Several weeks ago, Jack (on this board) sent to me a message. He said that that he had something in his possession that an old fart Marine such as myself might enjoy. He asked for my home address. I sent it along.

I have sports stuff, the Irish tri-color, and a lot of baseball stuff up on the walls of the downstairs saloon. Horse things too. The 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers are up big time. The only military things are my father's decorations from WWII. He was wounded twice and was awarded the Bronze Star. He was most proud of the Combat Infantry Badge, however, for being under under German small arms fire for a long time in Italy.

Anyway, John Spendolini sent me something. My mailman knocked upon the door and told me that he had to pull his truck up to drop off a package. It was from Jack, the Van Scammer. 1/8 Pole broke down the packaging and my old eyes filled up with tears. I cried like a baby.

This thing hit me hard. I remember meeting an old man named Jimmy Sullivan who crossed a wide-open field under devastating fire to get into Belleau Wood with 6th Marines in 1918. Fifth and Sixth Marine Regiments were attached to 2nd Division, United States Army in 1918. The French were running and the U.S. Marines were attacking. To this day Belleau Wood is known as "Les Bois de Brigade de Marines" - the Woods of the Marine Brigade. They took it despite enormous casualties. The Frogs ran off their own soil to let the Americans fight.

Anyway, 1775 Marines and 2009 Marines are brothers and I would think that the bitching and moaning and brawling have been going on well for 234 years. No Marine rifleman has ever been happy in a firefight up against an enemy but the Corps has been 'ready to go' and "First to Fight" for over two centuries.





That's DIXIE BOURBON rolling home to make everybody temporarily wealthy.

I will admit that the old staff non commissioned officers and officers from Korea and WWII that I served under in the 1960s weren't too hot about that "friend" stuff.

Gunny Smith told me that at the ass end of the Saipan campaign in 1944 he watched many Japanese civilians and troops jump off the cliffs for suicide. He was a teenaged rifleman and told me that he and his fellow Marines shot the Japs while they were "on the way to the emperor and the surf". Saipan was the first place that Japanese civilians were encountered in the Pacific.

The civilians were taught that American Marines could only be Marines after killing at least one parent and being a rapist who enjoyed torture. An old mailman and a friend, Tommy Smith (5th Marines, 9th Marines), had a young Japanese girl in good shape on her knees who was crying and screaming in agony. He tried to get her going to a place where she could eat and be taken care of. She kept pointing to his M-1 rifle and her head. She wanted to be shot dead as a teen Jap civilian. She didn't want to be raped and tortured by Roosevelt's Marines.

That's good stuff QP/Jack is some guy!!!!!!!!!!!

As a short-timer on the gate as a Military Policeman at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego I saw some some nasty stuff out in the street just outside the gate. No how no way was I ever going to make an arrest or draw my .45 sidearm or call for the officer of the day when a whole bunch of teen-aged Marine drunks came home. To this day I'm thinking I let a lot of Russian spies get by with the dippy drunken kids. When you are 21 and a sergeant and sober it's OK to call everybody else "dippy drunken kids".

Larry, is that a wig and womans underware hanging to the left of your picture?

Looks like a bag of pine cones, which seems a bit stranger than a womans wig...

that was nice of you john