"One round trip bus ticket from Murphy, North Carolina to Parris Island, South Carolina, please." Part 1.

A poem, by John Wayne.

“The Sky is Blue,

The Grass is green.

So get off your butt,

and join the Marines”

I love the Marine Corps. I’m not a Marine and at my age, 53, I’ll never be one but I was raised by one and influenced by many. If a man is once a Marine he is always a Marine, never a former Marine. I can’t go any further in my writing without sharing a few true tales of the many Marines I have crossed paths with, both in real life and on the big screen, and these are the jewels in the crown of my influences.

According to Wikipedia:

The United States Marine Corps traces its institutional roots to the Continental Marines of the American Revolutionary war, formed by Captain Samuel Nicholas at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, by a resolution of the Second Continental Congress on 10 November 1775, to raise 2 batallions of Marines. That date is regarded and celebrated as the date of the Marine Corps’ “birthday”. At the end of the American Revolution, both the Continental Navy and Continental Marines were disbanded in April 1783. The institution itself would not be resurrected until 1798. In that year, in preparation for the Quasi-War with France, Congress created the United States Marine Corps.

So, the way I read it, the Marines were thought up in a bar a whole lot of years ago, and they have been the ass-kickers of the known world ever since. It’s fitting that they were re-grouped in a war with France and I guess that maybe twenty or so Marines were sent to fight the entire French Army. Shortly thereafter, the French decided to stick to art and cooking after the tremendous ass kicking those twenty must have thrown on them. I’m reaching here, of course, when I say that there were only twenty Marines sent to kick the butts of the Souffle’ crowd, it was probably more like twelve or thirteen. I mean somebody had to carry the gear and load the rifles, cook, and wash blood out of the uniforms. Over the years, I’ve seen numerous ad’s in Craigslist for antique French Army rifles, never shot and only dropped once. They never seem to sell for much, seeings there are so many in perfect condition for sale at any given time. I’ll get off the French, they do hate us but at least they gave us the French Fry and we did let De Gaulle step up and declare victory for the French’s “participation” in WWII after the USA kicked every ass that advanced towards France looking for anything other than a date with a skinny girl with hairy armpits or sautéed snails floating in garlic butter.

Their have been many movies made with Marines in them and about them. John Wayne was a famous Marine Corps lover and depending on who you ask, was credited with “saving” the Corp by agreeing to star as Sargent Stryker in “The Sands of Iwo Jima” when a threat of disbanding the Marines was proposed by the Dolittle Board after WWII. The film was seen by millions and was the top movie as far as Oscar Nominations were concerned. I’m not at all saying the Marine Corps was saved by a movie, but prefer to think if you can pin the “saving” of the Corps on any one event, it would have to be Gen MacArthur’s amphibious assault on Inchon. That event validated that assault from the sea was in fact still a viable military option in the nuclear age, and that no-one was better equipped than the Marine Corps. I still have to give Mr. Wayne a tip of my hat for his love of the Corps, I understand what it means to love a division of the armed service and have never been an official member.

In the film, “A few Good Men” starring Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, there are numerous exchanges between Cruise and Nicholson and should be seen for the tour-de-force (uh-oh, thanks again you French folk) that was Mr. Nicholson’s portraying a an Old school Marine having to conform to today’s liberalized bed wetting political correctness as it pertains to war and handling troops. The most famous line being “You can’t handle the truth!” and hundred of others. Unless you’ve been asleep for the past ten years, you’ll know that “A Few Good Men” is a movie about two grunt Marines stationed on Guantanamo Bay, arrested for the death of a fellow soldier. In one exchange between Cruises’ Lt. Daniel Kaffe (Lawyer) and Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson (the black Marine on trial for code red-ing a fellow soldier) concerning Corp. Dawson’s apparent dislike for the Navy. Dawson’s answer was a classic and went something like this;

Kaffe: “Lance Corporal Dawson, why do you hate the Navy so much?“

Dawson: “”I don’t hate the Navy, Lieutenant, everytime we gotta go kick somebody’s ass, ya’ll are nice enough to give us a ride.“

For those of you that don’t know, the Marines are a division of the Navy and used to ride on ships as a means of getting somewhere to kick ass, like Lance Corporal Dawson said.

I have a dear and close friend, Cary Chandler, whose Dad was a devoted Marine up until his death in 2006. He had accepted Christ as his Lord and savior, but maintained his greatest influence this side of heaven was the United States Marine Corps. That man loved the Corps and every time I’d enter his office I knew that fact evidenced by the numerous pictures, commendations and medals he received. Colonel John Chapple “Chap” Chandler, Jr. was quite an accomplished and amazing man. He was an Eagle Scout, a three-sport athlete and a single wing quarterback of the Class C State Championship Football team at Millen High School in Millen, Georgia. He graduated as salutatorian of his class in 1946 and entered Georgia Tech holding a degree in Electrical engineering post graduation. Chap joined Roy Richards, Sr. in his fledgling, regional wire production company and helped lead sales from $12 million to over $512 million.  Southwire stands today as a global leader in wire and cable with our $5 billion in sales. As an outside observer, I can truthfully say that Chap’s greatest joy, besides his faith in God was his family. His devoted wife of fifty-one plus years Mary, two sons Cary and Chip, his numerous grandkids and daughters in law were his true pride and joy, was his 37 years in the US Marine Corps. He earned the rank of Colonel and at the end of his career served as the executive officer of the 6th Motor Transport Division in Atlanta. He was awarded the Korean Service Medal, the UN Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and he received the Navy Commendation Medal in 1975.

I want you to know all about Colonel Chandler’s accomplishments first. It should also be known that he also was a somewhat diminutive man. At six-foot four inches tall and a former college football defensive lineman, I might have had a good eight to ten inch advantage over him, but it is more important to know that I would not have tangled with him on his worst and my best day. He had a confidence about him that spelled success in every thing he set out to do, and that also included kicking ass when necessary. He was one of the old school Marines like Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup, except he was the genuine article. He had been there, done that, and he was “tougher than a two dollar steak”, and that is in todays weakened dollar. That’s the lead in to this particular true story about the Marine that was my good friend Cary’s father.

On one of his thousands of trips he took on the corporate jet to any of  thousands of locations he frequented to get Southwire’s presence felt in the world, he would prove his mettle. On this particular trip, Mr. Chandler was on his weekly trip to Kentucky, where he was President of National-Southwire Aluminum Company and found himself with a plane full of his co-workers, all executive types, on approach for landing during the famous Blizzard of Feb. ‘78. The conditions were exceptionally poor, snow was falling and from the follow-up reports from the F.A.A., the wings had enough ice on them to chill a year’s worth of cold beer produced by Budweiser. Visibility was extremely poor and the pilots couldn’t locate the airstrip at the plant so they made a low pass to catch a glimpse of it, not wanting to lose sight by going back up the pilot made a critical error and banked sharply to land. The weight of the ice on the wings made them drop like and anvil and they hit the ground nose first at nearly 200 mph.

The Mitsubishi MU-2 did indeed crash, broke off both wings, fuselage tumbling down the runway like a roll of fifty cent pieces, breaking up into two parts and injuring most of the passengers. The fuselage containing the passengers came to rest upside down in a snow bank, it’s occupants covered in jet fuel.  The massive snow drifts kept the group from become a fireball from a spark during the wreck. Chap Chandler, however, basically walked away from the crash, soaked in jet fuel and bruised from asshole to appetite, but basically unharmed. I’d say in Chaps case, it was a 100/100 proposition, one-hundred percent God and one-hundred percent Marine Corps training. He calmly refused an ambulance ride to the hospital so he could take photos of the crash scene, worked several hours then flew home later that evening.

Chap was as cool a customer as they came.  When Cary came home from college that night after hearing his dad had been in a plane crash, he asked Chap what he had been thinking as the plane went down.  Chap replied, “Oh I knew I was going to walk away from it, I was just worried about those other poor SOB’s and if they were going to make it.”

“They weren’t Marines.”

Colonel John Chapple “Chap” Chandler, Jr. passed away on February 6, 2006 in Carrollton, Ga. from a long illness. He was buried under a full Marine Color Guard and given a 21 gun salute, fitting for a man so devoted to the Corps. He was like most Marines I have encountered, all with a broken mold laying somewhere in heaven, God knowing he had a created a “one-off” never to be duplicated again.

Come on now, it's a goods story. Wednesday it gets better.