CHAPTER 2
Officer Candidate School
Igot my orders from the Marine Corps to report to Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia, in the first week of January in 1967. I had an airline ticket to Washington, D.C. That was the first time that I would fly on a commercial airliner and I was excited and quite nervous about my new adventure.
I arrived at the airport in D.C. and thought there would be someone to meet me and take me to Quantico, but to my surprise there was no one there. Instead I saw some other guys milling around and found out that they were there for OCS also. Someone said that we were to get on a train to Quantico, so I followed the crowd and boarded the train. As we pulled out of the station I noticed that it was snowing; that was the second time that I had ever seen snow. The first time was in 1961 in New Orleans, but it was just about an inch thick. This was real snow and it was really coming down. I thought it was great at the time, but I would not like it so much later on when we were running and training in it.
The train arrived in Quantico and as we got off, the Hell began. Drill Sergeants began to shout at us telling us to get into a formation.
“Hurry, hurry, get in line, get your spacing.”
A Drill Instructor came up to me and asked to see my orders and when I handed them to him, he glanced briefly at them and threw them in the air, scattering them in the breeze and onto the snow. He screamed at me to pick them up and get in formation. Next thing I knew, we were marched to the barber shop and got all our hair cut off. Then we were marched to the supply center to get our green utilities uniform.
Everything after that was kind of a blur, but I remember getting to our barracks and as we entered I saw bunk beds lined up on both sides of this long room which had a wooden floor and foot lockers in front of the bunk beds. It was pretty stark, but it would be our home for the next ten weeks.
Our lives would not be our own for some time to come. Our every move, every minute would be controlled and planned. The Marine Corps had, at that time, 192 years of turning young men into Marines and nothing they did was not for a reason and part of a plan.
Our days included waking up at 5:30 AM, getting into the showers, getting dressed in the uniform of the day and off to the chow hall. Then it was classroom time, Physical Training and then to “The Grinder,” an asphalt area for learning to drill. The real ball-buster was the forced march in the snow and ice up and down the hills, through the woods on trails with names like the Hill Trail and the South Bank trail.
It was hours of pure agony and gut check time. They pushed us to the breaking point and if you fell behind, stumbled or couldn’t continue for a while, you would get a chit from the Platoon Sergeant or the Platoon Commander. The chits would say things like you showed a “Lack of courage,” “Lack of fortitude,” “Lack of desire,” or something of that sort. I thought, “Damn, I wouldn’t have fallen behind if I hadn’t fallen five times in the snow.” Here I was running up and down hills in the snow which was the first time I had seen hills and the second time I had ever seen snow. And then I was getting dressed down by Lieutenant Van Dam our Platoon Commander for showing lack of courage. I would do everything I could not to let that happen again.
The march was supposed to be a march, but would end up being a run to catch up with the guys in front of you in what was called an accordion effect. It was the means by which they tested your character, stamina and mental toughness.
One time, as we were running up and down the hills in the snow on the South Bank trail, I began cramping up. Just in back of me was a tall buddy of mine and as my leg cramped up and I began to fall, and probably fall off the trail down the hill side, he grabbed me on the run by the collar and held me up until I got my feet under me again. That would have been another chit, I’m sure.
In OCS, there wasn’t a lot of classroom learning; mostly we learned about our weapons, First Aid and Marine Corp history, which was so important in Marine Corps training. It is this instruction into the Marines’ history that makes Marines understand that they are part of the greatest fighting force in the world and understanding that “Once A Marine Always A Marine.” Courage, Honor, Fortitude and Determination never to be defeated are the very essence of the Marine Corps.
A few good men is not just a catchy phrase; it is the Marine Corps.
It was a while before I realized what the basis of our training was. It was mostly physical to get us in shape, but more than that it was to push us to the brink and force us to keep going further than we ever thought we could go. It was also to break and weed out the weak-willed and weak-spirited, for it was better to find out there in training who couldn’t hack it rather than in combat when they would be leading forty-five Marines as a Platoon Commander. It was the reason that very time the DIs would find a weakling they would jump on them with both feet and never let up until the candidate broke or showed they could take it.
My game plan was to blend into the crowd and never stand out too much unless it was to be very good at something.
In our platoon we had this smallish mousy guy and I don’t remember his name, only that the DI called him “House Mouse #1” and another weak-looking guy he called “House Mouse #2.” The DI stayed on these two guys relentlessly. For the reason I just mentioned. But other guys seemed not to be bothered by the verbal abuse that we all received.
My buddy Dave “Shitty” Anderson was one of those. Dave was a big guy with a happy disposition. He would laugh at the DI’s antics and one time when we were standing in formation out in the snow the DI asked Dave if he thought that some episode of verbal abuse was “funny.” Most normal candidates would have replied “No, Staff Sergeant!” but not Shitty. He said “Yes, Staff Sergeant!” And with that the DI hit him with a snow ball right in the head. That set us all off laughing like crazy. I believe that earned us a two mile jog.
This particular DI was a black Staff Sergeant with a large repertoire of great verbal abuses and they were funny even if they were directed at you. Well, maybe not at first, but after you got used to them and learned not to take them too personally. Of course, one of the Marines’ favorite sayings was, “You better get squared the hell away.”
You could get into trouble for just about anything; one time I got caught singing in the shower and the DI made me go to each platoon in the company still in my bath towel and sing to them. You could imagine the response that I got with my serenade. But by this time I thought it was funny and didn’t let stuff like that bother me.
Our Platoon Sergeant was Staff Sergeant Neisley, who was a great guy, and like most Marines at the end of your Boot Camp or OCS training, you would love these guys who helped make you into a Marine. Our other DI and assistant Platoon Sergeant was Sergeant McCauldy who was somewhat of a character also. He had a mustache and reminded me of a British Army sergeant by the way he looked. He was a buck sergeant with four hash marks on his sleeve. Each hash mark represented four years in the Corps and he was only a three striper. There were several stories of how he had been busted, but I don’t know what the real story was.
Each one of us candidates had to stand fire watch duty at least a couple of times during OCS. You had a one-hour watch during the night in which you patrolled the barracks in order to make sure that the barracks were safe and that if there were a fire to break out you could sound the alarm. Well, one end of the company’s barracks was right next to the railroad tracks, like about twenty feet away, and there was a passenger train that came through at about 2:00 AM every night. I think the Marine Corps must have paid the engineer to blow his whistle just as he passed the barracks in order to scare the hell out of all the OCS candidates. Guys would be startled out of their sleep, sit up in bed and let out a scream as the train passed by. It was quite a sight when I had the watch at that time. I would look at my watch and anticipate the train whistle event. There was a railroad crossing in front of the barracks, so I guess there was a reason to blow the train whistle, but it was still another source of torture for the candidates.
The barracks we lived in was right on the Potomac River which provided a great view if you could enjoy a view while they were putting you though a meat grinder. The barracks was a two-story building covered with white weather boards. They called them the “White Elephants.” Later on when I was in Vietnam there was club in downtown Da Nang called the “White Elephant.” It had quite a reputation for drunkenness and rowdiness.
In OCS you learned all kinds of new words and phrases. Some were just military, but some were Marine Corps like: “You better get your asses squared away,” or “Belay that order,” meaning cancel that, and all Marines will remember, “What is that Irish Pennant hanging from your uniform for candidate?” An Irish Pennant was a green thread hanging for your uniform. Your heard the phrase, “Bounce a quarter off your bed.” Well, that was more than just a phrase—that is how we had to make up our beds; tight enough to bounce a quarter.
Another screw-with-you ritual was “Get in your rack, Get out of your rack.” The DI would come into the barracks and inspect us prior to lights out and getting into bed. We would stand at attention in front of our bunk beds, “our racks,” and he would shout “get in your racks,” and we would jump into our beds and lay at attention. Then he would say “get out of our racks,” and we would have to get out and stand at attention in front of our beds just to be told again to “get in your racks.” This went on for several times and the Sergeant would find that we were too slow at getting in or out of our racks and we would have to do it again. My problem was that I was in the top bed of the bunk bed and at five six, it took one foot on the lower bed and a high jumping technique to get into the top rack. After about my fourth or fifth attempt my jump was not quite as high as the one before and I was banging my crotch off the bed frame; that didn’t feel very good.
And one of my favorites was “The Uniform of the Day.” The uniform of the day would be posted or passed on and as soon as you got dressed, it would be changed.
Another drill was pushing our foot lockers around the floor of the barracks like a train saying “choo choo, choo choo.” The Sergeants seemed never to run out of harassment techniques.
On the weekends, we would get off training around noon on Saturday and go out of the gate into the town, Triangle, Virginia. There we would wash our clothes, maybe get a burger or something like that. But you spent a bunch of time cleaning your gear and polishing your shoes and stuff like that. After so many weeks we were allowed to leave the base and the town of Triangle and go off to Washington, D.C. But by the time you got to D.C., had a couple of beers and something to eat, you just wanted to go back to the hotel and rest. Because of our training schedule, we were not used to staying up very long after dark. My buddy Phil Vannoy recalled that as we were sharing a hotel room in D.C., I would call my sweetheart Eileen and fall asleep in the middle to the conversation, and he would end up talking to her.
Phil was a great guy with a very pleasant disposition and a constant smile on his face, like Dave “Shitty” Anderson in that respect. The three of us were good friends, along with Marty Steele who was already a corporal involved in the OCS training when he got accepted as a candidate to OCS.
Marty was an outstanding corporal who had been to Vietnam already with the 1st Tank battalion and was serving as an instructor at OCS when he was recommended for OCS by his commander. His bunk was next to mine and all of us in the platoon benefitted from his advice on handling the rigors of training and this new life in the Marine Corps. Marty had a very distinguished career in the Marine Corps, retired as a Lieutenant General and a one point was in consideration for Commandant of the Marine Corps. He would become the highest ranking tank officer in the history of the Marine Corps. (Source: Boys of ‘67, by Charles Jones)
Dave Anderson would later be a platoon commander in Vietnam like most of the guys from our OCS and The Basic School classes. He was only in country a short time when he was shot in the chest in an action when his company got into a firefight with an North Vietnam Army regiment. He and his men had to be rescued by another friend, Ray Smith’s, company. Ray would come to be one of the most decorated Marines of our era and retired as a Major General. He, Marty Steele, Jim Jones and Les Palm, in all of our OCS and TBS classes, would go on to become Marine Corps Generals and those whose careers and exploits are written about in a book titled Boys of ’67 by Charles Jones. The book is mostly about these great Marines but as the title says it is about the Marine Officers of The Basic School of April 5, 1967. We would become one of, if not the most, heralded Basic School Class in Marine Corps history.
But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. I mentioned that the Corps was trying to find people to be officers who could take the pressure of leading forty-five Marines in combat and try to get rid of those that couldn’t hack it there in OCS rather than have them break in combat. One of those guys in our platoon did crack and got into a fight with an officer in Washington on one weekend. So he was taken out of our platoon and they later found him walking down the runway at the Quantico airfield in the middle of the night and acting strangely. He had snapped and was gone.
This comes under the “It’s a small world category.” As my platoon was marching to or from class we passed another platoon going the opposite way and this guy waves to me and shouts “Ronnie!” It was my friend from college, Dan DeBlanc. I didn’t even know that he had joined the Corps. I would later cross paths with him again in Vietnam.
The physical aspect of OCS was tough, (the former enlisted guys who went through Boot Camp would laugh at that statement), but it got a little easier as we got into shape, all except for the forced marches on the Hill Trail—that never got easier. It was always a ball buster. We had the PFT (Physical Fitness Test), the PRT (Physical Readiness Test) and the O Course (Obstacle Course.) The PFT was a series of physical drills that you had to complete by doing a set number or do it in a certain time frame. It was designed to push the hell out of you and it did. The PRT was a three mile run with full pack, rifle, boots, helmet and gear that you had to complete in a certain time frame. It was a tough test for me, but I would make it, though it was nothing to brag about. The O Course was my favorite event and on one occasion I beat the company stud, a former jock, head to head. I had a good technique of rolling over the series of logs about four feet off the ground and we hit the last obstacle, the twenty foot rope climb even. But he tried to climb the rope with his arms, and I knew the trick of using the rope like a ladder, using my legs and feet to climb up. I slapped the top just before he did.
The Rifle Range
My favorite part of training was the rifle range. I can remember the feeling I had the first time that we went to the armory and signed out our M-14. Man, that was sweet. I learned very fast not to say “my gun”; it was a “rifle” not a “gun.” The DI’s would make you say to all in earshot, “This is my rifle” (while holding up your rifle) “and this is my gun” (while grabbing your crotch); “one is for killing, the other is for fun.” But for me shooting was fun; I fired expert the first time I fired the M-14. That is a great rifle and still in use in the Corps.
At the range we fired standing up, in the “off hand” position, sitting, and in the prone or lying position. When you fired at the target, the guys manning the targets would mark the hit with a circular marker at the end of a stick. This way you could adjust your sight for “windage” and elevation or as they called it “putting in your rifle dope.” If you missed the target completely, they would wave a red flag, which was called “Maggie’s drawers.”
Years later, I read a book about the Battle for Khe Sanh and the author began by describing the morning reveille scene with everyone standing up in their fox holes with helmet and flack vest on saluting the flag when the thump of mortars coming out of the NVA mortar tubes was heard. Everyone got back down in their holes. When the mortars ceased their explosions, someone waved a red flag, Maggie’s Drawers. That said an awful lot about the Marines at their embattled hill top at Khe Sanh.
Marksmanship is paramount in the Marine Corps, where it is said that the most deadly weapon in the Corps is the rifleman and that every Marine is a rifleman first. If you don’t have an Expert Rifle and Expert Pistol Badge, it is noticed. I wasn’t so good with the .45 pistol; my first time to qualify, I qualified as Sharp Shooter, but my next time to qualify I fired Expert.
OCS lasted ten weeks and I was pretty excited as we approached the end of the course. We had been fitted for our officer’s uniforms and sword and I made a loan to pay for everything. Officers buy their own uniforms.
Graduation day had come and my family or part of them took a train all the way from New Orleans to Quantico. My dad worked on the railroad and got a free family pass. It was my dad, my mom, three of my youngest sisters and my youngest brother on the longest trip my family had ever taken. On graduation day, the Marine officers to be commissioned and their families and friends were all gathered in the auditoriums. I looked up and spotted my family in the balcony and was happy to see them. When we were pronounced Officers in the United States Marine Corps and the band played the Marine Corps Hymn, I thought my chest would explode it was so expanded with pride. I looked up in the balcony and saw my dad with tears in his eyes. I had never seen that in my whole life, neither before or after. He was a tough guy who didn’t show much emotion and gave very few compliments, but that put tears in my eyes, too. I’ll never forget that moment.
So OCS was over, I had made it and I was now a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. After a short leave I was to report to TBS or the Marine Corps’ The Basic Officer’s School.
On my flight home from OCS as a very proud 2nd Lieutenant in my green uniform with spit-shined shoes and spit-shined brim of my cover (hat, but don’t ever say that in the Corps) I took my seat on the airplane and the stewardess said, “Here, let me take your hat” and put a thumb print right in the middle of that spit-shined cover’s brim. I worked on that brim for hours to get it to shine like that. But what the hell, I was now a Marine Officer and heading home.
OCS 3rd Platoon E Company —
Marty Steele and yours truly are holding the sign
TBS
The Basic Officer’s School for Marine officers wasn’t like OCS, a ball-buster; it was about learning to be a Marine Officer and learning the skills and the use of the tools that we would use in combat. Vietnam was going strong and nearly all of us would see combat, most before the end of the year and those of us who went to flight school a year and a half later.
In Basic School I was assigned to the 1st Platoon of Mike Company. Assignment was based upon the alphabet so the last names of all the guys in my platoon started with A, B or C. In my squad of fifteen men and my fire team of five men was Fred Bonati, Tom Broderick, Pete Barber and Bob Bracken. All of us but Bracken would become pilots. Bob Bracken was legally blind I was told and shouldn’t even be in the Marine Corps. Dave Cummings was in our squad and would go straight to Vietnam after Basic School like most of the 516 2nd Lieutenants from the TBS class of 5/67. He got wounded in Vietnam then went on to flight school after his rehab.
We all became good buddies and did most of the training and exercises together. Tom and Dave would go to Naval Flight School in Pensacola. Fred, Pete and I would go to the Air Force Flight School in a new program set up with the Air Force to train about one hundred Marine jet pilots a year. We would be in the very first classes of Marines to train in the Air Force’s UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training) program.
One of the first things that stood out to me at TBS was the training. Basic School trained all the officers to be platoon commanders no matter what MOS (Military Occupation Specialty) you would later become. Just like all Marines are trained to be riflemen, all officers are trained to be platoon leaders. It wasn’t all about being trained by the book as written years ago in a different war, but rather, they were trying to train us from the experience of combat vets both enlisted and officers who had just returned from Vietnam. They were teaching us the most effective ways to do our jobs, the way that they learned in combat.
Also, the most important thing was to learn the subject matter and not just to pass a test. So immediately after a test we went over the test and learned the correct answers while it was still fresh in our minds.
Our M Company Commander was a short but tough stud of a guy and former Recon officer by the name of Captain Paul. He could run circles around all of us and was a very good leader who had just returned from Vietnam.
One of my favorite courses was Land Navigation where we were taught to read a map and navigate from point A to point B over the terrain or through the woods and of course to find your position by reading the terrain and correctly pin-pointing it on a map. This was also the basis for calling in fire support or air support.
We were taught the skills and techniques in class and then we would go out in the field to practice what we had just learned in class. In the course we had to find a number of ammo cans painted white and stuck on a stake in the middle of the woods. It was pretty challenging and you would see a Lieutenant in the middle of a road or field looking confused with a map in one hand and a compass in the other trying to figure out where he was or where the damn ammo can was.
Then we had a night time compass march, where we had to read the map and navigate through the woods at night to our objective and arrive by a certain time. I was teamed up with Bonati and we were discussing how to best accomplish the task. Fred looked at the map, looked at the sky and said follow me and that star. We took off running through the woods in the direction of our objective looking at the stars for guidance. I thought we made it to the objective first; however, when Fred and I got there Pete Barber was already there and leaving. He had a date or something that night and he didn’t want to be late. He must have run the whole way because Fred and I were moving pretty fast through the woods that night. We were all cut up from getting lashed by the branches while running through the woods.
Fred was a piece of work and really smart. I really enjoyed his friendship and we would keep on crossing paths after TBS throughout our time in the Corps mainly because of our alphabetical alignment on orders.
When I went home on leave after OCS and before I reported to TBS I got to spend time with Eileen, my sweetheart, and we discussed getting married, but no commitment was made. However, the wheels were put in motion and after many phone calls back and forth when I went back to Quantico, all of a sudden I was engaged to be married.
When I returned home on leave for Memorial Day in 1967, we got married in New Orleans. We were married on a Saturday and I had to be back at TBS on Monday morning for classes. I had rented an apartment in Woodbridge, Virginia, across from by buddy Tom Broderick and Ray Smith.
Eileen was nineteen and I was twenty-four years old at the time. This started a new adventure for both of us in the Marine Corps.
Eileen, having no experience with the military and its terminology, had some amusing incidents. One was when an MP was trying to giving her a parking ticket for parking in a no parking zone between the hours of 0800 to 1700 hours. She jumped all over the MP and told him in no uncertain terms that she didn’t know what that meant and that she had only been here for two weeks. The MP apologized and tore up the ticket.
Another time Eileen and I went to Washington, D.C.- on the weekend with a Brazilian Marine Officer who was going through TBS with us. His name was Mark Agnise, a very nice and good-looking guy who was from a wealthy doctor’s family in Brazil and who was dating a Brazilian movie star. Mark spoke several languages, including French.
Eileen was a pretty petite blond except for her chest which was a pretty good size. As the three of us were walking down M street in D.C. we passed two French sailors who stared at Eileen and said something in French. Eileen pretty much knew what they were saying, but asked Mark anyway. Mark tried to be polite and said something nice, but Eileen insisted on knowing exactly what they said; so Mark confessed and said that they had remarked, “Too much sail for so small a craft.”
TBS lasted for twenty-one weeks from April 5 1967 through August, 1967, and most of the TBS graduates were to be 0301 Basic Infantry Officers and would be in Vietnam soon after graduating from TBS. There were a number of us who were going to flight school, which would be the Naval Flight School in Pensacola, Florida or so we thought. About a month before graduation, they called a number of us into a meeting and asked who wanted to go to Air Force Flight School. We said, “Why would we want to do that?” And they said, “You will be guaranteed jets.” Everybody’s hand went up.
A large number of the guys in that room were former enlisted who had a year or more of college, had a high GCT (IQ) test score, had stood out in Boot Camp and were signed up in the MARCAD program to become officers and pilots. I was one of the few with a college degree, because most guys out of college went from OCS straight to Naval Flight School; however, as I said earlier, the recruiters talked me into going to The Basic School.
In that room with me was Fred Bonati, Pete Barber, Rick Spitz, Kurt Wilbrecht and about twenty or so others. Kurt was Rick Spitz’s good friend since boot camp and would become an F-4 pilot and would later be killed in Vietnam attacking a target when his plane failed to pull out of a dive. He probably took a hit from small arms fire on the way into the target. We would be the first group of Marines to go to Air Force Flight School.
The Boys of 5/’67
Our Basic School Class (TBS 5/67) was one of, if not the most renowned Basic School Class in Marine Corps history. Of the 542 2nd Lieutenants that started in that class on 5 April, 1967, 516 graduated on August 30, 1967. The 516 Marine Officers of this class were awarded twenty-two Silver Stars and ten Navy Crosses for bravery in combat and two Distinguished Flying Crosses.
Most of us served in Vietnam; for the guys that were infantry officers, they would be in combat in Vietnam within a few months after our graduation from TBS and right in the middle of the Tet Offensive of January 1968. Tet was the Vietnamese New Year and in 1968 the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong compatriots in South Vietnam started a country wide offensive that went on for months.
Eleven of those Marine officers fresh out of Basic School died within the first three months in country and our class lost a total of thirty-nine of its officers killed in action in Vietnam. (Source: Boys of ’67, by Charles Jones)
For those of us that went on to be pilots, we would get there about a year and a half later.
Tet produced many fierce battles and many, many acts of bravery and heroism that helped shape the careers of a number of Marine officers that went on to be future top level leaders of the Corps.
Charles Jones’ book Boys of ‘67 is a story about this Basic School Class but mainly covers the careers and exploits of these four Marine General Officers: General Jim Jones, Lieutenant General Marty Steel, Major General Ray Smith and Major General Les Palm.
Marty Steele
Martin R. Steele, my buddy from OCS, had an outstanding career in the Corps. He was a tank officer and rose in the ranks to retire as a Lieutenant General and became the highest ranking tank officer in Marine Corps history.
Marty had a brilliant thirty-five year career in the Corps and served in a whole host of important and prestigious billets including Commanding General of the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia, as well as being instrumental in getting the wonderful Marine Corps Museum built. Before his retirement in 1999, he was considered for the position of Commandant of the Marine Corps which was given to General Jim Jones.
Ray Smith
Ray L. Smith was a good friend of my buddy Fred Bonati and with whom I car pooled in TBS sometimes from our apartments in Woodbridge, Virginia. He became one of the most decorated Marines in modern history. He won the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts along with numerous other awards in two tours in Vietnam and the other battles and operations he was involved in.
He was a 2nd Lieutenant when he took over as company commander for Alpha 1/1 in the battle for the ancient City of Hue where the Marines faced a NVA Brigade of about seventy-five hundred enemy troops.
He earned his second Silver Star at Khe Sanh towards the end of that epic Marine Corps battle.
I followed Ray’s career to some extent; he was in Vietnam a year before I was while I was in flight training, returned to the states while I was in Nam and then returned as a Captain and adviser to the Vietnamese Marines the following year when I came home and was stationed at MCAS El Toro, California.
One evening, while watching the evening news I saw a reporter interviewing Captain Ray Smith just after a battle where they stopped the North Vietnamese advance southward at a river. The reporter asked him what he felt about the South Vietnamese Marines that he was with and he said something to the effect of, “Well, we stopped them (The NVA — North Vietnamese Army) here.” That was all he needed to say I guess.
He got his Navy Cross on his second tour in Vietnam while an advisor to a group of about two hundred fifty Vietnamese Marines. They occupied a hill top outpost and were fighting off a number of savage assaults by a large NVA force estimated to be about two Battalions during a period from March 30 to April 1, 1972. Ray’s Vietnamese Marines defending the outpost were down to about twenty-eight and air support was no longer available. He attempted to lead his men off the hill to the safety of friendly lines. As they were making their exit, they encountered the booby-trapped barbed wire perimeter fence and an enemy soldier. Ray shot the enemy soldier and threw himself backwards onto the fence, letting his people run over him as he lay on the downed barbed wire, then led his troops to the safety of friendly lines. (Source : Boys of ’67, by Charles Jones)
Later when I had got out of the Corps, I saw that he was the Battalion Commander who led the Marines who landed in Grenada to rescue the students and after that his unit took over in Beirut, Lebanon for the Marines that got blown up in their barracks in1983. Two hundred forty-one Marines, sailors and soldiers lost their lives in that attack.
I knew Ray through my buddy Fred Bonati who was Ray’s best man in his wedding. They had been enlisted Marines together, and Fred predicted back then in TBS that Ray would some day be Commandant of the Marine Corps. He came close in his prediction, for Ray was considered for that position.
Ray was a warrior in every sense of the word from modern day to those of past history. After his tours in Vietnam, Ray returned to Basic School as a Captain and instructor. He was nick-named “E-Tool” Smith for his heroics in Vietnam when it was thought by his students that in a fierce combat situation he ran out of ammunition and fought off the enemy with his e-tool (a small foldable shovel.) (Source: Boys of ’67, by Charles Jones)
Ray retired as a Major General and when Ray retired from the Marine Corps in 1999 he was the most decorated Marine living at that time. The term “Warrior” fits him very well.
Fred Bonati told me a story about when he and Ray Smith were going through the MARCAD processing (a program to promote enlisted Marines to flight school) at Camp Pendleton and they were being interviewed by officers on a selection committee.
He said, “We were going through the process for the MARCAD program, and we had to jump through a bunch of hoops. One was we had to individually go before boards made up of three, four or five officers, Captains, Majors and Lieutenant Colonels. They wanted to see how you handled yourself. Poise. Confidence. They asked all sorts of questions in order to ascertain whether you were officer material and your intentions were sincere. For instance, they’d put words that you may or may not know in their sentences just to see if you knew the meanings. Like siblings, peers, etc. They asked Ray if he had any peers, and he answered yes, that the members of the board for instance, were his peers. One of the officers, being stunned by his reply, asked him if he really knew the meaning of the word peer. Ray says, ‘The Constitution of the U.S. says that you are my equal.’ Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I was scared shitless when I went in there. In fact the board thought I was aloof and cold, when actually I was catatonic. So, Smitty goes in there and pulls that off. Pretty cool.”
Oddly enough, Marty Steele and Ray Smith were both former enlisted Marines and roommates in The Basic School.
Jim Jones
Ididn’t know Jim Jones, but if you were a Marine in that era you heard of James L. Jones. He got his baptism by fire in a battle in Vietnam where his company was battling a NVA battalion in an area called Foxtrot Ridge. His credentials were built over the years as he rose through the ranks to become the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps, Supreme Allied Commander of American and NATO Forces in Europe and Africa, then National Security Adviser for President Obama.
Les Palm
Leslie M. Palm was a 2nd and 1st Lieutenant artillery officer who earned his combat pay with the 1st Battalion 13 Marine Regiment at Khe Sanh and Hill 881 South in Vietnam from December 1967 to December 1968. He later commanded the 10th Marine Regiment in August 1990 and participated in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Les Palm had a great thirty-one year career in the Marine Corps and retired as a Major General. After his retirement, he served for twelve years as Publisher and CEO of The Marine Corps Association which publishes the Marine Corps Gazette and the Leatherneck Magazines. (Source: Wikipedia)
TBS M CO