 500 yards away. "Watch me hit that crow," I said. I raised the muzzle about a foot over the crow and fired. He toppled out of the tree. When we got to it, I had hit it dead center of the head. I couldn't have done it again in a 100 years. They said, "How'd you do that?" I replied: "They teach you that in the Marines."
While working in the library I got promoted to corporal (I'd taken a bust to PFC to reenlist), and then to sergeant. In October 1947. I put in for recruiting duty and was sent to Parris Island, SC for school. This lasted about 10 weeks and I was assigned for duty at MCRS Atlanta, where I had enlisted in l943. I worked around the main station getting familiarized with the duty and regulations.
Our CO was a pilot in WWII and was a three-time ace in fighter planes. He would go out to the Marine Reserve Squadron at NAS Atlanta, borrow an F4U Corsair and do his inspections of the sub-stations by plane, to and from airports. One day I went out to NAS Atlanta to meet him coming in. I watched an F4U coming in when the landing gear collapsed. I knew it was the CO. We were there for three hours while he made out reports.
Moonshine fishing
I went for duty at the Athens sub-station and our territory ran from central Georgia at the Tennessee state line down to below Gainesville through Winder, through Madison, and across to Washington, Ga. There were two of us. A master sergeant and myself. He was married and because I was single I took all the overnight itinerant recruiting duty. (IRD). One place I spent the night was Clayton. I'd go to Hartwell on Monday and on to Clayton to spend the night at the fire station at the invitation of the chief, a former Marine. We became friends and he invited me to spend the weekend, during which we'd go up the river into the mountains for fishing. He had a cabin out in the boondocks about two miles off the roads.
It was about dark on Friday evening and he told me to stay close to him and not to stray off the path. I wondered why. A couple of weeks later I was in town for duty and I kept running into people who said they had seen me going up the river. When I said something to the fire chief, he laughed and told me that was why he had told me to stay on the path and close to the lantern. There were at least three moonshine stills on the river close to the path. He said if I had gotten off the path that I might have been shot. I didn't go fishing with him again.
In the spring, we had to call on all high schools and make an appointment to speak to their graduating classes. All the services were doing it and sometimes our schedules were such that we were following each other in the classrooms. One of the schools on our itinerary was Riverside Military Academy. The dean there was a retired army general named Sandy Beaver. He had a reputation of being a hard-nosed, starchy individual. I asked the Army and Navy recruiters if they were going to ask him for an appointment. They both said they weren't going anywhere near him.
I went over to Riverside and requested an interview with the general. He invited me in, got us coffee and was very glad to see me. He was mad at the Navy recruiter and really hurt that the recruiter from his service wouldn't even come around to ask him. When the day came for my talk to the graduating class, the general himself made the introduction. I got three of his class to enlist in the Corps plus one of his instructors.
While we were there at Athens, we would pull colors for the National Anthem for the UGA football games. I was dating the sister of the head boxing coach so I had to watch my step with her. I was a good friend with her brother, so I wasn't worried. This was during the Joe Geri, Fran Tarkenton era. I got free passes to all home games at UGA.
Relatives
One sad duty that we had to perform was at the numerous funerals of the men who had died during WWII. This would occur about once a week. The saddest one I had to attend was for my cousin, who had died on Okinawa. His brother (Army) had died three months before at the Battle of the Bulge. His name was Emory Stockton, and every summer we'd go up to Jackson County for their reunion and they'd come to ours, so he wasn't just branch-water kin.
I had relatives all around Athens. Cousins in Winterville, cousins in Jefferson, cousins in Winder. So every time I was in one of those towns on IRD, I'd take dinner with one of them. Once I almost got my Winder cousins in trouble with their neighbor. We'd set up a desk in the lobby of the post office and the applicants would come to apply for enlistment there. If a prospective applicant was 17 years old, he had to have his parents' consent to enlist. We would then send them home with consent papers to be signed and returned the next time we were in town. When parents objected to their son enlisting in the Marines, we'd go out and talk with the parents and usually they'd allow their sons to enlist. This one young man didn't come back, so when out to my cousin's house for dinner I stopped by his parents' house (next door to my cousin) to talk to them.
There were two painters, painting the front of their house, as I drove up in the Marine Corps pickup. Before I could knock on the door, it opened up and the boy's mother came out and gave it to me with both barrels. She said she'd not let her son join a "suicide" outfit like the Marines, even if she had to chain him at home. That was the nicest thing she had to say. She was really incensed and as I found out later, she was known to cuss some. I stood it for awhile, then I told her that although her son was only 17, he'd be 18 in two months and, if he still wanted to enlist, he could do it without her consent. I said that I'd make certain he passed all the tests.
Then I left. The next week he visited with the papers signed. His father heard about the run-in I had with his wife and signed the papers himself. When the son returned from boot camp, he came by the post office and brought his mother. She apologized for jumping all over me. Three weeks later the son's 21-year-old sister enlisted.
Hollywood meets reality
John Wayne shown with Iwo Jima flag-raiser John H. Bradley
Lee Marvin
PFC, USMC
WWII
Steve McQueen,
