Chapter Five (b)
Retread
Back to FMF
The Key West agreement between the services set the peacetime strength of the active Marine Corps at 75,000. We had that many already, so the recruiting service was cut back and many of us were sent back to FMF. In March 1949 I was sent to the 2nd Tank Battalion at Camp Lejeune.
I had bought a 1939 Ford V-8 Business Coupe. This model had only one seat and the trunk extended up under the ledge behind the seat, all the way to the back of the first seat. It was big enough for a double-bed mattress, so I kept one in it with linen and spent many nights on the beach sleeping in the trunk of my car. I had rigged a handle on the inside so there was no way I could get locked in.
In early 1950 I bought a new yellow Plymouth convertible. It was a beauty and could out-run anything on the road, almost. That was the year that Plymouths were taking almost all of the stock-car races.
About this time I met the woman who would become my first wife. She lived in Sanford, NC, about 20 miles from Fort Bragg, the large Army base. One day a bunch of us were riding around when she made a smart remark that she could get herself a soldier in 10 minutes. I pulled to the curb and said not to let the door hit her in the ass on the way out.
Trouble
I got into trouble about this time. The parking lot for private cars was knee-deep in loose sand. The worst part of parking was coming off the pavement and up over a steep rise to get into it. We were getting stuck all the time. I was the senior-most Marine parking there, having been promoted to staff sergeant in August 1948, so I became spokesman for everyone who parked there.
I asked the warrant officer in charge whether Camp Maintenance could be prevailed upon to put some gravel down so we could drive into the lot. He said Camp Maintenance had enough to do without pouring gravel in the tank battalion's parking lot. I then asked if he could take one of the bulldozers we had in the battalion and drag the sand out so we could get in. He replied, "Are you trying to tell me how to run my job?" I was pissed by now and told him someone sure should. I then walked out. He told a man then that, "I'll see that SOB in the brig."
A couple of days later I sent one of my new privates, just out
of boot camp, up to draw a wrench that we didn't carry on the
tank for a special maintenance job. The WO asked him who
his platoon sergeant was. When he told him, the WO said,
"Don't have one." The private walked over to the phone and
called the company CO, Captain Karl Viner. We called him
(to this back, of course) "Earthquake McCoon" after the character in the Lil' Abner comic strip.
The private told him, "Capt. Viner, Sgt Stockton sent me up here for a wrench and all Mr. Murray (all WO's were addressed as Mister) will give me is a bunch of shit."
"Let me talk to Mr. Murray," the CO replied. After that all the private heard of the conversation was Mr. Murray saying, "Now Karl . . . now Karl." What Capt. Viner had told the WO was that when one of his staff NCOs sent a man to maintenance for a wrench — he'd better get one.
Office hours
About a month later I was called to battalion headquarters, where the battalion CO asked me to take over as chief steward (manager) of the area service club. I told him I didn't know anything about running a club, but he brushed this aside by saying it was a job and when a Marine was given an order, the correct response was "Aye-aye, sir," So I said "Aye-aye, sir" and walked down the hall to the office of the area exchange officer, who gave me a very sketchy rundown of the job.
He wanted me to take it over right away, but I insisted on an inventory before I signed for my keys, which would make me responsible for everything that was missing. After the inventory was verified, I took it over. A friend of mine in the battalion administrative office told me to watch my step because he'd heard that they were going to try to railroad me while I was on the job.
Later, two or three times they sent men to the club seeking to buy beer via the back door, but I wasn't having any of that.
One weekend the club's beer supplier gave all the chief stewards a deep-sea fishing trip on Saturday. The assistant steward opened when I had the day off. I closed the club on Friday night and left before dawn to go to Wilmington for fishing. When I went in to open on Sunday, the area exchange officer was waiting for me and asked for my keys. He said I was relieved and to stand by for office hours with the battalion CO at 0800 on Monday.
I refused to comply with the order until an inventory was made of the club. When I took over the club, it was $300 in the red. The inventory now showed a profit of over $50. The sergeant major read me the charges. They claimed I had left a window open in the club. I checked with my bartender, who was with me when I secured the club. The window was one that he had closed, and was only opened a maximum of four inches high when it was open during business hours — to thwart would-be burglars. The guard office looked out onto the same window, plus a sentry patrolled around the club all night. There was no entry in the guard log of a window having been found opened.
At office hours on Monday morning, the battalion CO again read me the charges and when I entered a not-guilty plea, he said, "Deck court."
"No, sir," I replied. There were three types of court martial under the old "Rocks and Shoals": deck, summary, and general. Under a deck court I could not bring in any witnesses and there was only one officer sitting on it. You could refuse any court martial except a general. When you did, you were awarded the next higher. So when I refused the deck court, the CO said "Summary court" and I answered "Aye-aye, sir."
A staff sergeant I'd been on recruiting duty with had gotten a law degree at Georgia Tech while we were in Atlanta. I got in touch with him and got him to defend me. With all my witnesses, I beat the court martial.
I walked out of the courtroom, down the hall to the sergeant major's office and told him I wanted a transfer. When you beat a court martial and request a transfer, it has to be granted if it is at all possible. The only thing open was as a drill instructor at Parris Island. I took it, but I may have been better off to stick it out at 2nd Tank Battalion. The transcript of the court martial was supposed to be secret and supposedly erased from my record — but that never happened. From that time on, whenever my name came up before a promotion board, I was denied promotion. Even though I had Letters of Commendation in my jacket, good fitness reports from my reporting officers, and five Good Conduct Medals, I was turned down.
I lasted about four months at Parris Island. I was a staff sergeant and usually SNCOs were senior DIs. Yet I was the one assigned to pick up a new platoon and take it through the first three weeks of training and out to the rifle range. The easiest part of the training cycle for DIs was while the recruits were going through rifle training. What would happen with me was I never took a platoon through rifle training. Instead I would have to turn my platoon over to a junior DI and then go pick up a new bunch of recruits.
I got a transfer back to Camp Lejeune in August 1950 and went back to 2nd Tank Battalion. A lot of the men, including WO Murray, had been sent to Korea and I knew it wouldn't be long before I'd be sent over there as well.
At that time we had a serious problem with AWOLs and other petty offenders in the battalion. I was given the job of taking these men and retraining them. Most were victims of the system and couldn't adjust to military life. Most had higher-than-average IQs, so I began with normal close-order drill, but branched out into drill-team stuff and started training them in night attacks and guerrilla- warfare tactics. Any time one of the other companies was in the field for training, I got permission to take my "company" (which was what it was; they formed "C" Company just for these men, and it was to be disbanded when their retraining was over) out and be aggressors.
We carried no weapons and had only chalk to show when we'd infiltrated a bivouac area. The company commanders wanted to catch my troops in the worst way, so their men had almost a blank check as to what they could do if they caught any of us. The guerrilla training paid off — my "aggressors" went through every platoon and company in the battalion. Every tank, every truck, tent and piece of equipment was marked with a white chalk X — and never a man was caught. I hope this training saved some of the lives of my men later during their service in Korea.
When the retraining period was over, these men went back to their companies and none of them had any more trouble, as far as I know.
The author with his beloved Black Beauty — a 1939 Ford
V-8 Business Coupe,
at Camp LeJeune in 1949
"I told you, sir, they were red-hot
with drinking; so full of valor
that they smote the air"
Ariel, in Shakespeare's The Tempest,
act 4, sc. 1, reporting to Prospero of the
drunken state in which he left Trinculo,
Stefano and Caliban.
