My Time in the Marine Corps: Four Splendid Years, 1950–1954 Four Proud Years When a Dove My Brooklyn Beauty, Flew into My Life in 1951

By George R. Lipponer

George Lipponer was born in Patchogue NY and graduated from Bellport High School in 1949. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1950 and participated in the landing at Inchon Korea and through the winter campaign at the Chosin Reservoir from September 1950 until January 1951. Later he served as a Marine Corps recruiter in Baltimore Maryland until 1954. He is a life member of the Disabled American Veterans, The 1st Marine Division Association and the Chosin Few.
The author later attended Suffolk Community College and the NY Institute of Technology where he pursued Journalism.
He has traveled to Asia, the South Pacific and extensively to the European Continent.
Mr. Lipponer's hobbies include collecting antiques, and buying, selling and making Native American items with his wife Dove, under the Dove Spirit Inc. label.
Like many snowbirds, he resides on Long Island NY in the summer months and in Maitland Florida during the winter.
He has authored the following books, 'The End of Forever, Mending Fences, Paul Gets a Cleaning Lady and Filial Piety.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479755172

George R. Lipponer

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Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by George R. Lipponer.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012922144

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4797-5516-5

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4797-5515-8

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-5517-2

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To my wife Marie-Dove,

a true Marine wife and companion

for more than 60 years.

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Memoirs of my time in the United States Marine Corps, 1950-1954

G rowing up in Patchogue, the city of my birth, since 1931, our family faced difficult years. Both parents—my father, Henry, and mother, Clara (Salzmann)—were European and practiced their heritage while adapting the American way. They came to America by passenger liner and settled here where my father’s family—with three sisters, two brothers, and a mother—had already set up residence.

The Depression had left its mark all over America. My brother (a year older) and I lived through this time without knowing any other way of life. Everyone was in need of money and a job, and we survived with a backyard garden that provided most of our food. We grew radishes, cabbages, spinach, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, kohlrabi, lettuce, and more. We had chickens, ducks, and fruit trees. All ended up on our dinner table. When there was excess, it was canned for the winter months.

I went through the Patchogue school system during the war years, and due to my mother not being a citizen, we were subject to a home search by the FBI. My father, who was a citizen, had served thirteen years in the German army (1917-1929). That didn’t help either. They searched, but I guess we were cleared because we didn’t hear any more about the search.

Sports were a great outlet for my brother and me. We played on many local teams that we organized—mainly baseball and football—which kept us out of mischief. In my junior year of high school, my father and uncle opened up a restaurant in Bellport, New York, which was named the Iron Horse Inn because there was a cast-iron horse-head hitching post left on the front yard, which was used as a way station to hitch the stage coach horses while on the way farther east. The home was the former Osborne estate, a stately home with leaded glass windows, bevel sidings, porch posts, and the typical white-painted exterior. When it opened for business, I was a senior in high school. I had finished my senior year in Bellport High School in 1949. My bedroom was above the barroom, and I could be serenaded by the Wurlitzer juke box on busy nights when the barroom was filled with revelers or just plain drinkers. So for me, it was new friends, classmates, and environment. I thrived on it and graduated with the class of 1949.

What began to trouble me was what to do after I graduated. I had been working in greenhouses growing roses, which was also a second job for my father. My brother and I did summers and Saturdays on this job since we were twelve years old. I could never see myself in a career growing roses under the glass of greenhouses. Though the people that worked there were nice, I began to plot my move. But where?

With the World War II movies fresh in young kids’ minds, the many movies that always seemed to depict marines, with actors such as William Bendix, John Wayne Brian Donlevy, etc., maybe I was starstruck. I was particularly fond of Captain Joe Foss, the marine flying ace who shot down over twenty Jap planes.

Oh yes, in my senior year of high school, we had to subscribe to a scholastic publication that covered world events, taught by Mr. Feeney in his social studies class. Scant attention was paid to the

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border dispute between North and South Korea, which was divided by the victorious powers of World War II.

The winter of 1949 had several of us discussing what to do with our lives. We were bored teenagers, seventeen—to eighteen-year-olds. The subject of joining the marines arose, and several of us thought about it. We decided to wait until