People have asked me over the years why I joined the Marine Corps instead of another branch of the military.
🪖 Brothers In Arms • Field Notes from Those Who Served
The answer is pretty simple.
I was a terrible student in high school.
Not because I wasn’t smart. I was just bored to death. I did only enough to graduate and finished with the bare minimum credits required for a diploma. My grades weren’t good enough to get into college, and to be honest, I didn’t want to go. The last thing I wanted was more school.
I wanted adventure.
By then, two young men I knew had already been killed in Vietnam. Every night the television news showed another report from a war that seemed to be growing bigger by the day. Like a lot of young men my age, I wanted to know what was really happening over there.
If I was going to serve, I wanted to serve with the best.
The Army never really appealed to me. I didn’t want to be just another “dogface.” I wanted the toughest training, the highest standards, and the greatest challenge I could find.
To me, that meant one thing.
The United States Marine Corps.
There was another reason.
My Uncle Jack had been a Marine during World War II. I looked up to him, and if the Marine Corps was good enough for Uncle Jack, it was good enough for me.
“If I was going to serve, I wanted to serve with the best.”
So, without telling my parents, I walked into the Marine Corps Recruiting Office in downtown St. Louis and enlisted.
The Marine Corps offered two-, three-, and four-year enlistments.
I didn’t hesitate.
I signed for four years.
If I was going to do it, I wanted the full experience.
Because I was already eighteen years old, I didn’t need my parents’ permission.
I enlisted in May 1967 under the 120-Day Delayed Entry Program, which meant I wouldn’t report to boot camp until September. That gave me one last summer as a civilian, working as a lifeguard at a country club swimming pool.
It was a great summer.
I had no idea how much my life was about to change.
When I finally told my parents I’d enlisted, their reaction wasn’t what I expected.
They were furious.
My father, a World War II Navy veteran, looked at me and shouted,
“Don’t you know there’s a war going on?”
I think, deep down, he was also disappointed that I hadn’t chosen the Navy, the branch in which he had proudly served.
My mother simply shook her head.
To her, I was making the biggest mistake of my life.
Maybe she was just scared.
Looking back now, I can’t blame either of them.
Parents have a way of seeing dangers their children can’t.
On September 18, 1967, I climbed aboard a bus headed for the airport.
From there I flew to San Diego.
Another bus carried me through the gates of Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego.
A few minutes later I found myself standing on a pair of painted yellow footprints.
That was where my military adventure began.
Little did I know that those footprints would eventually lead me to Vietnam, a very different Marine Corps than the one I imagined, and experiences that would stay with me for the rest of my life.
At eighteen, I thought I was choosing a branch of service. I had no idea I was choosing the course of the rest of my life.
Every veteran has a different reason for raising their right hand. This article reflects my personal decision to join the United States Marine Corps in 1967 and the events that set me on a path I could never have imagined.
Continue the Journey
- Fort Benjamin Harrison DINFOS — The unexpected MOS that changed my military career before it really began.
- Boot Camp Didn’t Prepare Me for Vietnam — Arriving in Vietnam, culture shock near the DMZ, and discovering that war played by a different set of rules.
- Rank Over Right: The Marine Corps’ Quiet Purge — One simple command taught discipline, teamwork, and attention to detail.
- For the Marines: Uncle Jack, the Pueblo, and a Night Out of ITR — The people and events that influenced my decision to wear the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.