CHAPTER 1
Recruitment
Recollection #1:
Fall of 1943, World War II was at full swing, and I wastwenty-years old. For the past two years I had been a U.S. MarineCorp reservist while at the same time attending NorthwesternUniversity in Evanston, Illinois. At that time, a call to activeduty did not mean that I nor my fellow reservists, would haveto fight. Instead, we were to be awarded the title, Private FirstClass, along with a marine corps uniform, and sent to resideat a "marine barracks." In my case, "barracks" meant an N.U.fraternity house.
The plan was to no longer have any of us remain as justa marine "grunt" (marine slang for privates and non-coms).Instead, the plan was for us, as college students, to becomemarine officers. This meant we marines were supposed to stayin college until we were needed, and then, when called, go tothe officer's training school at Quantico, Virginia. There wewere to be graduated as second lieutenants. How long was itbefore I would have to go? I figured a year; meanwhile as thewar was raging worldwide the other marine reservists and Iwere supposed to remain in school. The reason for the delay,according to "scuttle-butt" (rumors) was that the marinesalready had a surfeit of officers and didn't need any more.
And so one day the time came when two dozen or so of mynewly recruited fellow marines and I lined up in civilian clothesoutside our "barracks:" in this case a fraternity house at theuniversity. This was in early September 1943. We stood there,shoulder pressed against shoulder, wearing mostly T-shirts andjeans (our marine uniforms were due to arrive days later). Andon the ground next to each marine was his suitcase containinghis other clothes and personal effects.
Standing in front of this lineup were two men in uniform.The one in the background was a marine captain, and the other,in front of him and nearest to us, was a platoon sergeant. Hewas in charge with the captain being there as an observer only.His cap set at exactly the correct angle and his brown tie tuckedinside his khaki shirt between the second and third button asmarine regulations required. His shirt sleeves and blue pantshad a red strip down each side (worn only by noncoms andofficers), had been ironed razor sharp and the shine on hisshoes blinded the eye.
So now the sergeant, let's call him Sergeant Lee, standingin front of us with his hands on his hips, barks out orders,"Attention! Line up! Tallest, left! Shortest, right! The rest standin between!" After a lot of shuffling the line gets formed; tallestleft, shortest right and the rest in between. Me? At six feet, Iended up amongst the few to the left. Sergeant Lee, again withhands on hips, shouts, "Attention! No talking!" I did my bestto obey. Head up, shoulders back, stomach sucked in. As fortalking, neither I nor anyone near me spoke a word, except forone person.
This was a guy standing three marines to my left. He wasabout my height and I did not know him, and in fact I had neverseen him before. What set him apart from the rest of us andhad raised the ire of Sergeant Lee was that he was talking, andmostly to himself. And not only that, his head was bobbing upand down, and he was laughing, giving the impression that hethought this whole procedure, as well as the sergeant, was abig joke.
Seeing this, Sergeant Lee walked over to him. He stoppedand said, "Okay, Loudmouth, knock it off." But Loudmouth paidno attention and kept on chuckling. This was too much for thegood sergeant. Standing back a few feet from his target, thesergeant made a tight right-hand fist. Then, with all his might,punched the marine in the stomach. It took but an instant,and Loudmouth began to gag and double over. Fortunately twomarines on each side of him seeing this, grabbed him just beforehis head hit the ground. Still holding him, they backed out of theline, laid him down, and then returned to their places. SergeantLee, as cool and collected as if the incident had never occurred,stepped back while turning to face us, commanded: "Attention!Line up!" Then, "Dress right." Lastly, "Troops, dismissed!" Andthat was it. From then on, the only time we college marinessaw the sergeant again was on the school's soccer field wherehe helped teach us how to march correctly. As f0r Loudmouth,no one saw him again.
So that was my introduction to the marines, as well as tothe war. It was also the day I felt I was beginning to graduatefrom my own fantasy world and enter the real world of reality.Now, a question is: could an incident as described above berepeated by the marines of today? I doubt it. It just wouldn'thappen. But things were different then. It was the early 1940'sand almost every one of my twenty-year old frat brothers hadleft or was leaving school. All in which were headed into eitherthe marines, army, navy, or the army air corps (later renamedair force). Therefore, there was scarcely an American familywho did not have a sad war story to tell such as what happenedto my Florida Uncle William's, and his wife Ruth's son, Bill.
In the spring of '43, their twenty-six-year old and onlychild, Bill, was piloting a four engine B-24 Flying Fortress("B" being the Boeing Co., the plane's maker) on a bombingmission over Germany when a German pilot flying a singleengine Messerschmitt 109 spotted his plane. This was followedby machine gun fire from the 109 which set all four of Bill'splane's engines ablaze and Bill had no choice except to dona parachute and bail out; all this having taken place at analtitude of 25,000 feet. Next, as the official report later stated,at 15,000 feet, the German pilot seeing Bill hanging beneath hisparachute and continuing to float down, spun his M-109 aroundand machine gunned him. My cousin Bill was dead before hehit the ground.
Suddenly, this then leads my mind to the story of my eleven-month-oldertwenty-five-year old brother, Burling. He, like ourcousin Bill, was a wartime pilot. And he, along with his copilot,flew a two-engine, cigar- shaped B-26 Marauder fighter/bomber. The word was that it was an extremely dangerousplane to fly and several were reported to have crashed withtheir young pilot trainees still aboard. One reason allegedlybeing that its wings were too narrow and short. At any rate,my brother had to fly the thing, and did so for twenty-fivesuccessful missions,...
