Infantry Marine Course

I was attached to this training infantry unit San Onofre when I was separated. I was just a Cpl NCO in charge of other Marines waiting to get discharged. Discharged or separated, honorably, dishonorable, or medically. As a foot note two Marines were being discharged because they were gay. Never heard anything negative toward them from other Marines. Today the infantry courses is much more complex because of the weapons used. In combat infantry Marines use what they are taught. Looking back on this experience taught in training, is in combat you react to circumstances without thinking. I think what separates the Marines from other branches is the very strict rank structure. Example my Battalion commander in Vietnam was aid to David Shoup Marine Corps Commandant. General Shoup tells the story of a Lance Corporal given the task of picking picking up other former commandants at a parking lot to drive to Arlington. Told hell to pay if he screwed up and left a 4 star general in the parking lot. When all the generals, all former CMC were on the bus the Lance Corporal in Marine Corps fashion said when I call your name repeat your name and say here. In Marine Corps fashion they did what the Lance Corporal asked as if their were a bus load of privates.

I went through 4 weeks of advanced infantry training at Camp Geiger, North Carolina, in early 1957, but I'm sure it was a cakewalk compared to this course. The only memories I have of it are standing watch in the middle of the night somewhere in a North Carolina pine forest, and a tick that bored its way into my left armpit. A medic used a flip cigarette lighter in an attempt to persuade the tick to back out. That failed, so he pulled the tick out with tweezers, or at least most of it. The tick's head broke off buried in my flesh and is still occasionally an irritant today, 64 years later.