Category: USMC

“Whaddya Want? EggInYerBeer?* It’s Just Tradition!”

youngest and oldest

get sword-cut cake before all:

even in boot camp!

 

*(I celebrated 10 November in Boot Camp in 1967. The next time was in 1971 at Headquarters, Eighth Marine Corps Recruiting and Reserve District in Philadelphia, nine months before I was released from Active Duty.  In between, while walking “drag” for a heavily reinforced USMC public affairs fireteam (one shotgun, 1 .45, 1 m-16 and one M-60 including two writers, one photographer and one mo-pic (movies) guy walking back from Thu Bon River along Highway 1 about two miles from Landing Zone Baldy (HQ, 7th Marine Regiment), our destination, we stopped for sustenance.  In a roadside straw hut-tavern we each had two beers poured cold into tall glasses! with tomato juice and one raw duck egg apiece in each glass.  I produced tobacco and John Gentry had a small jar of horseradish, Frenchy LeBreq had Worchestershire and Leo Dromgoole supplied smoke.) We sailed into the combat base belching and farting and pleased as punch we had not the chance to duck or be accused or bad marksmanship.  And, no, it was not 10 November 1970 but much earlier and I was scared shitless.)

by Categories: Birthday, Haiku, J Richards, Marines, November, November 10, Poem, Poetry, USMCTags:

“Forty-Nine Years Past”

A scared near-week passed

at Parris Island and still

not really begun!*

 

*(Sitting by my garden in shade and sipping an adult beverage with foam on top, the image of my squad leader whom I did not then know and did not know was from Sanford, Florida, USA, too, came jolting upwards forebrainishly, and I grinned: How you like this shit, Jimmy Clements?)

by Categories: 1967, Boot Camp, Commentary, Haiku, J Richards, Parris Island, Poem, Poetry, USMCTags: ,

“Two June D-Days In 1944”

Six dozen years past

evil tasted fear while gorging

at France and Saipan.*

 

*(Though the U. S. Marines’ invasion of Saipan did not exactly coincide with the June Sixth  – invasion by the American-led U.S. Army and allies’ at Normandy, both invasions were within a week of each other. Saipan’s invasion began June 9, 1944.  The notoriety – and eurocentricity of American public policy and common thought – of the Normandy landings, understandably, outshined what took place at both Saipan and Tinian, the next island in the campaign that brought B-29 Superfortress bombers within range of the Japanese home islands and thus begin the end of The Pacific War.  Oddly enough, Marines still retain all the unfounded credit for the Pacific War, though only Iwo Jima and Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll were the only  two campaigns exclusively conducted by USMC invasion forces throughout WWII. Saipan remains a part of the Northern Mariana Islands U. S. Commonwealth.)

by Categories: D-Day, France, Saipan, Haiku, J Richards, June Sixth, Marines, Poem, Poetry, USMC, WarTags: ,