I had never noticed the section concerning boot camp; it brought back thoughts I had wanted to forget.
I arrived at MCRD on Dec. 22, 1964 as a barely 17 year old weighing in at 119 lbs. My brother, a career Marine, had told me I was not up to it, the I’ll show him disappeared very quickly.
I joined platoon 2009, living of course in those days in Quonset huts. Beatings were a common event, seems DI’s of that era anyway were very partial to seeing young men squirm. A really good trick for them was when they caught someone smoking when the ”smoking lamp was not lit”, Was to put them under a blanket with a bucket on their head and a PACK of their cigarettes, when the pack was gone they could come out. Good ole Sgt. Anderson, he loved to punch men in the gut. He had a bar with large cans on each end filled with concrete, you were to hold it out straight; as you tired and began lowering the unit he would hit you each time it lowered.
Screaming was nothing, every member of your family was insulted, a girlfriend was said to screwing everyone in town while you were gone. The term for us was maggot, always maggot, hey maggot get over here drop and give me 20. I believe their thoughts at the time was to so thoroughly demoralize a recruit they would be bought back from nothing to a cohesive unit, does it work?? I don’t know. But in a sense you can’t blame them for being nuts, they get one group of nothings trained and sent out and the next day they start all over.
Not knowing at the time I had Pneumonia, we were at the rifle range on
“prequel day” a Marine had to fire at least a 190 to qualify for a badge and of course be better qualified to be a Marine. It was looked down upon greater on any Marine who did not qualify. Consequently that night when I and some others did not qualify, we were taken to a hill very close to the rifle range, Sgt. Anderson was very plain, the first one who stops running up and around the hill would get a good beating. Well due to my pneumonia I was the first to stop, and he wasn’t kidding. He called me over grabbed my shirt collar and began hitting me in the gut all the while cussing screaming, etc. As he finished he lifted his right leg and gave a good kick right in the shin below the knee.
I qualified the next day and as a custom the platoon marched back to buses some miles away in the sand along the ocean, 11 days later another DI noticed I was doing jumping jacks on one leg, and ordered me to sick call. Of course they listened to my breathing first off at check-in and immediately sent me to the pneumonia ward at Balboa. It was a week later when I had fallen out of bed they finally x-rayed my leg, I had been going thru all that time with a green stick fracture in the right leg. Fear is a strong weapon when everything is unknown, it certainly worked on me.
What it really accomplished was to color my whole time in the Corps, I am of course proud of my time in there, but I never got over the humiliation that came with my boot camp tour.
Did it serve me when I got to Vietnam, I don’t know. True I was more afraid of DI’s than I was the enemy, but it was really having my brother near me for the whole year that kept me secure in mind.

Semper Fe