He was a Hispanic kid from the barrio in Albuquerque, New Mexico when I met him. He and I were both fed into 2nd Platoon, C Company,
First Marine Battalion, First Marine Regiment, First Marine Division at Camp San Mateo, Camp Joseph Pendleton, California, in January, 1963,
he from boot camp and ITR -- rudimentary infantry training -- in San Diego, and me from Parris Island and ITR on the east coast. If we had not
been thrown into 2nd Platoon by fate I don't think either he or I would have ever given each other a second look. I was a young, fair skinned,
Anglo-Saxon kid from the deep South, from Alabama, and was a member of the middle class and a protestant.
He was just a young kid, too, brown skinned, short and stocky, but compact and muscular -- like a coiled spring -- a Roman Catholic by faith and
the way he lived, and he gave off an aura, an attitude of “you didn't want to mess with me.” He was very serious and gung ho about The Corps,
an enthusiastic and eager to learn Marine. He would also -- with his fist -- knock your block off. You didn't have to see this to know it, you just
knew it intuitively -- if you had any powers of observation at all. I later learned he had been a Golden Gloves champion boxer in his hometown,
and took pride in his fighting ability. He appeared to be almost completely, as far as I could tell, without fear. This was later to be proved true
by him in armed combat, in Vietnam, but that's another story, for another time. His name was Pedro Bernal Padilla -- he didn't like the name Pedro,
so we called him Pete -- and he was what we called “one squared away Marine.” It was only later that I realized that the only way you could become
his true friend was to show him you were not scared of him. You knew he was going places in The Corps.
Our stories in the service had their beginnings in 1962 when I found my life to be immature, directionless and without purpose and decided to quit
my unsuccessful career as a student at the University of Alabama and enlist in the Marine Corps. I was promptly sent to the Marine Corps Recruit
Depot at Parris Island, SC, for boot camp training and was later assigned, as a volunteer infantry grunt, to our nations' amphibious shock troops --
to the First Marine Division -- at the big Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, California. I will never, as long as I live, forget seeing the big sign
at the entrance to the base that read: THE MORE YOU SWEAT IN PEACE, THE LESS YOU BLEED IN WAR.
It was an axiom I quickly found to be true -- at least the first part -- when we new replacements were assigned and integrated into our respective
infantry companies. All the old salts from the 1st Marine Division were just rotating back to California after being at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during
the Cuban Missile crisis the previous October. They had spent months and months locked-and-loaded and eyeball to eyeball with Cuban Army
troops and their Russian combat advisors. Armed tensions were high, and they knew they could have been at war with Cuba in an instant.
The Guantanamo veterans were a serious, surly bunch, and were completely without mirth. They had spent their time mostly digging-in, filling
sandbags, building bunkers, and staring at their adversarial counterparts through the barbed wire entanglements, minefields and watchtowers that
separated them. They spent a lot of time wondering what would happen to them if and when the shooting started, I think, and how would they react
to it, individually, and all secretly hoped they would not shame themselves in front of their comrades if they did fight.
Within a few months we had entered the most intense infantry training phase we encountered each year, a six week long training phase -- a phase
The Corps called a “lock on.” I found it, in many ways, to be worse than Parris Island. There was so little rest, or chances to rest, and the mental
harassment and pressure from the Guantanamo veterans was constant and grueling. They kept a tremendous tension on us, and orders from a
superior, even a PFC, were not negotiable.
All us boots felt threatened by the specter of a court martial if we faltered, and military justice can be swift, severe and life altering. Generally we
“went to the bush” on Monday, early, and came back the following Friday. We slept when we could at night, clothed in our marine utilities, with a
field jacket when cold, and wrapped up in our ponchos. When it was really cold we slept in goose down sleeping bags. We found out by experience
that the sleeping bags could and would soak up and hold rainwater.
We showered only when we got in on Friday, and this only after we cleaned our rifles and 782 gear, which we also called “deuce” gear, (our web
belts, knapsacks, haversacks, packs, ammunition pouches, canteen gear, and so on), and stood inspection. Liberty was a time of letting off
tension -- a time of drinking beer either at the on base “slop chute”, or in the “ville”, at nearby Oceanside or San Clemente, California, and of fist
fighting with members of other companies or marine battalions, although this was not encouraged. Physical threats and squaring off with marines
of your own rank were a common occurrence, especially at the onset when we were all strangers and had just begun training with each other, and
the pecking order had not been clearly established.
During the daytime training we were in either class rooms outside (open air), studying infantry tactics and related topics, or practicing small unit
tactics, digging foxholes and going on patrol. At night we practiced infantry defensive tactics, or going on the attack at night, going on patrols or
being on a 50% defensive alert. The lock-on training ended with a twenty-six mile forced march. And when I say forced march, I mean a march in
which we were walking as fast as it is humanly possible to walk, and not run. The walking is so fast that one could trot alongside us -- and we were
weighted down with a full field pack, 100 rounds of blank 7.62 NATO (.308 Winchester) ammunition, a seven-pound M-14 rifle (these were wonderful
weapons), a steel helmet, two canteens of water, bayonet, and first aid kit. We were young then, and full of vigor and the strength of youth, and
ignorant of what life could hold in store for us.
By the early summer of 1963 we were on the USS Billy Mitchell, a troop and dependent transport ship headed overseas. Enroute we stopped at
Honolulu, Hawaii, and Yokahama, Japan. At the end of the trip we rotated into G Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division,
and were home based at Camp Hansen, Okinawa. (The island of Okinawa had been taken forcibly from the Japanese in the closing months of World
War II by Marine and US Army infantrymen on land, by Marine, Army Air Corps, and Navy airmen in the air, and by the US Navy offshore It was a
hard fought, bloody, grueling, long lasting battle, and at the time it occurred, in the spring of 1945, was the largest sea-air-land battle in recorded
history).
We had at least one sergeant in our company who had fought on Okinawa, as a young Marine infantry grunt during WWII, and he was a crusty,
grouchy soul, with a twisted, waxed mustache, one that stuck straight out from each side of his face, and ended in a sharp point on each end.
There are many other stories worthy of telling during that 13 months spent by us overseas, but I'm going to defer them to a later date. Also, as an
aside, I want to stop and say right here that there were many, many other men and boys in Company C who were wonderful, outstanding and
noteworthy Marines, and many -- and I feel fortunate to be able to say this -- later became my friends of mine. But I'm just going to talk about Pete
only here because he was with me on that Christmas Eve in 1963 and I want to honor him and his memory. I plan to write of his bravery and how
he shed his blood for his country in armed combat -- and his death in combat -- in later articles.
So getting back to this story, as we began to settle into our overseas duty, changes were gradually settling over us, but I didn't notice them then.
One change became apparent that fall, in October I think, when a visiting American USO troop came to our camp. I was absolutely entranced to see
young, round eyed, American girls. They were far off, way up on the stage, but I still remember the absolute fascination I had in just seeing them.
It surprised me. It surprised me that I was surprised to see them. And it surprised me to realize how much I had missed seeing American women,
but did not know it. By not having seen any Caucasian women for months and months, I did not know how much I had missed just not even being
able to look at them.
Our infantry training routines were much the same overseas as they had been in California, only our liberty did not begin until Saturday at noon,
after a formal, in formation and standing at attention, rifle inspection. It was a major sin to flunk a rifle inspection. If you were found with a spec
of rust anywhere on the metal portion of a rifle, or if your rifle was discovered to have an unclean, or rust pitted rifle bore, then you were considered
to have just committed a harsh, severe infraction. Life was serious in a Marine grunt platoon.
We also spent a lot of time on troop ships with the US Navy's Seventh Fleet, and late that first summer we were sent to Camp Gotemba, a tent camp
located on the slopes of Mt. Fuji-yama. Mt. Fuji-yama is a mostly dormant -- but can become active -- volcano located about 90 miles south of
Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese trains ran on precise time then, and liberty in Tokyo was a real treat.
By that fall we were getting ready to ship out to Subic Bay, Philippine Islands, but before we left on that seagoing trip we celebrated the Marine
Corps Birthday. The USMC was organized on November 10, 1775, at where else but a tavern -- Tun's Tavern -- in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
It is a formal holiday in the Corps, and a huge beef steak and eggs and all the trimmings and deserts are served. No matter what day of the week
the holiday occurs upon, all duty -- except guard and other necessary or office duties -- are suspended. On Thanksgiving and Christmas similar
turkey feasts are served, and these three, along with any pre-invasion meal, are the very best meals of the year.
The Christmas following that Thanksgiving in 1963 is the Christmas I remember -- but not with a whole lot of fondness. My friend Pete and I were,
unlike most of our marine comrades, over 21 years old that Christmas, and that made us eligible to join the “Over 21 Club” on the base, where they
served hard liquor. If you were a marine and under 21 and were on base you could drink only beer. Of course a marine on liberty in one of the
“villes” could buy almost any hard liquor drink he wanted.
Pete and I decided to go to the Over 21 Club that Christmas. Hard liquor was ten cents per glass. We were both experiencing our first Christmas
away from home and family (the previous Christmas, after boot camp, I was at home on leave). I don't remember us discussing it, but for me I was
10,000 miles away from my home in Alabama and was missing my girl and my family something fierce. It was dismal and rainy and cold and bleak
the night we went to the club, and I remember us wearing our raincoats. Once inside, for some reason, we chose to drink champagne. Perhaps it
was because they had champagne for a reduced price that night. We bought and drank it by the bottle -- bottle after bottle. I will tell you that at the
time I did not know that champagne was a wine, and that it could be potent. I thought it was something akin to -- perhaps even a cousin of -- beer. I
thought it was mild, and that one could drink it in unlimited quantities. I was to learn differently before the night ended.
Since my Mother is deceased perhaps I cannot embarrass her by writing this paragraph, and hopefully I won't embarrass my wife and children
either. I don't write this article because I am proud of my actions. I write this to write true, and to remember that Christmas and honor my friend
Pete, who is no longer with us in the land of the living.
But we did do it, I'm afraid, my friend Pete and I. At least I did, I confess, and I can only, ultimately, speak for myself. I drank to excess that night.
I drank to blot out my worry and my sadness and my blues. I drank to blot out my loneliness and missing those whom I most loved in the world.
I drank and drank until I could not drink any more and when I had had enough walked, nay, staggered, my way back to the barracks. Even today
I cannot tell you how I made it back to our barracks, to my rack in our squad bay, but I did. I slept the sleep of the dead the next day, but it was a
severely hung over, hurting sleep.
In conclusion, I must say that I cannot truly speak for Pete with this statement either, because I do not remember us specifically discussing our
loneliness, and Pete was killed in action fighting in Vietnam just 27 months later, so he's not here for me to ask him. But for me it was my loneliest
Christmas. It was a cold, rainy, dreary Christmas, and I was far, far away from those in the world I loved the most. It was the drunkest I've ever
been, that night on Okinawa in 1963. In fact -- I have told people, and perhaps I should not speak in the plural, but I have -- that Pete and I got as
drunk as two grown men can get and still live. It was that kind of night. It was that kind of holiday. It was that kind of temporary escape, a moment
of forgetting. It was, and still is, and I hope forever will be, my loneliest Christmas, that Christmas on Okinawa with my best marine buddy, that
Christmas of forty years past and long ago.
Copyright, December 17, 2003, by Michael K. 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
