Spent a few days last week down at the old stomping grounds on Camp Pendleton and MCRD checking out what's happening. My old fire team leader, Dick Svee and I had talked about going down and seeing the Amtrac museum for some time now, so time permitted and away we went.
Camp Del Mar, just west of the Camp Pendleton area and on the beach, holds the tracks museum and once we got past the mumbling inarticulate guy guarding the gate and his front-tooth-braced female co-gate guard (she must be all of 17), we wandered around the base looking for the building housing the museum. Camp Del Mar is much bigger than I thought it was, plus they have a great beach-side camp-ground for retired and active to camp at. Driving by the camping area, we saw two mobs of Devil Pups doing PT, which consisted of lining them up for some chewing out about taking too long in the heads and then running them, an out of step mob, down the street. One group were boys, the other girls. Somewhere in the back of my memory I remember reading about school kids that spend their summer playing kid marines. (?)
Most of what they had were WWII and Korean War tracks. The track we rode in during the 60's, just wasn't there. They did have a fantastic display of Japanese relics from the WWII island campaigns along with time period comparable Marine combat uniforms. I would guess that the Amtrak guys could pick up lots of battle field souvenirs and bring them back inside the tracks. It's not too often one can see a Japanese soldiers uniform full of bullet holes. As a side note, my Uncle Don was in Europe during WWII as a Army Amtrac driver. He brought back a whole collection of German daggers. No, I didn't get one. His worthless son got them all, pawned them and used the money to continue his drinking career.
After crawling around on the tracks, we went out of the building and ran into a Sgt just outside the door. We questioned him about where they might have some of "our time" tracks and he said he just didn't know, but Speilburg has borrowed one for a movie he's making. We went back in and looked at the picture, but it wasn't it. As we left, he thanked us for what we had done and I told him to take good care of our Corps. "Urah!" he said.
We drove around a bit more and swung by the Officers Club. I didn't know it was a hotel also. You know, I knew they ate better than we did, but a hotel? At the club?
We left Del Mar and started back into to Camp Pendleton, had some misunderstandings with mumble-metal mouth and went over to the Main Gate. The first guy said we couldn't come on the base unless we were "sponsored" or had military ID. They are under Condition 5, which meant nothing to us, but with some fast talking and bullshit with the guy in-charge inside the gate-house, they let us on. Yup. The old razzel-dazzel still works on jarheads.
Went up to Main-Side and saw what that looked like. Looking more like a shopping center all the time. Fast foods, grocery stores, Target etc. Also lots of family housing has been built. Looks very much like a standard housing project anywhere in southern California. Also saw the football field. There again, some things happened in the Marine Corps that we grunts weren't even aware of. A football team? Guys join the Marine Corps and play football for four years? Does this mean, if they re-enlist, where do they go and do what? Become coaches? Hump a pack as a grunt? I don't think so.
Continuing up to Las Pulgas, Camp Horno, San Onofre and San Mateo, we saw very few guys working. One place at Pulgas they were firing off some sort of blasting practice up on the hill and at San Mateo we saw a bit of squad tactics with live fire. You know, you get on line and advance firing at stationary targets. They seemed to be working closer up to the targets than I remember, but then, that was a long time ago and we were using real long guns in those days. Okay, I mean 30 Caliber verses the 7.65 caliber or smaller they use nowadays.
Past Camp San Mateo, we discovered the staging area for overseas deployment. Talk about a step back in time. The entire camp consists of Quonset huts. All painted that dull sand color that seems to be in vogue on the base. The place was uninhabited, but you could see that it's in good shape. Waiting for the next bunch?
Speaking of good shape. The main highway in from the Main Gate is absolutely filthy. So much litter along the side of the road. It is a shame. It's inexcusable. They have guys in the Brig so put them to work cleaning up the place! I've written a letter to the commanding officer so hopefully some butter bar Lt will get his ass chewed out. Trashing out my Marine Corps It's just not right!
And, the ITR (Infantry Training Regiment) is now ITB. B = Battalion. I don't know why they changed it. Size?
The Grinder is called that because of the amount of grinding they had to do to flatten out that much area in the hills of San Diego, so the rumor goes. I think it had to do with me doing hundreds of push ups and marching in cadence for hours upon hours on it.
The next day we went down to San Diego to see a graduation of the current crop of new guys. Dick had bought a K-Bar at one of the surplus stores in Oceanside the night before and the guards wouldn't let us drive on MCRD with it in the car. Apparently they are under Condition 5 also, and have no place to stow possible terrorists weapons. Much less a crazed former Marine sporting a K-Bar and attacking a Drill Instruction, or any officer, or whoever. We parked about two blocks away and hoofed it on to the base. Coming back through the gate, one of the guys who knew we had the K-Bar asked if we still had it on us. He was just making the little joke, but I said we had thought about strapping it on our backs and then thought better of it. He looked relieved.
Can't you just see it. Big newspaper headlines; FORMER MARINES KILL 3000 AT GALA CELEBRATION. "IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE" cried one witness, "He whipped out a huge knife and began slashing and stabbing and before long, everyone was dead except the band leader." News and video at 11.
The Lt. Colonel. in charge of ceremonies was a real hoot. He affected the Drill Instructor voice while he talked. At one point during the ceremonies they honored previously active Marines and ask them to stand for a round of applause. From my place of view, I'd say there were only a dozen or so of us there. The rest of attendees were family and friends of the guys graduating. Always good to be thought of as something much better than we think we are.
After the dismissal of the 'Boots', Dick and I walked the 'Grinder' and marveled at how big it still is.(see photo) It's hard to tell how many miles we've marched and ran up and down that parade field but quite a few. The grounds are still in perfect condition but didn't see any Ice Plant. It has all been replace by short green grass. Over at the Exchange, we walked through there and thought we were in a Macys department store. Women's purses, perfume counters, shoes and clothing were all on the first floor. Didn't go upstairs where I assume the men's stuff was. Did notice that all the help behind the counters were from the Philippine's.
On the way out, a lot of new guys were over at Cash Sales buying blues. As they met us walking out, they all said "Good Morning Sir!" and I congratulated them with "Congratulations Marine." We all got little tingles and emotional chokes.
A new thing the Marine Corps is doing is handing out stripes to graduating recruits. The company honor man gets PFC, and they now have Lance Corporal stripes for the battalion honor man! Helps with recruiting I suppose but I sure hope the new LCpl is as good at everything as he thinks he is. The new LCpl had only fired Sharpshooter instead of Expert so the extra stripe must not mean he was the top man in everything.
So these new guys get a ten-day leave before reporting to ITR or ITB and then go on to do whatever it is they are assigned to do. Good luck to all of them.
Oh yeah, one other thing. While we were at Camp San Mateo, we stopped at the exchange to see what they had in there, kind of like a 7/11 Convenience store. On the way out to the parking lot, we saw a (I think he was a Marine) with a beret on. Those little pieces of crap look like shit. I sure hope that they aren't going to wear those instead of a Utility Cover. Next they will be wearing those little silk neck scarf's like the Army guys wear. How cute.
And my second other thing is the amount of civilian cars parked all over base. They belong to the Marines so it's not a bunch of civilians parking there. These guys are obviously making much more money than we did to afford a car. I think we only had one guy below the rank of Gunny Sgt with a car. He was quite popular.
I guess that's about it for now. There are some observations of Oceanside and its environs, but those I will write about later.
Always Faithful,
Corporal Mikey
PS: One more dig, ARMY means Ain't Ready to be a Marine Yet.
PS: One more dig, ARMY means Ain't Ready to be a Marine Yet.
Love it! You really paint a scene well.
ReplyDelete