Loon - Jack McLean [11]
I wish you the best of luck in your math exam and in the months ahead, from Parris Island on. Come back and see us when you can. Our best wishes are always with you.
Sincerely,
Field Marshal Thomas von Lyons
Lyons gained a degree of national notoriety years later when candidate George W. Bush, in a rare public acknowledgment of his Andover experience, referred to Lyons in a New York Times article as his most outstanding teacher.
On July 2, 1966, I sat for my math makeup exam and passed with flying colors. Later that afternoon, the headmaster called me into his office and handed me my high school diploma.
Six weeks later, my father drove the short distance from Brookline to Boston’s South Station to deliver me into the hands of Sergeant Miller. Miller welcomed our small group to active duty, presented us with our “official orders,” and saw to it that we actually boarded the train.
Fifteen hours later, after a layover in New York and a train change in Washington, D.C., our connecting bus arrived at the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.
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THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT at Parris Island, South Carolina, occupies the entire 6,600 acres of a flat sandy Atlantic barrier island, located between Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. Its mission is to train all incoming marine recruits from east of the Mississippi River. The Marine Corps described Parris Island as a place to “indoctrinate the recruit with the essential knowledge derived from almost two centuries of experience in training fighting men, and to inculcate in the individual that intangible ‘esprit de corps’ that is the hallmark of United States Marines.”
To those of us who served, it was simply hell on earth.
Recruit training at Parris Island was tough, exhausting, and excruciatingly exacting. Its mission was to produce America’s first line of defense. A Marine Corps motto was “First to Fight.” This is where boys became ready, willing, and able to do so—at a moment’s notice.
Historically, the spit of land was noteworthy. The first attempt to colonize South Carolina occurred with the discovery of Parris Island in 1526 by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, a Spaniard in search of slaves and gold. It was later briefly colonized by a group of French Huguenots who built a fort on its southeastern tip.
The first title to the island was granted in 1700. In 1715, the title passed to Alexander Parris—hence the name. Seven plantations flourished for more than 175 years until 1891, when the marines landed with a small detachment to defend a naval station there. By 1915, the island had become the recruit depot for the Marine Corps.
Over the following three years, nearly forty-one thousand recruits were trained there to man the American effort in World War I. After a postwar lull, the recruit load skyrocketed following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During the balance of that month alone, 5,272 recruits arrived. The following month the number reached 9,206. During the period 1941–1945, more than two hundred thousand marine recruits were trained on Parris Island.
Recruitment dropped at the end of World War II. When the Korean Conflict began, there were only two thousand recruits on the island. By March 1952, however, the number had ballooned again to more than twenty-four thousand. In all, more than 138,000 marines were trained during Korea.
Now Vietnam.
Our first week on Parris Island was a blur. Vázquez de Ayllón and his crew may have been ecstatic at their first sight of land viewed across the water from the east in 1526. Those of us on the charter bus crossing the causeway from the west in August 1966, however, were apprehensive at best—scared shitless at worst.
Count me among the scared shitless.
We reached Parris Island sometime after midnight and were screamed off the bus by Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant W H. Hilton.
“If you are smoking a cigarette, you will