My dad and his best friend at the time, Elmer Taylor, both decided to join the Marine Corps at the same time to get out of the small town they both called home, Murphy North Carolina. When they had both completed high school, they both decided to go down to the recruiting office and sign up. This would be their opportunity to get out of the small town and expand their collective horizons, seeing the world on the USA’s nickel. When they entered the small recruiting office, they were met by a Marine in his full dress blues, a no-nonsense type saddled with the job of finding “the few and the proud” first and seeing if the Marines could use them if they survived boot camp. My dad tells the story as him entering the office first, signing the paperwork first and passing the initial physical exam consisting of having all your teeth and not being flat-footed. He said he squished his toes up so he wouldn’t be found out as a flat-foot, an insult according to the way the recruiter said it, and one way he’d miss the opportunity to make it out of his small town he called home. He passed the test and to his surprise, his buddy Elmer didn’t squish his toes up and failed the test miserably being called a wash out and a flat foot. My dad’s friend didn’t even try to fake it like he did, meaning my Dad was on his way to Parris Island, South Carolina very soon, and without his best friend at his side like they had planned. His friend confessed to him he got cold feet and decided not to join and his only way out was to be flat-footed. I think my dad and him had a genuine fist fight over that incident, but remained best friends until Elmer’s death twenty years later, long after the whole incident was a distant memory for them both.
My dad told me that when he arrived at boot camp, he stepped off the bus and heard in three minutes more cussing than he had heard in his entire life’s days combined. He said his drill instructor got in his face after he snickered at some insult hurled at some other new recruit a few rows over, a huge mistake. The recruits had been handed a bucket with all of their shaving and cleaning gear in it and this particular fellow commented about the brand of tooth paste not being his own, much to the displeasure of the drill instructor. My dad said as soon as he made a peep, he looked up and the bill of the instructor’s hat was poking him in the eyebrow portion of his forehead, his breath smelling of some long ago spent chewing tobacco. When the instructor questioned him about where he was originally from, he mistakenly made eye contact with the man in a manner the instructor found offensive based on the drill instructor’s fist being buried up to my dad’s esophagus. My dad said he dropped to the ground with all the wind knocked out of him, not catching his breath for a few days. He said he wondered, while on his knees in the Parris Island sand, what in the hell his friend Elmer was doing right then, vowing to kill him soon.
After the new recruits were divided up into squads and assigned bunks and separate drill instructors did he find out how the Marine Corps treated those who didn’t follow every order to the fullest extend. One of the many tasks the new recruits were required to do was to write “either your whore or your Mother” whichever you left back home, and loved most when you decided to infect the drill instructor’s beloved Corps (pronounced CORE just in case you are not familiar with the pronunciation) with “the maggot shit filled presence that was each recruits worthless life.” It is important to know that I am not making any of this up . Making Marines bad enough to go charging into battle with little more than a dull butter knife was a difficult task and one not to be taken lightly. One of the most important parts of the training was teaching loyalty to each other and building a team, but not forgetting the importance of family and especially one’s mother. Each recruit was to write one letter each day and forward that letter to his mother on that same day. My dad was the oldest of six brothers and sisters still back at home with his widowed mother, her depending on his $66.00 dollars a month stipend as a replacement for his absence while he was busy becoming a man. My dad had never been away from home this long in his life and this was a way of meeting others from all over the country. It amounted to quite an eye-opening experience for a young man from the Hanging Dog community of Western North Carolina. Then he made the big mistake.
It was approximately the end of the second month beginning of the third and last month of basic training and my dad’s battalion and all the other recruits, numbering in the thousands, and all split into separate batallions were all engaged in an exercise where live rounds were being fired. It was a sort of practice war giving the soon to be Marines the real feel of a battle, meaning one thing: if they didn’t keep their heads down they were liable to get shot or blown up. The drill was about half done when all of a sudden all the shooting stopped, mortar shells ceased exploding and a Jeep came careening through the middle of the whole shebang, the driver and the passenger bouncing like they might fly out of they weren’t careful. They drove straight to the command center and from my dad’s vantage point, he could see the men pointing to a paper they pulled out of an envelope then the commander pointing in the general direction of where my dad was located. My dad and his soon to be Marine buddies all were looking at each other when one of the gents lifted a bullhorn and shouted (and I quote); “Is there a God Damned Private George W. Hall in the second batallion!!??”
My dad said his vocal chords froze at the sound of his name. He thought he might not have heard his name correctly but was snapped out of his trance by his squad leader screaming in my his ear “George, god dammit, George! They are calling your fucking name you maggot dick piece of shit, get your worthless ass up and make your legs carry your carcass to the command tent before I shoot your ass myself!” He then got up and trudged his way through what seemed like a mile of mud and sweat, the two men in the Jeep walking towards him through the mud in clean dress greens. These guys reached him and grabbed his arms dragging him toward the Jeep they had driven so vicariously a few minutes before. Simultaneously, they both looked at my Dad and said “Get your sorry, worthless, no good, shit sucking soon to be dead ass in this God damned Jeep right now and don’t ask a single question, you stinking pile of maggot shit”
If you are reading this, it is important to know that I have cleaned up the language a considerable amount. The actual language used during the entire length of my dad’s stay on Paris Island was considerably stronger and included insulting your sister’s virginity or lack thereof, your girlfriend’s willingness to spread herself around while you were away serving your country and God help you if you were from Texas. The many uses of “Maggot”, AKA fly larvae, was a name assigned to all recruits and its fecal matter associated with your name was an important part of insulting the man you thought your were before entering the Marines. Let’s get back to the story now, shall we?
My Dad was riding in the back of the Jeep, wondering what ever in the world might he have done to deserve the fate that was currently befalling him at this particular moment. He knew the two guys up front were cussing like two drunken sailors on leave and unhappy as to the condition of the dress uniforms they wore daily. They were doing between eighty and ninety miles per hour over some purdy rough terrain and my dad said he nearly flew out a time or two during the trip to where ever the two front drivers were taking him. He asked, at one point, what in the hell might be going on and how did it involve him. He remembered one of the guys looking back and calling him every name in the official Marine Corps book of cuss words. He was called names he said he’d not heard in his entire life and figured when, and now if, he made it out of the Corps he’d get a copy of the combination guide to conjugating cuss words and connecting worthless humans to fly larvae. He still had no idea what in the world might be going on and the reason for the hurried trip he found himself involved in.
The Jeep pulled up to my Dad’s barracks and skidded to a stop. In one motion the two reached around and pulled my dad, in his full fake war gear, out of the front of the Jeep. They then ran him into the showers, stripping his uniform off and cussing him like he was a government mule. The two men had what my Dad thought were Brillo pads, used to scrub pots and pans in the kitchens of the massive island training facility he was stationed at during his basic training. The two scrubbed until my dad said his skin burned from the cleaning he received that afternoon. One of the men then instructed him to go and shave his face again, even though he had done it that same morning, and accompanied him by his arm when my dad balked. The other officer was busy ironing Dad’s dress greens, creases perfect, with the speed and efficiency of a robot. When he finished his three “S”s ( shit, shower and shave) for the second time that day, he inquired as to what in the world was going on and how did he fit into the situation at hand. One of the men bent over to his face while he was lacing his recently polished boots and told him ” You son of a bitch, you’ve got business with the base commander, he said to shoot you if for any reason you balked at our request. Now get your maggot-assed frame up off that bench and follow us to the Commander’s office. Boy, you have fucked up now, you dumb-assed pile of maggot shit”.
He followed the two men to the Commander’s office, wondering what fate might await him inside the giant doors he stood in front of. When the two men grabbed him under his arms and basically carried him into the office, every eye he met was void of sympathy, all looking like he had declared himself a communist and every one knew it. When he reached the Commander’s office, the two secretaries looked at him like he had stepped in dog shit and had tracked it onto the new carpet in their homes. He had just about had his fill of it all when the older lady looked at him one last time and sarcastically said “You can go in now”. One of the soldiers that had picked him up, cleaned and delivered him whispered as he passed ”You are a worthless pile of shit for what you have done, you sorry maggot”. When my Dad cleared the commander’s door, he said his knees began to shake. He told me if he had one wish and God was merciful, could he please allow him to retroactively fill an infants grave, him being better off dead than what he faced right then.
There sat his mother. She was drinking tea with the commander. He said the commander said “See, Mrs. Hall, your son is not dead, he is alive and well. Son, come over here and give your mother a hug”. He followed the commander’s every order and hung on his every word, sensing his Commander’s eye’s burning holes through his entire being. My dad said he knew right then what he had done and why all the fuss aimed in his direction. He had indeed written but not mailed any letters to his Mom for the past two weeks and she thought he was dead. Like any good mother would do, she went to the Murphy Greyhound Bus station and asked the man at the window:
“How much for one round trip bus ticket to Parris Island and back to Murphy, North Carolina please?”, her showing up at the front gate of the giant island to inquire on the status of her oldest son. Needless to say, my Dad wrote her two letters every day for the rest of his stay on Paris Island, with two men standing over him with sidearms drawn and safety’s off.
Commander’s orders.
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