Loon - Jack McLean [25]
As my leave came to a close, I joined my family on our annual trek to Elizabeth, New Jersey, to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with my father’s parents. It too was awkward. Cousins and other family members were locked into traditional roles of prep schools, college, and first jobs. My grandmother, with so much family to be proud of, was dazed and confused when it came to me. For the first time in her life, she was confronted with the real possibility that by next Thanksgiving a member of her family would be absent and in harm’s way half a world away.
My grandfather alone stood tall that day in my mind’s eye. He understood what I was doing and was immensely proud of the decision that I had made. Our freedom was a fragile institution, and, given his life experience, he well appreciated the need to defend it at every turn. Grandpa was a bourbon-drinking, cigar-smoking former six-term Republican congressman from New Jersey’s sixth district. His childhood years had been spent as a page in the United States Senate. His twelve years in Congress exactly overlaid the first three terms of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Grandpa had provided me with many of my most lasting childhood memories. He took me to my first baseball game in 1954 to see a remarkable young phenom named Willie Mays at the Polo Grounds in New York City. He later introduced me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to see the newly acquired Rembrandt masterpiece Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.
My grandfather’s first association with war came one April afternoon in 1898 when, as a twelve-year-old Senate telephone operator, he answered the call from President William McKinley requesting a congressional war declaration against Spain.
Nineteen years later, while a young lawyer, he watched as the United States sent forces to Europe to execute the final push that ended World War I. On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as a fifth-term congressman, he cast a vote to declare war on Japan. In 1950, while he was serving as a judge in Union County, New Jersey, the United States entered into the war in Korea.
Grandpa knew that our freedoms were to be cherished and defended. Sometimes, as with World War II, the enemies were clear and present. Other times, as with Spain and Korea, the issues were less obvious. As a patriotic American, however, Grandpa had long understood that national service on any level was both a privilege and, on occasion, a necessity.
On this Thanksgiving Day, he quietly pulled me aside after dinner and expressed his appreciation for my decision to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, and expressed his deep pride that I would be serving the United States during a time of national need.
10
ON NOVEMBER 29, 1966, I TRAVELED BACK TO CAMP Lejeune and began a course in mechanized supply at the Marine Corps Supply School at Mountfort Point. A select group of us had been chosen out of boot camp to learn a new computerized supply system that was being implemented by the Marine Corps. It was as safe an assignment as existed in the marines at that time.
Our days were spent in classes learning how to type and do basic accounting and property requisitioning. There was little discipline or physical training during our six-week course. The war seemed a world away. Each day further separated us from the airtight discipline of Parris Island and the travails of our former platoon mates, now en route to Vietnam. With our new training, we were all destined to be stationed at one of the two huge stateside United States Marine Corps supply centers, in Albany, Georgia, and Barstow, California.
Graduation was held on February 3, 1967. Given the choice of the two available duty stations, I chose Barstow, California. It was 1967. California was sun, the Beach Boys, hot cars, fast food, and beautiful girls. It was an appealing image to a nineteen-year-old boy.
I could not deny, however, an unscratchable itch to go to