My old hat is not a hat, really. It's a cap. In fact, if one really wants to get technical, it's a “cover.” At least that's the official Marine Corps
terminology for it, and it is, truly, a Marine Corps cover. All the branches of the US armed services change their uniform designs from time
to time, and that's one reason how I came by this particular cover.
In the fall of 1964 I was a part of the 7th Marine Regiment and stationed at Camp Las Pulgas, located on the big USMC base of Camp Pendleton,
California. Camp Joseph Pendleton is located in southern California, near Oceanside and San Clemente. The base covers over 200 square miles
of mostly scrub, sandy, hilly - - some hills are over 1,500 feet high - - dusty desert. The camp also encompasses over seventeen miles of oceanfront
footage, which is used by the Marine Corps for amphibious training; if it weren't for that fact, it would have long ago fallen into the political hands
of beachside land developers. The base is dry, hot, arid and home to tarantula spiders, rattlesnakes, lizards, roadrunners - - that's right, just like
in the cartoons - - coyotes, and sheep-herders. The ones we saw were Basque sheep-herders -- political refugees, I think -- and originally mountain
people from northern Spain. We often came upon them unexpectedly while training in the hills. These solitary men would be out in the wilds,
tending hundreds and hundreds of sheep. The lonely herders lived, cooked and slept in a little wooden cart on wheels, which was pulled about by
a mule, or horse. The cart had sides, a door, sometimes an unscreened window opening, and a roof. When the sparse, arid, bone-dry grass played
out, the herders simply moved to another spot. They rented grazing rights from the US government.
I was then an infantry grunt corporal in the 1st Marine Division and we had just returned to our home base at Camp Pendleton the previous summer.
We had completed a thirteen-month tour in the far-east. It had been, for me, a long, lonely tour - as I had missed my family and my childhood
sweetheart, Maribeth Clenney, who was waiting for me - very much. I was glad to be back in the US. My comrades and I were now veteran grunts
and we were feeling pretty salty about ourselves. Infantry grunt work is hard, sweaty, mostly hot work - - even when it's cold - - and we called it
“running the hills” and “going to the boonies.” Our job mostly consisted of learning and engaging in small unit infantry tactics - - we practiced both
offensive tactics and defensive tactics - - over and over, all the time, day and night. We trained hard and long - particularly at night, as the Marine
Corps infantry likes to fight at night. During wars night fighting keeps the casualties down, at least for the ones on the attack. I was all for it - the
night training - but it, and reconnaissance and combat patrols, and defensive 50% foxhole alerts that went on every night forced one to do without
much sleep.
When I had first set eyes on Camp Pendleton, in January, 1963, I was in a bus convoy of young boot replacements. We were all just out of boot
camp, some from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego, Ca. and some, like me, from Parris Island, SC. I will never - - as long as I live - - forget
the big billboard type sign I saw as we drove onto the base. The sign read: THE MORE YOU SWEAT IN PEACE, THE LESS YOU BLEED IN WAR!
If you really want to summarize why the Marine Corps produces such really good infantry combat fighters, century after century, I think you have
to take that axiom to heart. We practiced and trained for war all the time.
My outfit was scheduled to attend the USMC Cold Weather Training School -- in the next several months -- at Bridgeport, California. The camp is
located in the high elevations of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. And I'm talking about, very high, covered with snow and very cold mountains.
It was not far from the spot where the Donner Party had gotten trapped in the snows of the high mountain passes in 1846 - and then killed and
cannibalized each other to survive. So when my buddy (his name was Broderick) who worked in the Company “C” office asked me if I wanted to
go TAD (temporary additional duty) for six months, and work at the base brig as a prison guard, I said “Yes.” Make that a resounding, enthusiastic
“Yes!” I knew my grunt buddies were going to freeze their hinnies off in the mountains, and I wanted no part of it. Not if I could avoid it.
So I soon received my new orders and reported to Mainside and the Camp Pendleton Base Brig. This was a big prison, or jail, holding Marines
caught and convicted for various infractions ranging from not coming back from liberty on time, and/or insubordination -- to burglary, arson, rape
and murder. My six months spent working at the brig deserves its own story, so I am going to save that essay for a later date. My work there was
enjoyable - compared to our work in the infantry. I learned so much about human nature, and now look back on my six months tour there - - after the
passage of time - - with fondness and humor. A lot of what I saw and experienced there was very funny - the prisoners too -- and I can still chuckle
and laugh about it when my memories are focused. And some of it, on the other hand, was serious, and very grim. I plan to write about that part,
also.
While stationed there I became friends with a big, gruff, overbearing Marine from Memphis, Tennessee - another brig worker -- named Stiverson.
I don't remember his first name. He worked in the base laundry, and was in charge of part of the cleaning of the prisoner's wearing apparel.
The prisoners wore old, almost worn out Marine Corps dungarees -- and covers -- from WWII, which was long since won and nineteen years in
the past. The prisoner's dungarees, or utilities -- which was the official USMC name for them -- were faded and worn, and had white, sewn-on,
horizontal stripes on the arms and legs.
The WWII utilities were also very different in design and color from the utilities we were issued and wore in 1964. The WWII utilities were
herringbone patterned, had no flap on their blouse (shirt) front pockets, and were faded almost white with age. The blouse pockets also bore a
big, black emblem, the USMC Globe and Anchor. These clothes had been worn by “The Old Breed,” which is what the Marines who fought and
died in the First Marine Division in WWII were called. How we admired and coveted those clothes! If we could have just voted on whether to
change our utilities back to that earlier WWII design -- that “The Old Breed” wore -- we would have done so in one brief second.
One day I was visiting with Stiverson in the brig laundry room and he asked me “Would you like one of these covers?” I couldn't believe my ears.
The covers were worn by all the prisoners, but very few of the guards - because they were scarce and not readily available to us. You had to know
someone to get them. So I quickly said “Yes.” He gave me two covers. He made my day!
When I returned to my 7th Marine outfit when my six-month tour was up -- and wore my “new” and very different cover -- I was the envy of the
platoon. All my buddies wanted to know where they could get one. My best buddy in the Marine Corps, Sgt. Pete Padilla (then a corporal), even
asked me to give him my extra cover, and I told him “No.” I could just see myself needing that extra cover as I wore them both stateside - when
I got to be a “crummy civilian” again. I was then a veteran noncom, salty, foolish, carefree, and joyful at the prospect -- being just a few months
away -- from being a civilian again. Little did I know how that one decision -- that one, simple decision -- would come to haunt me in my later years.
Neither of us had any way of knowing it then, but Pete had less than twelve months to live.
Shortly after I returned to the 7th Marine Regiment my buddies, the four-year enlistees, shipped out to the far-east. Again. The Marine recruiters,
God bless them, had most conveniently not mentioned the three-year plan to my platoon mates when they joined. I had enlisted for three years,
so I didn't go back with them overseas. Not this time. In addition, I had applied for and received permission for an “early out” to return to college --
to the University of Alabama -- which is where I had been enrolled as a student three long, carefree years before. Before I became a grunt Marine
and changed my life forever.
Viet Nam was just a little, insignificant country then, a little country with just a wisp of war smoke on the horizon. None of us knew - had no way of
knowing -- that my buddies would end up in a raging firestorm of a war in South Vietnam. But they did end up there. I'm not going to go into all the
details of their tour in Viet Nam in this story, (I plan to write about it in other, later stories) but please take it from me that it was very bad, it was
extremely serious, and it was deadly. Many of my friends shed their blood and some even gave up their lives for their country. Included on the
list of those who gave up their lives - who died as a hero, in battle, against the North Vietnamese Army -- was my best friend in the service -- Sgt.
Pete Padilla. The friend I had said “No” to, when he asked me for the extra cover. He simply asked me for the extra cover, and I -- in my ignorance,
lack of awareness and in a carefree, youthful, cavalier style -- said “No.”
Have you ever looked back over your life and wished that you could go back and change a particular thing, if God would just grant that wish to you?
I have. I have many things in my life I would change if I could, but unfortunately that's not a luxury God gives us. But if God would let me, I would
go back in time - to the spring of 1965 - and give my friend Pete that extra cover, the one he asked me for. I would pay a lot of money to anyone
God designated, just for that privilege.
That extra cover now sits at home in my clothes bureau drawer, unused, and frozen in time. If one looks at it closely it still has “BRIG” stamped in
fading black ink on the top of its bill. It still retains its green color, and is not faded nearly as much as the other cap, the cover I have worn for yard
work and while outside all these years. It lies there undisturbed. It is my personal remembrance -- my personal monument -- to selfishness and
shame, and to my guilt and loss and grief.
My wife doesn't know the true story behind the two covers. If she did, she would not insist that I throw it away -- I don't think she knows there is a
second cover in the clothes bureau drawer -- as she often has done and does still. At least I don't think she would. She says the old cover, now
faded by many washings and time, is now too small for my head. She has tried many times, over the years to get me to make a swap, and has
furnished many substitute hats for me. I just quietly throw them away. Or perhaps she is preoccupied with my image - and, perhaps, how it makes
her look, also - too much sometimes. Or maybe she's right. I cannot argue that I haven't gained fifty pounds since my service days as a young man. I can't even argue - logically -- that I probably now look silly when wearing it. But it's the emotions and memories tied to it - not the logic -- that hold me.
And I also want you to know that old beat up, much abused, faded cap is one of my proudest possessions. I would fight you for it if you tried to take
it from me -- and you can rest assured it would be a bloody fight, too. It and the family pictures of my parents and their mothers and fathers, and
theirs in turn, as well as the pictures of my uncles and aunts and cousins, and my children when they were small -- and their children now in turn --
are the most precious material things I possess.
I wear that old cap-- that old cover -- for many reasons now. I wear it to remember and honor my USMC friends and the young marine I used to be.
I wear it to remember and revere those men and boys who as marines have gone on before me -- in a long, unbroken line of tradition, unselfish and
freely given service, and yes, fighting and dying for their country -- back through the tunnel of time. I also wear it because I earned the right to wear
it -- and I won that right through sweat and toil and grime and tears and blood and deprivation and sacrifice. I am proud to wear that cover, and I will
feel that way until my last, final day - until the day they throw the earth atop my grave. And finally, another true reason I wear the cap, that cover, is
to remember and honor my friend Pete Padilla -- who gave his all, his “last full measure of devotion” to his country and to you and me -- with his last
dying breath, on that battlefield at Vin Loc in that haunted, long fought over, sad and beautiful country that is South Vietnam.
Copyright June 29, 2003, by M. Ken Bedsole
The writer of these articles may be contacted at :
524 Kirkland Street, Abbeville, Alabama, 36310
or at telephone number (334) 585 5768,
or via email at: MK9792@aol.com
