Memory lane...

[alexpgp]

My destination after Infantry Training - that little-spoken-of phase that followed my 10-day leave after boot camp - was Camp Pendleton, California, which represented the "Ultima Thule" of my travels to that time. Being young, I paid enough attention to my surroundings to remain safe and sound (though the same cannot be said for my wallet after visiting a carnival sideshow just outside of Oceanside), but not enough to remember very much about the guys I served with.

I got started on this latest bender down memory lane by uncovering a box containing an all-but-one set of the Harvard Classics, which could not but cause me to remember one of the fellows I shared a squad bay with, a pretty quiet fellow who returned from town after liberty one weekend with a box filled with the five foot shelf of books.

And he sat down to read them, one by one. It was his plan for self-education (most of the guys in my unit had entered the Corps straight out of high school, which made me the "old man" of the squad bay, by about two years, by dint of having a couple of years of university under my belt). He was, of course, subjected to a torrent of cracks and jokes and what-have-you about his high-falutin' "intellectual" bent, but he was oblivious to it all. He just kept reading, and was about a quarter of the way through the volumes when our paths parted.

Some years later, I picked up a copy of the books myself (sans one volume), at a garage sale, buying it with the same intent, but never got around to cracking the first book. With my recent discovery, I now have an opportunity to at least ameliorate that shortcoming, and will.

For the life of me, I cannot remember the fellow's name, or where he hailed from, or anything else about him. But sitting here, a generation later, I cannot help but feel the world is a better place because of attitudes like his.

Cheers...

Cheers...

Comments

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

My son Eric has just turned in his gear for the Marines, having put in 6 years so far, and finishing with the rank of Sergeant. He still is IRR, but we're hoping that is more of a retirement for him than it has been for many of his comrades.

When he was in Iraq, though they had many amenities unheard of a generation earlier in war zones, such as computer rooms, fitness centers, and movie showings (He was stationed at an air base,) he and his buddies still relied largely on electronics-free, old-fashioned entertainment to wile away their 7 months of deployment in the desert. Never an avid reader, he discovered books. He instructed his mates in astronomy. He and the guys put on boxing matches, with one guy's job being to keep a watch out for the brass, (or "bling," as they called it,) and they had singalongs. If you know Marines, you know that all of this is outside the usual realm of such testosterone enhanced individuals. I only know about any of this because he also took with him a video camera. There he is on video beating the percussion beat with a broom stick while a fellow Marine chants out an ilead of his adventures with a young lady. I could only imagine the cave men doing something similar after a successful hunt for wooly mammoths. All they needed was a cave wall to paint it all on.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Well, as a "former" Marine, I can tell you that although all of "this" is outside the stereotyped realm of Marine-dom (and the butt of many jokes about book learning and whatnot), "it" is fully in character, both for guys in the military and out (see, for example, Education of a Wandering Man, by Louis L'Amour).

Cheers...

P.S Computer rooms? Yep. Movie showings? Nope (though I guess that depends on your definition of a "war zone").

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

Just gotta add: Driving through Camp Pendleton is one of my favorite routes. It's so refreshing to see unspoiled natural beauty. Sure, I've been to plenty of places more remote, but the coastal ranges of the base are a pleasure.

I once looked up a snake we had found at our house and found in the process that Camp Pendleton is a repository for such nature studies because it is so well isolated from the trampling feet of the hordes.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Yep, it sure was pretty out there when I was in the Marines. For the longest time, we had a work site that was quite literally at the north end of the base (within some yards of a fence that, we were told, was the boundary between the base and someone's ranch).

And rattlesnakes, too. Definitely rattlesnakes. Big ones.

Cheers...