SO WHAT DID YOUR PARENTS DO IN THE BIG WAR

David Hartung added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

HEMI-Powered wrote:
My father was over 30 when he was drafted into the Marines in
mid- 1943, I was born in 1947. Many of my friends' fathers
were much younger, so it was their grandfather that fought in
WWII. All of my uncles on both sides of my family were WWII
vets. One was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, all the
others were in the Navy. My Uncle Joe was the 20mm gunner on
the bow of the USS Massachusetts.

My Dad's dad served in the Marines during WWI.

WWI?! Wow, he must've been even older than my father, who was
born in 1913 and passed away in 1998.

To my knowledge, he never saw combat. My Mom's dad was
a Lutheran
school principle, and my guess is that he was on the high side
of 40 in 1941. He also had, at that time, 5 kids. I'm not
certain if that had any bearing on his service status or not.

If you really meant WWII, yes, I believe that the draft extended
to about 42, although I didn't think the Marines took men that
old. 30-ish is VERY old to withstand the rigors of WWII-style
Boot Camp, which was 11 weeks long, and in those days, DIs could
actually hit a boot. Not to injure them, of course, but they
might cold cock an errant trainee. And, in them days, they
definitely marched boots in either the desert areas of San Diego,
where my father went, or the swamps of Parris Island with the
proverbial bucket over their head. Sometime in the late
1950s/early 1960s the corporal punishment was banned as was a
bucket on the head after several boots fell in a hole in the
Parris Island swamp and drowned.

I also remember my father telling stories even as I was a young
child in the early 1950s to wit "we have only 11 weeks to train
you to fight an enemy that's been training for 20 or 30 years.
And, in those days, just about everyone also went to Infantry
training at Camp Pendleton. As you probably know, ALL Marines,
regardless of actual training specialty - my father was a "6x6" 2
1/2 ton truck driver - were riflemen. The reason he wound up in
Shrier's patrol that assaulted Mt. Suribachi is that there was
little for a truck driver to do prior to it's being taken. AFAIK,
he then was assigned to assist the Navy Sea Bees to build runways
and a transportation system. I have documented proof that he was
also still on Iwo on 21May45, two months after the island was
secured. He first supported Marines on occupation duty and later
Army personnel. I also remember his stories that into at least
April, maybe May, he would occasionally get sniped at driving on
cat eyes at night.

--
HP, aka Jerry