vincent p. norris wrote:

2005 - 1946 = 59 years.= almost 2 x 30. When did you
retire?!?!?!?!?

I didn't serve long enough to retire. I got out in 1953.

slaps forehead

Duh. Shoulda been able to figure that out on my own. If you had
served long enough for a pensioned[1] retirement, you would have
served long enough to know about that blues thing, and not asked
in the first place.

/slaps forehead

[1 - Since once a Marine, always a Marine, the only difference
between "retired" Marines is if they retired before or after the
20 needed to rate the pension {or retainer pay, retired pay, or
whatever your pedant heart wants to call it}.]

[Snip general stuff, addressed below, except...]

I got my wings in 1951 and kept
passing passing physicals until 1953 when a nosy flight surgeon
decided I really wasn't fit to fly Uncle Sam's airplanes (which I had
already done for about 1400 hours) so I was discharged.

Tail end of Korea - when the health requirements for warm bodies
in cockpits were returning to peace-time levels.

In fact, through most of the post-WWII/peacetime draft/cold
war/lukewarm war period, warm, willing, and get-in-shapeable
bodies covered for a lot of sins, health history-wise, like the
aftermath of your childhood injury or my hay fever/
not-ever-formally-diagnosed-even-if-I-was-an-Army/
Marine-Brat-who-had-been-under-military-health-care-all-my-life-asthma.

I served with a lot of Marines in my career ['61-'82] who would
have not been accepted for enlistment today for health reasons.
With hindsight, safe in retirement, I can say that the USMC is
right. I was lucky and never got into circumstances, even during
VN tours as a helo gunner, where my "hay fever" presented a
problem. BUT, if I had faced such a situation, I could have
damned well taken down a lot of other good Marines with me.

I never had a set of dress blues, either.

Well, you would have, post-Korea. Blues were part of an
Officer's required kit, pilot or otherwise. ;-

[You could, though, have held off on the Mess Dress until you
made Major. Gotta have the fancy togs to go along with the
scrambled eggs.]
--
OJ III
[Email to Yahoo address may be burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast.]