Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [54]
The two men and Phyllis drove north the next day to Raritan. The situation promised to be awkward. John seemed to have grown tranquil now that he’d made a decision and taken action. He thought he now knew how to appeal to his father, through the old man’s love of his adopted country, his patriotism, and though his mother might “carry on,” she would eventually fall in line. The ploy worked. Over a smoke he told his father he was concerned about threats from the country’s enemies. Who would dare attack us? the senior Basilone demanded. John was prepared. “The Japs, Pop.” Maybe he was still thinking of that golfing foursome at the country club, those Japanese golfers taking photos.
At Sal’s insistence, John agreed to remain in Raritan for a round of leave-taking with family and friends. At first he resented these duty calls. But as the visits went on, seeing pals and relations, with the well-wishing, the ritual glass of wine, the gifts, usually money, pressed into Basilone’s hands, he felt better about things. And to be candid about it, he could use the dough. His appointed date with the Marines arrived, and he left Raritan for the South, reporting to boot camp at what was then the Marine Corps recruit depot at Quantico, Virginia, just thirty-five miles south of Washington, D.C.
In her serialized newspaper account of her brother’s adventures, and in his voice, this is how Phyllis describes John’s formal introduction to the Corps: “A hot sweltering humid day. The processing didn’t help any, however. Looking back I can truthfully say the first night at Quantico was the only night I found it difficult to fall asleep. If I thought Army training was tough, it was soon put out of my mind. When they train you to become a Marine, you either fall by the wayside or you emerge as the best damn fighting man in the service. We trained and went through exercises at Quantico until we were razor sharp. Our sergeant was a holy terror and if only one-tenth of our bitching came true, he’d never have a restful night’s sleep. Later on we thanked God for our training under Sarge. It certainly paid off. Maybe he knew; he always hollered, ‘Come on you guys, get the lead out of your asses. What’d you think, you’re in the Army? Set up these guns, on the double.’ It got so we could set them up in seconds flat. Secretly, I had the feeling he was satisfied, even proud of us.”
All this may have dismayed Phyllis, but to most Marines the drill sounds familiar, routine, and rather tame. If “asses” was the worst language and “hollering” the worst treatment that boot camp drill instructors passed out back in 1940, Manila John was a fortunate man. One can assume this business of “setting up guns” dealt with the Browning heavy machine guns on which Basilone had been already thoroughly checked out during his Army hitch. As for that “hot sweltering humid” Quantico weather, I can testify as a Marine who spent three summers there (1948, 1949, and 1951) that heat and humidity was commonplace. For an American with two years in the tropical Philippines, the climate of northern Virginia shouldn’t have been a shock. And for an enlisted man and trained athlete with three years of Army service behind him, a Marine recruit depot would be tolerable if not posh. Yet as Phyllis sums up in John’s voice his Quantico experience, “If we thought boot training was tough, we soon discovered that compared to our training and exercises at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it was duck soup.”
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