Can you recount a particular incident from your service, which may or may not have been funny at the time but still makes you laugh?:
If there was one thing that could strike fear into any Marine recruit back when we actually received service numbers, it was the fear of being sent back for some mischief, thus prolonging our time in purgatory. I faced that very real possibility between Phase 2 and Phase 3 at MCRD, San Diego, and it was Mess and Maintenance week.
Can you recount a particular incident from your service, which may or may not have been funny at the time but still makes you laugh?:
My all time favorite story is from my time as a Radio Operator aboard a P-2 at P31-31 DET NI. One of our pilots, nicknamed Porkie by the enlisted because he was portly and had a chubby face, had an incident the previous day training a new pilot. As three crew later told us. The student was high on glideslope and close to landing. He repeatedly told the student to get it down, get it down. He failed to do so adequately, and Lt. “Porkie” got angry and yelled, “I SAID GET IT DOWN!” Now they were already over the apron (Ideal touchdown area), and he wasn’t about to make a long landing. So he pulled back the power and dropped it like a rock onto the runway. The plane hit so hard it had to be towed back to the hangar.
A letter containing an order from the President ordering me to report for induction into military service “influenced” me to show up at my draft board office in Ashland, Ohio, on 8 Feb 1968 for the bus trip to Cleveland with several other young men to be inducted. The government was drafting 50,000 men monthly at the time I was drafted.
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