Uncle Sam's Mismanaged Children

By Isa Moore

This is an account of the adventurous four years I spent in the Marine Corps from 1959 to 1963.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isa Moore
• Release date: Apr 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476271477

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USMC

Uncle Sam’s Mismanaged Children

An Autobiography by Isa Moore

By Isa Moore

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Isa Moore

All Rights Reserved.

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Chapter 1

The year was 1959 Eisenhower had balanced the budget for the first time in the history of the country. Resultantly there wasn’t much in the way of work, I was 17 and had worked sporadically throughout the last year. Someone suggested I join the Navy. It didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Cause the army was sure to draft me within the next two years.

I lived directly in front of an Army base, called Fort Hamilton. Most of the soldiers venturing out from the place were naïve to the ways of the city. We considered them: Yokels Their big deal in life, was having been based in Germany. My older cousin had spent four years in the Navy. And was based in Maryland, For most of that period. If he’d gone anywhere else, he’d never mentioned it. When I was eight or nine years old, the USS Mississippi was anchored, in the waters between Bay-ridge Brooklyn and Staten Island. The back end of Fort Hamilton was adjacent to this body of water preceding the stormy Atlantic, which was just to the left of Staten Island. The one thing separating the fort from the shoreline was an old highway named The Belt Parkway. On the other side of the highway directly opposite the fort, was a medium size pier. It was the same dimensions as the one in Malibu. But this was Brooklyn 1949. Garbage barges had been dumping their loads in that body of water for the last 25 years or more. The only thing that could live in it, was long black eels. The gate to the pier was ajar. I’d never seen that gate open. Now not only was it open, it had a small crowd of everyday people in front of it, waiting in a disorganized line of about four abreast. This was the era when asking a question of an adult, was tandem to breaking one of the cardinal rules: Don’t talk to strangers. A slightly pudgy woman of about fifty took pity on my inquiring eyes. They’re taking us out to the Mississippi. She pointed to the battle ship about two miles out. She continued: we’re gunna see the spot the Japanese surrendered on. My next internal question was answered as I noticed an assault landing craft just now pulling up with a full load of people who’d been out there on that ship. Thinking: Ok. So I know they bring you back. For some reason at that point I had no fear. I stepped into the crowd. No one looked at me like: Hey kid! Where’s your mother or father ? It was like we were all just people. I was included. Then we walked down the pier, to board the recently vacated craft. One of the sailors manning it said: Hey kid. You’ve gotta have an adult with you to get on here.

He’s with me Said a man to my right. I looked at him to see if there were any ulterior motives in his face. In doing so I realized most of the group was in favor of me getting to go. Not just him. The sailor: All right, get in.

I climbed into the crowd, and away we wert, turning about, and splashing over the waves. We were doing around forty-five miles per hour as we bounced steadily in the direction of the ship. I couldn’t see anything but the sky. The steel walls of this craft were steep; It held around sixty people.

When we grazed a large wave, the spray of its wake would wisp over the walls, making this ride an adventure. Then we were there, pulling along side of this large steel gray battle ship. It was amazing to me that anything this heavy could float. Thinking: "All these boats are made of heavy steel.

How come they don’t sink? Right about then a boat shaped like a whaleboat moving like a speedboat, pulled up alongside the ship, just in front of us. It had wooden decks. From three wenches above were lowered three knotted ropes; In unison three sailors grabbed on, and climbed the the ropes hand over hand till they reached the top, two and a half stories up, Then swung over the rail saluted the officer of the deck. And walked off to I know not where. I boarded the ship with the crowd, and went to look at the little roped-railed square part of the deck where the Japanese surrendered.

So needless to say, I was more impressed with the Navy than any other branch of the service. Resultantly I attempted to join The Boys in Blue. But the quota was met in my sector of Brooklyn.

The recruiter: "You know, you can take this test you just passed, right across the hall, and join the Marines. They never override their quota. And it qualifies you, cause the Corps actually a branch of the Navy.

So I reluctantly took the paperwork, paced out the door a few short steps, and there was the open door to the Marine recruiter’s office.

A little quiver of ambivalence plagued my center as I viewed the red and gold sign above the door: Marine Corps. Then I walked through it. I was mildly surprised not to see a muscle-bound gorilla with attitude sitting behind the desk. Instead there was a rather average fellow around twenty-eight or nine years old, brown hair, not too shortly cut, brown eyes, light complexion, five nine, a hundred and fifty pounds. at first appearance, not exactly a bruiser. But he was wearing the three stripes of a sergeant. I handed him the test and said: I was told I could use this here. The guy across the hall’s quota is filled. He says they can’t take me for another eight months. Sergeant: I don’t think it’s a good idea. I was stunned to hear that. Thinking: I know that I’ve got a lot wrong with me. But what could he see at a glance?"

Sergeant: If you really want to join the Navy. You should wait the eight months.

I can’t afford to wait the eight months. I need to join now. Sergeant: No. You’re better off waiting the eight months, if the Navy’s what you really want.

I’ll be skeleton in eight months. There’s no work out there. I’m starving! He took that as figurative, but it was factual. I’d already lost eight pounds, which left me at 132 lbs. I needed food. Sergeant: I really think you should wait the eight months.

At this point I’m no longer afraid of this guy. He’s just another guy.

"Aren’t you supposed to be talking folks into joining? That caught him in the guilty bone.

"Yeah… But… Look I signed up two kids out of this neighborhood that originally wanted to be in the Navy.

They came back broken men. I’d look out this window and view them wandering around with no confidence or self-worth. It tears me up every time I see them. I couldn’t stand to see another one down there. You’ve gotta really want to make it, to get through the training. So if you really want the Na… I cut him off with: I’ll make you a promise.

If I don’t make it. I’ll never come back to this place again. So you’ll never have to see me."

But…

I have nothing to hold me here. you’re not likely to see me again, either way. He took the papers and began to sign me up. Here’s your orders. You have to be at Grand Central Station, At this date. You’re going to meet three other recruits there, one of them will have your boarding passes. You’re going to Paris Island South Carolina. I thanked him and got out of there, before he could have another guilt attack. Thinking: What if I don’t make it? So what; I get to eat. They’ll have to feed me.

I stayed at an Uncle’s place for the next two weeks. He didn’t mind having me around, cause he knew in two weeks, I’d be gone permanently.

When the time arrived to leave my uncle and aunt had already left for work. I was glad they weren’t there to see me off. My aunt had a habit of making shady statements, and I’d just as soon not hear something negative prior to embarking on a new life. My head served up the questionable statement: "What if your train is stalled getting there?

Will they put you in jail for being late? Will your first days in the service, be just like your first days in grammar-school ?Torture? My retort to myself: I’ll know when I get there." Get there I did, right on time.

In the designated area, stood three rather substandard individuals to my mind’s eye. I was expecting more athletic looking people.

"Hmm… Maybe these guys are stronger than they look. They might be real good with their fists, or something. I couldn’t imagine anyone trying to join the Marines if they couldn’t fight to begin with. I was in fights from the first day I landed in Brooklyn at age six. There was a kid two years older and a head and a half taller than me smacking a girl around in front of the apartment-house we were moving into.

I said: Hey! We don’t treat girls that way where I come from.

Oh, Yeah! Well maybe I’ll just smack you around instead. I looked at him sideways. Don’t try it. He did, He tried to get me in a headlock. I slid out, then tripped him and we went down on the cement. I was doing pretty good. But he out weighed me, so I decided to change tactics, and fight like my older sisters. I jumped up, put up my forearms as he came at me, and swung with tightened fists like two windmills in a hurricane, landing twenty fists in his face in rapid succession. I didn’t sense he was not swinging back, till I’d backed him up to a concrete bench on which he’d curled up in a fetal position with his hands over his face. The kid was terrified.

Thinking: Hmm… He don’t know how to make a fist, or punch or nuten.

I felt sorry for him. But I wasn’t about to teach him how to make a fist.

That would not be in my best interest. I just hoped he didn’t catch on to what I was doing. Since that day to this one in Grand Central station, I was in somewhere between fifty and a hundred fights. Most of them wrestling matches on concrete. I won ninety-eight percent of them. I never started them. I lived by my oldest sisters creed. I don’t start fights. I finish them. She had one hell of a right-cross.

One of the three, taller than the other two had papers in his hand:

Are you Moore?

I got your papers here, com-on we gotta get on this train. He then led the three of us down the platform to the boarding area, while I’m Thinking: This kids pretty arrogant. He didn’t even tell me his name. Wonder who he thinks he is? He gave the tickets to the conductor, and we filed on to the train; was shown our berths, and told where the dining car was. The other guys put their bags on their beds, then we headed towards the dining car as the train pulled out of the station, and made its way out of the heart of the city. By the time we got something to eat we were already across the bridge, and heading in the general direction of South. There was greenery instead of cement I kind of liked it. I always wanted to see more green and less concrete.

After eating the kid with the paper work lightened up and acted a little more human. A general conversation of which I do not remember ensued. I know that I spent most of the time looking out the window at all that wooded area going by, till it took on a monotony of sameness, of its own. After that it neared sleep time. Then waking eating, and waiting till late in the day, as we pulled into the station somewhere in South Carolina. I don’t remember what vehicle we got into, but I do remember the feeling as we drove through the front gate of Paris Island.

WW2 had ended just fourteen years prior. I’d seen lots of war films about that era. Everybody had. As we drove through the entrance, it reminded me of a scene from one of those movies, where the military vehicle drives through the gate with a small load of civilians destined to be concentration camp victims. After all, we were the only ones in civilian clothes. And we had just signed our lives away. We were escorted into a wooding building, then into a room with around thirty double-decker beds in it. The man with the smoky bear hat on, called them racks. It was just some springs with a cot on them, top and bottom, with an army blanket, and a couple of sheets. They were all tucked in rather tightly. The guy wearing Smokey’s fedora, was matter of fact about the place. Chow is in ten minutes. Stay grouped up, and we’ll mosey on over there together. The lights go out in the squad-bay at twenty-two-hundred hours. That’s ten o’clock. I suggest you sleep. You’re going to need your rest. Thinking: So far so good. no sign of cruelty."

The food in the chow hall was plentiful. I was seventeen and still growing so my slightly underweight body enjoyed the extra meat. As we walked back to the squad-bay (Barracks- to army foke) I could just about feel my system changing that protein back into muscle. Before I fell on harder times, I was able to military-press a hundred and thirty pounds twice in a row. My goal was to do it at least once with one-forty, cause that’s how much I weighed.

At present I was probably back to one-forty. But I wasn’t sure of what I could lift. We were in that room for two nights.

On the first night there was a kid around eighteen, a couple of inches taller than me, who decided to make fun of me. Like I was supposed to be low man in the verbal pecking order. On the street if you don’t take him down early, the whole group thinks they can verbally abuse you to release their emotional tensions, at no risk. The ones that never say a word, and just put up with it, are the most dangerous. Sooner or later they’re gunna come out of their shell. Usually with something in their hand. That’s why I never treated anyone the way this guy was attempting to treat me. I didn’t respond, cause this wasn’t my house, and it wasn’t his house. It was the government’s house. And I did not yet know the house rules, and the punishments, for breaking them. On the second night a guy around twenty five asked me: What’s your take on Davis?

He seemed normal neutral and somewhat mature. So I answered the question candidly. Things tend to balance off in life. Whatever you give out. That’s what you get back sooner or later in one form or another.

Pensively: What form do-yeah think it’ll take be for him? I think he thinks, he’s strong, and he can overpower people; But he’ll probably get sick, and that’ll weaken him long enough to make him to know, he’s not invincible. This way he won’t have to learn that lesson, by having the arrogance beaten out of him.

Hmmm… That’s an interesting philosophy. Then the guy who asked the question left. I never saw him again.

Morning came rather noisily. I thought the place had caught fire…

RRRRRRRAAAAAARRRRRAAAAAARRRRRAAAAAA…

Get up! Get up! Get up!! YOU MAGGOTS! … It’s Reveille!

There wasn’t a fire. It was four mean looking guys in smoky-bear hats threateningly screaming at everyone. They ran back and forth chasing people around like vicious dogs intimidating sheep into formation.

When they got everyone, many half-clad, standing in front of their racks, One of them said: Ok. People, pick up your gear and in single file. walk through that door over there. As we walked in the direction of the door with are belongings in our hands, the angry men picked out various sheep and literally growled in their ears as they passed. We passed through the doorway into the next room, which was about the size of an empty classroom, with white walls. They guided us around in a circle, then one of them said: Halt! That means-stop! You fucking maggots. Now turn around and face that bulkhead. Everyone turned around. As I did so, from my peripheral vision it was obvious that everyone there was thinking: What’s a bulkhead? That question was answered by one kid turning his head to see what was going on behind him. The largest of the angry men grabbed him by the back of his neck and pushed his nose into the wall, not enough to break it. Just enough to flatten it into the wall Saying: That’s a bulkhead, shit-bird!"

Now we all with side-vision on our end of the room, knew that to these monsters, a wall, was called a bulkhead. Ok. Now, take off those skuzzy civilian clothes. NOW! I didn’t start till most of the room was half finished. It’s near impossible to fight someone with thick boots on naked. So there we are standing looking at a blank wall naked, about fifty of us. Thinking: So far this is parallel to what I’ve seen in those old films and documentaries about places like Auschwitz.

I was right. We’re in a concentration camp. Next a rather nice kid around twenty, in fatigues started handing white boxers and a T shirt over their shoulders to everyone. When that man asks you what size you are. You will answer him."

You’re a medium, right?

Yes.

He had kindness in his voice, that gave me hope that the whole four years wasn’t going to be like this. I don’t remember what we did with the civvies (Civilian clothes.) I think they were put in individual boxes and later delivered to our living quarters the following day. We were now directed into the next room, where there were numerous older men; civilians acting very much like tailors, fitting us all into fatigues. Then came the fitting of the boots. Said in a less threatening tone by one of the older slightly more refined looking smoky-bears: It’s very important that your boots fit perfectly. So don’t be afraid to tell that fitter if they are the least bit uncomfortable, in any way. You’re going to be spending a lot of time on your feet. So it’s very important that those boots fit comfortably. I did what the man said I have a wide foot. That’s not much, but a little tight, on the right side of the right foot. He put on another boot. Now, that’s perfect.

You’re sure? I walked around in a small circle. Yeah. That’s perfect.

The fact of the matter was, that was the best pair of footwear I had ever put on those feet. My father died when I was a year old. My folks never admitted it. But we were poor ever since. We were in that room about forty five minutes. Then they brought us to the barbers. These civilians had attitude.

They made wise cracks as they buzz-cut the hair from the heads of the kids of which sixty percent were already in a mild state of shock. After I had enlisted and the papers were in, I had a couple of weeks to wait till we took the train ride. At the end of the second week I got drunk with a couple of characters I used to lift weights with. We went to Coney Island and got tattoos. Theirs were of sexy looking girls on their arms and mine was of an eagle with a banner reading USMC I was drunk, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then they said: Why don’t we give you a crew cut? After reassuring me that they had done this several times before. I sat down and said: Go ahead. By the time they were done I looked like a blond suede shoe on top. I chased them out of the building and around the block a while, them laughing towards the end of the run. So when I sat in this barber chair in South Carolina I didn’t expect these jerks to get much satisfaction. They did manage to get some hair off my head, but it wasn’t enough to comment on. It annoyed me that they got any at all. My face showed no indication of it. The haircuts were over.

Head DI: Ok. Let’s herd them out. They lined us up in a column five across and fourteen deep. DI to group: "Get up close to that man in front of you. Now when I say double-time, you will run together till we reach our destiny. Ok. Double-time March!!… Han… Hart… Hey … Har Han… Hart… Hey… Har… Han… Hart… Hey… Har…

New York City back in fifty-eight had a subway strike. Less than half the trains were running, yet we all, in Brooklyn the Bronx and Queens, still had to go to work. So we packed into those train cars like we were willingly on our way to enclosures, where people would demand we do things we didn’t want to do. But we did them, For money, then referred to as the root of all evil. This formation had a marked resemblance to the crowding in those train-cars, except there were no walls containing us. Just four mean guys in Smokey-Bear-hats yelling: "Close up that line. I want you up there asshole to belly-button. Move… Move… Move… Move… Han… Hart…

Hey… Har… The nature of this formation tends to make people in it stumble, step on each-others feet, nee each-other in the back, and butt, elbow one-and other in the face, and ribs, ect… ect… ect… And so on, and on, and on, it went. From an aerial view we must have looked like a severely injured centipede desperately ambulating for safety. Safety, if you want to call it that, was a quarter-mile away across a massive parade-ground.

"Platoon, Halt! That means YOU! Shit-birds, ONE TWO!"

So we stopped the knee and elbow fest in front of a long wooden building sporting a standard roof with a thirty degree pitch on each side; meeting in the middle, and running two-hundred feet to its end, with a flight of seven wooden stairs at its front, which we were now being instructed to climb, and enter into a room fifty foot wide, by two-hundred foot long, with evenly spaced double-decker racks running the full length of the edifice on both it’s sides. DI large tall with a head shaped like a Gorilla: You will find a rack, and stand in front of it, people! Everyone got in front of the first rack they could find. I was in the middle of the line going through the door, so by the time I found a rack to stand in front of, I was three-quarters of the way down into the room. Two men to a rack, Idiots!

He was picking guys out of the group and slamming them in place in front of the double-deckers with casual ease, like they were crash dummies.

Head DI: "You will now stand at attention. You will not slouch. You will not move. Your eyes will remain straight forward. You will not speak, unless you are spoken to. You will address your instructors as Sir. Is that clear? Response from five kids who’d gone to military-school: Yes sir!!"

I can’t hear you About thirty more chiming in for the second: Yes sir!!

Louder and sounding slightly psychotic: I still can’t hear you!! I hadn’t chimed in with the second group, cause I thought it might be some kind of a trick. But this time I yelled loud like everyone else: YES SIR!! We were in a swamp on an island surrounded by quicksand in a wooden barracks with extremely shiny hard wood floors. DI: This is my house. When you are in my house, you will take off your boots, cause if you scuff my floor I’ll get angry, and you people don’t want to get me angry, Do you?

In unison, very loud: No sir."

So take off those boots people. Put them under the rack and get back in front of your rack.

Then the Di’s left the room.

It was about forty-five minutes before one of the DIs returned. Everyone was still standing at attention staring straight ahead. Earlier on I could hear a couple of kids in the front venturing to say something to each-other.

He headed down into that section of the extensive room. I couldn’t see anything, just hear people being slammed into racks. Which confirmed my earlier suspicions. They were waiting to see who broke the silence, so he, or they, could be made an example of. We stood there at attention every day all day, in ninety degree heat and ninety-eight degree humidity for ten days. This routine was broken only for chow. For the first four days they herded us to chow in that ass-hole to belly-button stumbling formation.

By the third and fourth day of standing in the squad-bay at attention in this heat I heard bodies slam to the floor. No one moved to pick them up, or inform the DI’s that they had passed out. Two of them had fallen straight down and broken their noses. On the third day a rather verbose character still wearing his baby-fat ran in and rapped on the DI’s door, then told them that another man had passed out and fallen on his face. I was amazed that this guy didn’t get thumped on. Instead he was just sent back in front of his rack. This suggested a degree of sensibility I hadn’t anticipated. At meal time we were first herded, Then taught to march to the chow-hall. We had about twenty minutes to get in there, go through the line, to get food, sit down, eat the food, get up, rush out the door and get in formation, to wait for the DI to march us back, to stand in front of your rack, for the rest of the day till it was time to use the head (bath room) Then go to bed, to wake up to the alarming sound of a swagger stick being rattled around the inside of an empty steel garbage can, resounding like a machine gun firing into a thousand cow-bells, at close range. On the eighth day the guy next to me under his breath said: This is a bitch! I figured if the duty DI had heard him, we’d both be in a world of shit. Cause the DI on duty would usually just sit in his room through a door in a small hallway at the center of the barracks, adjacent to the head (bathroom) But on occasion he’d sneak out the room, and listen to see if anyone was breaking the rules, such as uttering a sound.

Thinking: If this guy was heard, we’re both gunna get punished. So I might as well whisper an answer: Have you ever tried it kneeling?"

As a child I was sent to St. Patrick’s parochial school, presided over by Dominican Nuns. I often thought of them as Demonic-an. At age twelve, one of these evil penguins demanded that I kneel straight up at attention on a hard wood floor facing the corner, in the back of the room, for four consecutive days. At first it hurt like hell. Then I started doing what I got slapped right out of the chair for doing by Sister Mary-Peter when I was eight. I began to daydream. I was traveling in my mind, to pictures in my mind, of places I had been in the past, and now looking them over in more detail. It was becoming fascinating. No one was interrupting, or breaking my concentration for any reason. By the second day I was looking forward to facing the wall and traveling in my mind. The only other place where I could concentrate for any length of time without interruption was a small grassy park not far from the ocean. At home, the apartment was too crowded.

The only time I had to myself was when I’d use the bathroom. No one was allowed to interrupt you in john. I never brought magazines in there when I used the can, cause I felt like the faces in the magazines could look out of them, and see me. Even when I wasn’t in the john if I peered at Look magazine or Vogue. The faces, especially the larger ones looked real, like they were looking right back at me. Later in life, I realized when that happened, I could tell you all about that person. But at this time I didn’t believe in the intuitive. An occasional hunch. Sure. But the rest was all Bullshit. Ok. Back to the squad-bay. We’d gotten away with those few words. But I was not willing to risk any others, which was obvious from my demeanor. The penguins from hell enforced this rule stringently, from the third grade on. They had the sweet young straight nuns teaching the first two grades of six and seven-year-olds. When you turned eight that’s when the shit hit the fan, in the third grade. These were women in their mid to late twenties, some had taken their final vows. They were troubled people with fits of rage that rivaled the temperament of a junk yard dog.

Sporting names like: "Sister Tomas Teraise, Sister Mary-Peter Sister Mary-Tomas and Sister Mira, the most fervent zealot of them all. She was going to make you a good student if she had to beat, each lesson into you personally. At any class above the second grade you could walk in at any time and drop a straight pin, on the hard-wood floor, then hear it clearly resound. This, in a room filled with sixty kids.

Well this room was filled with seventy-three guys, mostly in their teens. The majority were from small towns in the eastern side of the US. And it bore a marked similarity to those Catholic grammar school classrooms.

You could hear the proverbial pin drop on the hard wood squad-bay floor at any time of the day, in the first ten days of this discipline. Around the fifth day at the other side of the squad-bay I heard a rather whiney voice telling the biggest toughest DI: I don’t want to do this anymore. I thought: Oh, God! He’s gunna kill this kid. Surprisingly: He just explained the facts of life to him: We didn’t send for you. We didn’t draft you.

You signed yourself into here. It’s your own fault that you’re here."

It sounded funny, cause the kid was whining like a kindergarten child complaining to its mommy or daddy. At about mid room I could hear snickering from the center of the squad-bay. Sgt. Cronin marched directly to where the sound was resonating. Did you think that was funny?

Said while slamming the recruit into his rack, as emphasis for every word: That poor little girl wants her mommy. And, you, think, that’s, funny?

I don’t know what the other guys did to keep from laughing, but my technique was the same one I used to keep from laughing in church. I sucked my cheeks in under my molars and bit down. How hard you bit, was determined by how strong the urge to laugh was. In this case I drew blood.

Thinking: "Why’d they beat the hell out of you for laughing?

Ok, Suppose you’re in a foxhole out in the middle of no-place, and the enemy sneaks in and tells a joke. You laugh. It gives away your possession and you get accurately fired upon. Ok. That makes sense." Since I was eight I had to reason everything out for myself, cause my dad was dead, and my mom had a nervous breakdown to the point of incapacitation; So I’d been making all my own decisions since the third grade, and this is where it’d gotten me; Standing there in the presence of seventy-three young