Right. They've decentralized things. Each division now has a communications company and each infantry battalion has a communications platoon. I started out with Comm Company, 2nd MarDiv back in 1981. Cannot speak for the Wingnut side of the house. :>) Nonetheless, I was always reminded I was infantry first and that 'other stuff' second.
I've got a million stories from Parris Island. I could write a book...and maybe one day I will.
In fact, I shared one with the board on the occasion of the Marine birthday last year. Seriously, the place was a combination madhouse and comedy club. I mean Parris Island...not the board. Well maybe both, come to think of it.
Anyway, for this year's Marine birthday, here's another one, and as God is my witness and judge, it's absolutely true.
It happened around Christmas time (a holiday that is not terribly jolly for Marine recruits) after my Mom sent me a tin of chocolate chip cookies. (I knew they were chocolate chip cookies because she informed me in a prior letter.)
As per standard practice, the cookies were promptly confiscated by the drill instructors and placed in a clothes locker located in what was called their "house" (a sort of combination apartment-office) in the recruit barracks.
As the platoon "scribe," a Private designated to assist the DI's in certain record-keeping functions -- I got the job as the only college boy in the platoon -- I was the sole recruit authorized to enter the "house." So an idea took hold in my brain (and stomach) for moving the cookies from the DI locker to my mouth.
I put the plan into motion one afternoon shortly after Christmas when I pulled barracks watch, a duty that rotated among recruits and entailed standing watch over the premises and the M-16's tethered with locks to the racks (beds) while the platoon was at chow.
The idea was simple: enter the office, locate the cookies in the locker, rapidly consume them while leaving a small handful in the tin to cover my tracks, then execute a rapid get-away.
I knew speed was of the essence as it could never be ruled out that some random DI might saunter threw the barracks for whatever reason, and if I were to be caught rummaging through the DI locker, I would be the deadest of dead meat.
Nevertheless, we all have things we would risk our lives for: God, family, country....and for the idiots among us, a tin of home-made chocolate chip cookies.
So on that fateful day, I took a deep breath, darted into the office, frantically scanned through the locker, located the tin, removed the lid...and started shoveling cookies into my mouth at lightning speed.
No exaggeration: I crammed in probably 15 cookies in one minute's time, being careful to keep my mouth positioned above the tin itself so there would not be crumbs all over the place.
I left a layer of 5 or so at the bottom, reasoning that if one of the DI's were to open the tin, he would conclude that one of the other DI's had been helping himself to the cookies.
I wasn't worried about being found out after the fact because the DI's would never believe that any recruit could possibly be dumb, er, daring enough to risk his life and future for a batch of cookies.
In any case, after inhaling most of the cookies in the tin, I quickly put it back where I found it and scampered out of the office. Mission accomplished. The entire deed took maybe two minutes.
I never did get the tin back and sometimes wonder what happened to it and the remaining cookies contained therein. One thing for sure: I was not inclined to inquire on recruit graduation day.
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). Semper Fi, Devil Dawgs!
