and how it all started.
Why? Because if I was going to be a bear, I might as well be a grizzly.
I grew up watching all the neat war movies on TV like "Back to Bataan", "Guadalcanal Diary", "The DI", "Sands of Iwo Jima", etc. The Marines really impressed me with their dress blues, the Marine Corps hymn, and always kicking butt.
My Grandpa was in the Navy Seabees in World War II in the Pacific and my dad was in the Navy in World War II in the Pacific, also and reactivated for Korea. They would have preferred Navy for me, but I wanted to be where the action was.
In June of 1967, I graduated from Mehlville High School. After school, I went to work for Pet, Inc. in the mailroom.
Some of my friends were already in Vietnam. Some were drafted and some enlisted.
I went in for a variety of reasons.
I knew it was my patriotic duty to go fight for freedom just as my ancestors had done. That was a given.
My friends were over there fighting and who was I to sit over here while they did the dirty work. I felt that if I went, maybe it save someone else from going. My feelings were best expressed in a movie I saw where another Vietnam vet said, "I wasn't brought up to let someone else fight my battles for me."
And there were the South Vietnamese. We studied the war in school, but I didn't know a whole lot about it. All I did know was that the South Vietnamese wanted to be free and the North Vietnamese wouldn't let them. That was the extent of my understanding of the war at that time.
Years later, during a Veterans' Day Parade in St. Louis, a former South Vietnamese soldier asked me when we were going to go back to Vietnam and kick the communists out so he could go back home. I felt so bad and his words stuck with me. At least I had a home I could come back to. He had to flee the only home he had known.
There were other things going on in my life also, and the combination of all of the things going on with me and in my mind decided my fate.
In November of 1967, I bought a new '68 Plymouth Roadrunner.
After buying said Roadrunner, I began to have this problem with speeding tickets.
By the summer of '68, my dad and I were having frequent arguments, sometimes over the Roadrunner. During one of these arguments, I told him I ought to run away and join the Marine Corps. I mean, hey, I was 18 and I knew it all. My dad told me, "You wouldn't make a pimple on a Marine's ass."
In the fall of '68, I started going to Meramec Community College part time. I couldn't go full time because I had to work full time to pay for the Roadrunner. A lot of my friends, with birthdays just before mine were getting their draft notices and I knew mine was coming soon.
That pretty much sealed it for me. Did I want to be bellowing out, "From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli....." or should I wait and be squeeking out, "For it's hi hi hee in the field artillery."
On October 18th, I went down to the Marine Corps recruiting station at Grand and Gravois in St. Louis. "Gunny" Humbert got my name on the dotted line. I was scheduled to leave for boot camp on October 31.
From there it was boot camp. I started November 1, 1968.
Everyone enters as a private E-1.
Then Infantry Training Regiment (ITR).
I made private first class E-2 here.
Then Basic Infantry Training School (BITS).
After that I went home on leave.
I returned to Staging Battalion at Camp Pendleton.
Then from Staging to Okinawa to An Hoa South Vietnam in April, 1969.
I made lance corporal E-3 and corporal E-4 in Vietnam.
After Vietnam, I was at Camp Pendleton for 8 months, then I got separated with an early out on August 28, 1970.
From then until 1974, I was on Inactive Reserves.
In March 1983, I reenlisted, this time in the Active Reserves in St. Louis. I spent two years doing that. That consisted of a weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. One summer we went to Camp Pendleton on the West Coast and the next summer we went to Camp LeJeune on the East Coast. On our weekends we would go to Weldon Springs Mo. to train or Fort Leonard Wood Mo. We went to Fort Campbell Kentucky, too.
I was promoted to sergeant E-5 here.
Then I transferred over to Inactive Reserves. On Inactive Reserves, I did a lot of Marine Corps Institute correspondence courses. I did the two week drill in 1987 out at Camp Pendleton.
I made staff sergeant E-6 here.
My final contract with the Marine Corps expired in 1995.
Before Boot Camp
Marine pages
My Memorial Pages
Begin My Marine Experience
You are Here - Prologue
Next - Before Boot Camp
Boot Camp - page 1
Boot camp - page 2
Boot camp - page 3
Boot Camp - page 4
Boot Camp - page 5
Boot Camp - page 6
Infantry Training Regiment (ITR)
Basic Infantry Training School (BITS)
Staging Battalion (Pre Vietnam)
Okinawa (En route to Vietnam)
Begin my Vietnam Tour - Hotel Co. Index
Various Marine stuff - page 1
5th Marine Regiment Headquarters page
Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) page
Back to Mardex
Back to Sarge T's
Vets Index
Marine Index
Hotel Index
Marine pages
My Memorial pages
Prologue - Begin my Marine tour
2/5 Area of Operations map- Begin my Vietnam tour
Various Marine stuff - page 1
5th Marine Regiment Headquarters page
Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) page
Hotel Roster 5/23/69
Hotel Company Yearbook - 1970
2/5 area recent pics page 1
Veterans in my family
My Marine Education and Training
Other links
Yahoo! Geocities
SargeT@i1.ne