Medal of
Honor
Vietnam
Throughout my childhood and adolescent years, I dreamed of farming. A big farm with plenty of workhorses was my first love and my planned future. I knew farming; I was on one for most of those years and loved the hard work. I left the farm for a hitch in the Marine Corps at the outbreak of the Korean War, but sincerely planned to return to the farm in four years.
My cousins fought in World War II while I was several years too young to join them. The North Korean's attack into South Korea gave me a chance to catch up with my older cousins, now out of uniform. None of them were Marines, so I had a major decision factor in deciding what uniform I wanted to wear. The Marines won hands down and at the age of eighteen, I headed for Parris Island and Hell on 4 August 1950. Marine leadership didn't waste time in getting me into the Korean fight. I became a Browning Automatic Rifleman in Item Company, 3rd Bn., 5th Marines in January 1951.
By the time I was wounded in September, I was serving as a rifle squad leader with several good firefights with the Chinese and North Koreans behind me. I was not ready to leave 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Item Company, and my MedEvac through the hospitals back to the States placed me into a lifetime track as a Marine rather than a farmer.
I found more duties and things that I wanted to do as a Marine than could be done in a four-year enlistment. First, I was not finished with the Korean War and intended to return. Second, I wanted to make a Med Cruise (A battalion deployment into the Mediterranean Sea). Therefore, I put the farm off for twenty years.
Well, I had a lot of fun in those twenty years, rising to the rank of 1st Sergeant by my sixteenth year. Then I did twenty more, plus three, on top of that and was disappointed to learn that the Marine Corps Manual requires one to leave the ranks at age 62. And, I might add, I never did get a Med Cruise. In 1993, I retired from active duty, but had the good fortune to continue wearing my Marine Colonel's uniform while working with the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech. After fifty-one years, I've taken off my uniform, but my farm is limited to a mere three and a half acres.
I have written my Marine story with thirteen chapters covering each rank from Private to Colonel. Lessons learned during each rank are noted at the end of each chapter. The title is "MARINE RIFLEMAN: FORTY-THREE YEARS IN THE CORPS", and Brassey's Inc. will publish it by summer 2002. See the Table of Contents for an idea of my story and the fun I had along the way while serving with the world's finest fighting force.
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