Looking back on why I became a Marine

As I get old­er I spend more time rem­i­nisc­ing about my younger days. I won­der if that’s an afflic­tion of every­one as they age?

More specif­i­cal­ly, I find myself won­der­ing what­ev­er pos­sessed me to join the Marine Corps. And even though I seem to be able to dis­cern a mul­ti­tude of rea­sons, I sus­pect that most of them were not fore­most in my mind at the time.

Two Marine recruiters came to our high school dur­ing my senior year. I remem­ber being thor­ough­ly impressed by their demeanor and uni­forms: trop­i­cal shirts with blue trousers with the red “blood stripe” down the side and shoes that shone bright­ly enough for one to see their reflec­tion in them. 

What young man could not be impressed by such pres­ence? Well, obvi­ous­ly not the oth­er 30 male mem­bers of my class who did not choose the same path, or who were per­haps not as impres­sion­able as I was.

At that time the draft was still in effect and though I was not yet 18 years of age, with­in a cou­ple of months fol­low­ing grad­u­a­tion I would be sub­ject to it. I had no desire to go into the Army, not because I had less respect for that ser­vice, but I knew that a draftee had lit­tle influ­ence on what sort of duty he would be sub­ject to and the idea of a four-year com­mit­ment was not par­tic­u­lar­ly appealing.

During those years, many young men, includ­ing me, were awed by the Air Force. Maybe things would have been dif­fer­ent if Air Force recruiters had appeared at school when the Marines did.

One oth­er high school bud­dy was inter­est­ed in the Marines and we were advised that enroll­ment in the Reserve was avail­able. Wow! Perfect! As things pro­gressed, Don enlist­ed about a month ahead of me, but we were for­tu­nate to be allowed to begin boot camp at the same time.

There was a Marine Reserve unit in Lexington at that time, the 61^st Rifle Company, and going into the reserve would allow me to assess my deci­sion dur­ing the six months that I would be on active duty, to deter­mine if a longer stint in ser­vice was some­thing for me. The alter­na­tive was that going back to the reserve unit would allow me to con­tin­ue with civil­ian pur­suits, either a job or col­lege, while I attend­ed one week­end a month of train­ing and two weeks of sum­mer train­ing at a Marine Corps base.

These were a cou­ple of con­sid­er­a­tions in mak­ing my decision.

Another was the his­to­ry of the Marine Corps. It pre­sent­ed itself as an elite unit, not a place for every­one. I had nev­er excelled at much in high school, being a mediocre stu­dent and not one who par­tic­i­pat­ed in any of the sports being offered. The Marines would cer­tain­ly be a chal­lenge and, I sus­pect, it pre­sent­ed a cer­tain roman­ti­cism to me. I can’t even imag­ine why I nev­er con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that I would not be able to com­plete Marine train­ing as it had a rep­u­ta­tion of being very tough.

There was lit­tle his­to­ry in my fam­i­ly of mil­i­tary ser­vice. I would be the first Marine, at least as far as I knew. Maybe there was a Witt some­where in the Marine archives in the dim past. I knew of only one uncle who served in the Army in World War I.

Looking back over those years, six years in the reserve, I think it was all worth it. During that time, I worked a cou­ple of jobs and con­tin­ued my edu­ca­tion, even earned a lit­tle spend­ing mon­ey as a reservist.

While I don’t wear my ser­vice on my sleeve, I do have pride in being a part of the orga­ni­za­tion. I think all Marines have that pride. I imag­ine that all the ser­vices devel­op their own brand of pride.

I remem­ber, at my 15^th high school reunion, one of my class­mates — a fel­low with whom I nev­er had good rela­tions with dur­ing our high school days — com­ment­ed, “When you got back from the Marines, you were a lot different.”

I don’t think he real­ly meant it as a com­pli­ment but that’s the way I took it because it was an acknowl­edge­ment that the Marines had changed me somehow.

I think — and hope — for the bet­ter. Guess I’ll just con­tin­ue to rem­i­nisce . . . and won­der whether the Marines changed me for the better.