Prelude

Written July, 2019

High school graduation in the spring of 1967 was liberating. Catholic High School was suffocating with the rigid approach of the priests and lay people who taught us. But most of my friends continued with some connection to the Catholic Church out of a sense of duty subsequent to our massive brainwashing from an early age. In our senior year there was continuous preaching, even in math class, about the need to stop the godless communists in North Vietnam from taking over South Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia. 

Vietnam was a Catholic country. That happened because the French colonizers shoved it down their throats. We were told that it was our duty to participate in the war to save the Catholics of South Vietnam. 

In the summer, I was considering going away to college and 3 of my friends convinced me to go to Western Illinois University where they were going to start their sophomore year. I had a serious girlfriend and was a little reluctant but was more motivated to get out of my house and be somewhere else. Towards the end of the summer I was all hooked up to go to WIU and 2 of the friends who were supposed to go there ended up in the Army. So, it was George and I heading off to WIU in early September.

I didn’t much like it from the beginning and George had a new girlfriend at home that he missed. So nearly every weekend we drove 4 hours to Chicago to see our GFs. I couldn’t let my parents know I was home for obvious reasons so I stayed at friends’ houses and a couple times in a car in a friend’s garage. 

All the while we watched the war heat up and the protests increase and wondered why we were exempt from helping out. The prevailing view was that the war was “just” and protesters were scumbags. The message from the Church, the government, the media, and society in general was: 

“America, Love it or Leave It”

Simultaneously, the Draft Board created new rules that said if you don’t complete one fourth of your degree classes each year, then you lose your college deferment and surely will be drafted. George and I both were unable to accomplish this goal when we were registering for our second quarter in early November.

Within a short time we convinced ourselves that we were going to be drafted and go to Vietnam. We decided to join the Marines so we would be fighting with the best military force in the country. 

We went home the next weekend and visited the friendly Marine Corps Recruiter who had already swallowed up many unsuspecting, naive boys. He told us we could go on the “Buddy Plan” and be guaranteed to stay together all the way to Viet Nam.

In mid November we had a preliminary contract ready for signature and told our parents. No one was happy. My brother Mike was already in Thailand with the Air Force.

My parents said that one son was enough to fulfill their duty as a family. Young veterans 

in the neighborhood were encouraged to talk me out of this foolish decision. 

But George and I were stubborn and self righteous so we did it anyway. 

Thanksgiving dinner was a little glum. My dad pulled me aside and said he wished I hadn’t done that. “Let somebody else do the fighting, you have a good future ahead of you”.

The next morning, November 24th, 1967, he drove George and I downtown to the Marine Corps Processing Center. 

Things went fairly smoothly until George came to me and said he might be denied entry in to the Corps due to 2 minor medical issues discovered on his physical exam. It was a punch to the gut. He was out and I was in, alone. After an hour or 2 they gave him an exemption as long as he signed some papers.

So, we were off on a bus to O’Hare airport to fly to San Diego, Marine Corps Recruit Depot. (MCRD)

This was our first time in an airplane. There were about 15 of us from the Chicago area or other parts of northern Illinois. We arrived in San Diego and a Marine Corps sergeant met us at the arrival gate and hustled us to a bus partially filled with the other tough guys who thought they were going to be bad asses. It was about to get very interesting.