October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

The train station in Oceanside California is very near the beach so as I alit from the Coast Starlight, I walked over to the beach and sat on a 4 foot tall pipeline that runs parallel along the beach.  I was returning from a few days annual leave having been visiting my parents up the coast in San Jose for a week. 

           

The early fall weather in southern California is almost always warm and balmy so I took advantage of not having to report in until the next day and sat down in front of the pipe, looking out at the setting sun rays... then I slept there through the night.

Earlier the previous month, I had completed a month at the NCO school at the San Mateo camp on the sprawling USMC Base Camp Pendleton.  NCO school is like a shortened Boot Camp only worse in some aspects.  During Boot Camp, we never rose at 5AM, donned gas masks and ran around the parade field until the sun peeked over the horizon.  We just did it with out gas masks.  Now we stood inspection every day.  Once in the morning, once in the afternoon and one more before lights out.  Nary a hair or Irish Pennant (Marine jargon for loose threads.) was to be seen.  All creases in dress shirts and trousers were ironed again and again until it was dangerous to touch them with bare hands they were so sharp.  Utilities (work dungarees) were starched so heavily; they could stand in the corner all by themselves.  Never sat down with them on.  We ate standing up.  Might as well, we were on our feet from beginning to end of the day anyway.  There were classes and more classes both listening to and presenting in order to hone our skills as brand new leaders.  Our instructors were a bit on the Drill Instructor side of discipline.  Maybe they were wannabe D.I.'s

I'm afraid that a most of the training that month fell into a memory black hole.  My emotions were reeling from having received the dreaded "Dear John" letter a day before graduation.  The girl that I had lost my heart to back in high school had just eloped and married someone else.  Injury was added by her writing the letter while in their honeymoon suite.

The kicker was that I had just spent a months pay on a down payment for some engagement and wedding rings and had sent them, arriving the day after she eloped.

The next morning, with a still bruised heart and feeling sorry for myself, I caught the early bus to Camp Pendleton, hungry and looking forward to breakfast at the mess hall.  As I walked towards my barracks, I noticed a convoy of 6X's(large trucks) pulling onto the parade field.  The only time the trucks pull into the barracks area is to pick up us ground pounders for a ride out to the training range.  We always hoped the ride wouldn't be too long as we usually walked back after a day or two running up and down the mountains of Camp Pendleton.

Entering the barracks, I see everyone packing sea-bags and 782 combat gear with intent looks on their faces.  "Oh my God!" I thought, "We're going up to Pickle Meadows for the 'Battan like' death march back to Camp Pendleton."  (Only 416 miles, one-way.)

A few of my closer buddies filled me in very quickly about what the scuttlebutt was, "We're Going To Cuba."  War cries filled the room as I pulled out my sea bag and began stuffing it when the Gunny came through the barracks with full pack, helmet and side arm telling everyone to hurry up.  He spied me and asked what I was doing.  "Going to war, I guess." I said with a very excited voice.  I was politely informed that no, I wasn't.  The troop movement orders had been cut the day before and since I was officially on leave, my name was not added.

This is one of those times when the emotions are suppose to split apart in turmoil, like seeing someone you despise driving off a cliff in your new Corvette.  Well, that didn't happen to me.  I felt totally at sea.  My fellow grunts going to war without me!  My Fire-Team are all FNG's(fucking new guys), except for one!  I do believe I had tears in my eyes.

I stomped off to the Company headquarters and demanded asked to see the First Sgt., a fatherly figure that always understood and made things right.  His desktop sign said "First Sergeant" on one side.  The other side said "ChaplAin."  Depending on ones complaint, the appropriate sign was presented forward.  This was the first time I saw the third side, it said "ITS THE MARINE CORPS WAY"

Begging and pleading did me no good, I wasn't going, Period.  He was pulling on his pack and getting ready to leave when he said, in one of those twists that the Marine Corps uses, that I was now in-charge of the 2nd Battalion 7th Marines since I was the senior NCO being left stateside.  Given a list of those in Sickbay, in the brig, those in Communications (who we never talked to anyway) and a few known as the sick lame and lazy I was dismissed.

I walked out onto the parade ground to watch the company form up, count off and begin boarding the trucks.   They were off to war and the reality of it was beginning to show on their faces and demeanor.  I was feeling totally rejected and frustrated.  And hungry.

The mess hall had one cook and two of the lazier of the sick lame and lazy as helpers.  The cook said I could have anything I wanted since there was a ton of food that would go to waste if it wasn't eaten, so steak and eggs became my basic meal for breakfast lunch and dinner.  Somehow, we were short on coffee so I sent a recon(reconnaissance) team up to the Officers mess to scrounge up what they could find.  We soon had coffee and lots of it too.

I, Corporal Harris now (Battalion Commander), moseyed over to my new office only to find it locked and barred.  Not much to do anyway so I went back to my company barracks and took a nap.

The sickbay corpsman had a radio so I soon found out about the Russian missiles in Cuba and the mano-a-mano of Kennedy and Khrushchev.  There was no word of what my outfit was doing but we assumed that they were on a troopship circling the island of Cuba.  The guys in Communications wouldn't tell us anything.  Probably didn't know anything since they were Communications.

A week of me being in charge of the ghost battalion was soon over.  A Staff Sgt back from leave took over and I became Company Commander of Charlie Company.  Wasn't long before a buck sgt transferred in from somewhere else and I was knocked down to Platoon Commander and then to Squad Leader by the end of the second week.  A mighty fall in just a few weeks, from acting Lt. Colonel to acting Captain to acting Lieutenant to acting Sergeant and me just a Corporal to begin and end with.

A couple weeks later, the Russians blinked, the battalion returns on trucks just like they left only with much more hooting and hollering and smiles.  I was filled in on the trip about the boredom aboard the ships, going through the Panama Canal and pulling liberty in Puerto Rico.  Apparently VD was so virulent down there that one could catch it by just walking down the street.  That's what I was told by those visiting the Corpsman, every day, for shots. Including one of my fng's.

The battalion began transferring out those that had put in their time humping mountains and bringing in new guys to fill out the ranks.  I opted to make a second trip to the Far East and had to extend my enlistment in order to do so.  No sweat, I still felt left out from the Cuban excursion and had no earthly reason to remain in the same country as my married-to-someone-else girlfriend.   Fantasy wise I think, if I could have, I would have deserted from the Marine Corps and joined the French Foreign Legion but they didn't have a recruitment office anywhere near.  Besides, I was still so "Gung Ho" for the Marine Corps that I could eat Marine Corps emblems for breakfast with out sugar.  That desire was corrected a year later but that is a whole different story.  As Goethe said, "There is no man more dangerous as the disillusioned idealist."