For the last 30 years my family and I have lived in Greensboro, North Carolina. We are proud to call the Tarheel state home, but I was born and raised in Vermont. In an ideal world I would return to Vermont from May to October each year and then sprint back to the South. Vermont is one of the most beautiful places on earth…when the weather is agreeable. One has to endure six months of hard winter annually. When I was a kid it was not unusual in January for the high temperature of the day to never exceed zero degrees. Vermont would have been an ideal training site for the 1st Marine Division in 1950 before it headed to Korea and the Frozen Chosin.
My dad was a World War II Army veteran, and my father-in-law enlisted in the Navy in 1943 when he was 17 and served in the Pacific. The man who inspired me to become a Marine was a close family friend who enlisted in the Corps prior to Pearl Harbor. He landed on Guadalcanal on 7Aug42 with the 5th Marines, and later served on Iwo Jima with the 5th Marine Division. The more I got to know him, and the more I learned about the Marine Corps, the more I knew I wanted to be a Marine.
My dad passed away in 1948 when my older brother was 11 and I was 3. Fortunately, my mother was a registered nurse and was able to support us by working at the Rutland Hospital. For many years she worked the 11 pm to 7 am shift and then came home to feed us and get us off to school. Only when I was much older with a family of my own did I fully appreciate what a great parent she was.
In the fall of ’63 I headed to Cambridge, MA, to begin my freshman year at Harvard. Initially I hadn’t considered applying to Harvard, but I learned scholarships were available and I elected to enter the NROTC program with the knowledge that I could pursue a commission in the Marines. I have never regretted that decision. Other than proposing to my wife, the best thing I have ever done is serving my country as a Marine. No doubt–that experience made me a better man.
Following TBS I had orders to the Field Artillery Officers Basic Course at Fort Sill, OK. I was delighted with this opportunity. My great-grandfather served with the 1st Vermont Heavy Artillery (later converted to the 11th Vermont Infantry when Grant came east) during the Civil War. One of my fellow students was a mustang 1st lieutenant who had already served a tour in VN. At every opportunity, I honed in on what he had to say. There is no substitute for experience, and he was more than glad to share what he had learned.
After a too brief leave, I headed to WesPac and arrived in Da Nang courtesy of World Airways on Easter Sunday, 1968. Later that day I saw the 1st MarDiv CG at church services, the only time I saw him during my shortened tour. I was part of D/2/11 based at Phu Bai and was assigned to be the FO for D/1/5, which was under the command of Capt Harrington. The heat always sticks in my memory–I recall days with temperatures at 105 to 110 degrees and 100% humidity. The mosquitoes weren’t as big as helicopters, but the clouds of mosquitoes were.
We received some intel that the VC were coming at night to a nearby village to pick up supplies and we countered with an ambush to hammer them on their way out. At about 0100 on the morning of May 21 we triggered the ambush, which was highly effective. However, we had some casualties in the aftermath.
I took a round through both arms, and another round nicked my right kneecap. I went out briefly, and when I came to, the platoon Doc was hard at work trying to patch me up. God bless the corpsmen. The worst part–both of my arms were broken and I could do little or nothing to defend myself. At first light a medevac helo came in to transport me to the battalion aid station. Just before it arrived, one of our men was hit by a sniper. He was immediately put on the chopper beside me and was soon in the hands of the doctors. He had a severe head wound, but I later heard, by some miracle, that he survived.
Eventually I arrived at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, NH, the hospital closest to my home of record. In short order one of the nurses put a large poster of a scantily-clad Raquel Welch on the bulkhead at the foot of my bed to inspire me to get out of the sack. It worked.
In the spring of ’69 I returned to active duty at Camp Pendleton and served as XO of a 4.2″ mortar battery, W/3/13, until we put the unit in mothballs later that year. I was in my new 105 battery office in late ’69 when Steve Freiherr, a fellow member of A Company at TBS, came in and announced that I had orders to language school at Monterey, CA, to study Japanese for 47 weeks. At first I thought he was blowing smoke, but he soon convinced me he was totally serious. It was tough duty but someone had to go.
At the end of that assignment I was disappointed to learn that I was returning to Pendleton. Each of us has arrived at significant crossroads in our lives–if the Corps had seen fit to send me to Japan I would have embraced that opportunity. I would have had approximately six years of active service at the end of that tour and might have been a career Marine. Instead, I worked in the 25th ITT for six months and then wrapped up my four years as a proud U.S. Marine.
In July of ’71 I joined Pfizer Inc. at their headquarters in NYC and began a new career in human resources. In 1985 I made a career change and joined Merrill Lynch as a financial advisor. For more than 25 years I enjoyed helping individuals and businesses work toward their financial objectives. At the end of 2010 I decided it was time to saddle up and ride off into the sunset.
I have been richly blessed with a terrific wife and two good kids. My daughter has returned to school to get her MS in social work at UNC-Wilmington, and my son received his BS from UNC-Chapel Hill, completed his MD in ’12 from Wake Forest, and is now a 3rd year resident at Carolina. He recently learned he will start a 4 year fellowship at UNC this July that will lead to a certification in gastroenterology and an MPH. We are very grateful he has this opportunity and will still be only an hour away from us.
Each of us should have at least one or two passions. Two of mine are the Boston Red Sox and the American Civil War.
Semper Fidelis, my brothers.
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