Some guys are influenced by rock stars. Some by coaches. Me? I was influenced by a Marine — my uncle Jack Rice.
Jack wasn’t just any Marine. He was a WWII combat correspondent, a writer, and a man connected to the higher-ups in the Corps. But more than that, he was like a father to me. My real one left when I was a teen. Jack stayed.
So when I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1968, his shadow was always there. I graduated boot camp in November and landed in Camp Pendleton in January of ’69 for ITR — Infantry Training Regiment. Let me tell you, don’t ever believe that song about it never raining in Southern California. It rained, it froze, it sucked.
Days were spent map reading, humping hills, firing every weapon the Corps could put in our hands. Nights were spent shivering in San Onofre under a plague of spinal meningitis. Misery doesn’t even cover it.
And then — out of nowhere — my uncle Jack shows up. With permission. He takes me out for a night of steak and beer. Like a rescue mission.
Why was he there? Because Jack Rice was the only civilian journalist allowed to sit down with Captain Lloyd Bucher, skipper of the USS Pueblo. A floating CIA station, they called it later. At the time, all we knew was “the Koreans are harassing us.” In truth, the Pueblo crew had endured capture, beatings, and humiliation at the hands of the North Koreans. Captain Bucher felt the weight of it so deeply that he later took his own life.
But that night in San Diego, Jack couldn’t talk about it. He’d been sworn to secrecy until he was debriefed. So he didn’t mention Koreans or CIA or captivity. We just talked about home. Family back in St. Louis. My mom, his sister. My six siblings. The roof over our heads that he helped keep there with his writing checks.
For me, it was a night of salvation. Out of the mud and the cold, into a warm booth with steak and beer, laughing with the man who shaped me.
Later, years later, over bourbon and Southern Comfort with him and my mom, I got the full story of that Pueblo interview. But the details aren’t what matter here. What mattered was that in the middle of my Marine misery, my uncle Jack Rice reminded me of who I was, where I came from, and why I signed up.
They call me “Forest Grump” because I’ve lived through so many oddball, right-place-right-time moments. This was one of them. And I’ll never forget it.