by Jack McLean
Vietnam would probably be over in six months, a year at most. The only war of my generation would be concluded before I had the chance to go.
Minutes later, I said, “I do,” and began a clock ticking that would end one hundred twenty days later when I too would report to South Station for the long ride to Parris Island, South Carolina.
5
THE FOLLOWING DAY, TO THE STUNNED DISBELIEF OF faculty and students, I returned to school with my news.
“You did what?”
“Come on. You’re kidding, right?”
“Jack, you can’t be serious?”
I was eagerly looking for some reassurance, any reassurance, about my decision, especially from the faculty. I didn’t expect my classmates to understand what I had done—I could barely grasp it myself—but many on the faculty were veterans. They proudly evoked their service every Memorial Day by donning their old uniforms and marching in a parade down Main Street. The headmaster was a retired colonel and a West Point graduate.
Jack Richards and Tom Lyons, both history instructors and strong supporters of me academically and personally, understood my decision. “Not an everyday thing around here, Jack, but a brave decision,” they said. That was really all that I needed—some assurance that I hadn’t completely lost my mind.
My graduating class comprised 251 boys. Of that number, more than fifty made the decision to attend Harvard University, twenty-five would go to Yale, twenty to Princeton, and twelve to Stanford. Matriculation to those four institutions alone represented more than 40 percent of the graduating class. The balance was evenly spread among many of the other most competitive colleges and universities in the land, including MIT, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Amherst, Duke, and Columbia.
By the beginning of May, many seniors began to evoke an increased identity with their new institution. College T-shirts appeared. Boys who were headed to Yale began to act like Yalies—treating their Harvard- and Princeton-bound classmates with mock disdain.
“When was the last time your ice hockey team beat ours?” Ice hockey was king at Andover.
These dialogues did not include me.
The last big game won by my new team had been the Second World War.
There were two marines who took particular interest and pride in my pending military service. One was Fred Stott, a family friend and member of the Andover administration who had worked closely with my father on alumni matters for many years. He and his family had been especially kind to me during my five-year academic struggle at Andover. Fred had served with distinction in the Marine Corps during World War II, having been awarded the Navy Cross in Saipan. He also had been wounded and evacuated from Iwo Jima. He was quick to support my decision. No doubt he also made a consoling telephone call to my stunned father.
The other was United States Marine colonel Hank Aplington. Colonel Aplington was a distant cousin of my mother’s from Derby Line, Vermont, the small town that sat across the border from her childhood home in Stanstead, Quebec. He and his family would make an annual summer day trip to our cottage there. This was the extent of my relationship with him. I had not really been aware at that time that he was in the United States Marine Corps, although I do have a vivid memory of him standing in his bathing suit on our dock by the lake with a rock-hard body and a shaved head. Aplington was, in fact, a full colonel and, as I learned many years later, a highly decorated survivor of the World War II Pacific campaigns. He had been awarded both the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for gallantry in combat, in addition to several Purple Hearts.
He heard news of my enlistment and sent the following letter of introduction to me. In retrospect, it was an extraordinarily perceptive view into the marrow of one of America’s outstanding institutions.
APO San Francisco
June 25, 1966
Letter from Col. Henry Aplington II, USMC
As of today I have been in the Marine Corps for twenty-six years. I’d like to take the occasion to welcome you to the USMC and give you my thoughts, which you may use or not as you may wish.
The men who have passed through our Corps have found it a rewarding and lasting experience. You will hear the expression, “Once a Marine, always a Marine” and it is true. As you embark on your military career, there are two things which you should keep in mind. First is that from the moment you signed your enlistment contract, you established a permanent record which can rise to plague you in the future or to which you can point as a matter of pride or reference. Second, the Corps has its fair share of no-goods who may be easy to gravitate to. Unfortunately, they and their friends usually end up in trouble. Take care to avoid them.
The great majority, however, without the advantages that you have had, are doing their darndest to improve themselves in every way. These are the ones to associate with. I have been impressed with the great number of men, some without the benefit of a high school education, who have by intelligence and hard work stood very high in the most difficult technical schools.
You will find the Corps a new experience. Military service has many features which have no counterpart in civilian life. In a way, it is like your prep school experience in that you are a part of it twenty-four hours a day. Unlike school, however, it is oriented toward the accomplishment of a mission, not toward the education of its members per se.
This leads your superiors to take a different view of you from that which your masters had and I think that it is worth reflecting on the way you will look to your superiors. They don’t care who you are or where you came from. Their interest is in what sort of job you do and what sort of a Marine you are. They are engaged in a serious purpose, preparing a fighting machine, so that they are impressed by an individual only as he contributes to the functioning of that machine. They do not have the time or the interest to try to develop a man who is not interested, trying to help himself, or follow regulations. They have all the time in the world, however, to work with those who are interested in trying. A man must make or break himself.
The Marine Corps is big and proud with years of experience. It can be impersonal, but it knows what it wants. It has regulations to be followed. Many may look silly to you. Most, however, are there because they have been proven as effective ways to accomplish the mission; to fight and win wars. Things will be done the way the Marine Corps wants them done. If you do what you are told to the best of your ability, you will get along and it will be a rewarding experience. Otherwise you will get run over by the system and it won’t hurt the system a bit.
You are now part of a long line of Marines who have served their country in wars all over the world. This is a great time to come into the Corps. The Marines are doing what they exist to do here in Vietnam with pride and professionalism.
Welcome to the club.
Throughout my time in the Marine Corps, my mind would wander back to Aplington’s letter. He made a key distinction between my life before the moment of my enlistment and my life beyond. Up to that point, I had been overseen by my family, friends, and Andover faculty. That would soon change. The Marine Corps cared about me as a vehicle to their own ends—winning wars. It was important, consequently, that I be well trained, well fed, well disciplined, well behaved, and that I follow orders.
The Marine Corps cared about the Marine Corps.
It was an important early lesson for this innocent child of privilege.
In early June, I learned that my fears about graduating from Andover had been warranted. I had failed trigonometry and would not graduate with my class on June 6, 1966. I still attended the graduation ceremony with my classmates, but received an empty envelope. Barby and my parents came. Though my grandparents had come up to Brookline from Elizabeth, New Jersey, my father asked that they not attend, “given the circumstances.”
It was a most unhappy day.
I, however, was relieved that I actually had passed four out of my five courses—was quietly thrilled, in fact. And really, who needed trigonometry?
My American-history t
eacher was Tom Lyons, even then a legend at Andover. When he informed me that I had passed his rigorous course that spring with a 63 average (60 was passing), he said that I had earned every point of it. Several weeks later, I received the following letter from him:
Dear General McLean,
I know I echo the entire faculty’s sentiments when I state that Andover is no prouder of any member of this class than of Private McLean. You showed a lot of people—adolescents and adults—something about character and courage in your stay here.
I wish you the best of luck in your math exam and in the months ahead, from Parris Island on. Come back and see us when you can. Our best wishes are always with you.
Sincerely,
Field Marshal Thomas von Lyons
Lyons gained a degree of national notoriety years later when candidate George W. Bush, in a rare public acknowledgment of his Andover experience, referred to Lyons in a New York Times article as his most outstanding teacher.
On July 2, 1966, I sat for my math makeup exam and passed with flying colors. Later that afternoon, the headmaster called me into his office and handed me my high school diploma.
Six weeks later, my father drove the short distance from Brookline to Boston’s South Station to deliver me into the hands of Sergeant Miller. Miller welcomed our small group to active duty, presented us with our “official orders,” and saw to it that we actually boarded the train.
Fifteen hours later, after a layover in New York and a train change in Washington, D.C., our connecting bus arrived at the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.
6
THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT at Parris Island, South Carolina, occupies the entire 6,600 acres of a flat sandy Atlantic barrier island, located between Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. Its mission is to train all incoming marine recruits from east of the Mississippi River. The Marine Corps described Parris Island as a place to “indoctrinate the recruit with the essential knowledge derived from almost two centuries of experience in training fighting men, and to inculcate in the individual that intangible ‘esprit de corps’ that is the hallmark of United States Marines.”
To those of us who served, it was simply hell on earth.
Recruit training at Parris Island was tough, exhausting, and excruciatingly exacting. Its mission was to produce America’s first line of defense. A Marine Corps motto was “First to Fight.” This is where boys became ready, willing, and able to do so—at a moment’s notice.
Historically, the spit of land was noteworthy. The first attempt to colonize South Carolina occurred with the discovery of Parris Island in 1526 by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, a Spaniard in search of slaves and gold. It was later briefly colonized by a group of French Huguenots who built a fort on its southeastern tip.
The first title to the island was granted in 1700. In 1715, the title passed to Alexander Parris—hence the name. Seven plantations flourished for more than 175 years until 1891, when the marines landed with a small detachment to defend a naval station there. By 1915, the island had become the recruit depot for the Marine Corps.
Over the following three years, nearly forty-one thousand recruits were trained there to man the American effort in World War I. After a postwar lull, the recruit load skyrocketed following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During the balance of that month alone, 5,272 recruits arrived. The following month the number reached 9,206. During the period 1941–1945, more than two hundred thousand marine recruits were trained on Parris Island.
Recruitment dropped at the end of World War II. When the Korean Conflict began, there were only two thousand recruits on the island. By March 1952, however, the number had ballooned again to more than twenty-four thousand. In all, more than 138,000 marines were trained during Korea.
Now Vietnam.
Our first week on Parris Island was a blur. Vázquez de Ayllón and his crew may have been ecstatic at their first sight of land viewed across the water from the east in 1526. Those of us on the charter bus crossing the causeway from the west in August 1966, however, were apprehensive at best—scared shitless at worst.
Count me among the scared shitless.
We reached Parris Island sometime after midnight and were screamed off the bus by Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant W H. Hilton.
“If you are smoking a cigarette, you will put it out; if out of the bus you are chewing gum, you will swallow it. You have thirty seconds to get off this bus, maggots, and fifteen have already passed. Move. Move. MOVE.”
And move we did, clambering over one another as though escaping a fire, grabbing our bags from the overhead bin and tumbling out of the bus onto the painted yellow footprints that were lined up in perfect platoon formation. There were several dazed stragglers who seconds before had been in a sound sleep. I have a vivid memory of Staff Sergeant Hilton grabbing one of them by the neck as he hit the bottom step and throwing him to the pavement.
Straggling, apparently, was not tolerated.
There had been joking on the trip down about what was in store for us—the perverse kind of banter unique to teenage boys. We all had heard stories about Parris Island; some had direct knowledge through friends or family members who had served. We were confident that we knew what was coming and were prepared to take it on. We were … marines.
Sort of.
In fact, we would not officially be marines until we graduated from Parris Island. Of that we were constantly reminded. Although we were to hold the rank of private and were to be paid accordingly ($96.50 a month), one had to learn to be a marine before ever being accepted as one within. Here, “learn” meant “earn,” as I never knew before.
Once we were assembled on the footprints, Staff Sergeant Hilton asserted his authority over us as a group. We were one hundred ten boys, but by the time we graduated, we would be one.
That was made clear.
For the next several days, the only words spoken by any of us would be a resounding “YES, SIR” to any request or question that came out of Staff Sergeant Hilton’s mouth. Otherwise there was silence. That evening, we were herded in loose formation through the double doors of the receiving building. Every motion was a lesson—how to open a door the Marine Corps way, how to hold it, how to move in a straight and tight line. (“Asshole to belly button, ladies. Asshole to belly button!”)
Our clothes were removed, bundled, and sent home. We were given a pen and a postcard upon which to write a single line home saying that we had arrived safely. Our heads were shaved clean. Wrapped in towels, we were led to the showers to wash off the last of our “civilian scuz.”
As we emerged, we passed through a gauntlet of navy corpsmen who gave us a number of shots in each arm. I had an aversion to needles and immediately, instantly abhorred corpsmen and all that was navy. That naïve opinion would change shortly after arriving in Vietnam, where I witnessed the selfless valor of the United States Navy Medical Corps. No group of individuals—marines included—ever brought greater honor to the United States Marine Corps than the navy field corpsmen.
Still wrapped in towels, we emerged from the initial processing center and walked across the parade deck to enter a cavernous supply warehouse. The now cool night air felt strangely fresh against our denuded, clean bodies. We were ordered to hold our arms out straight before us and sidestep on command. With each step, a marine would throw an additional article onto the growing bundle of military clothes that bore some resemblance to our size.
Combat boots, however, were the one exception—they were carefully fitted and issued. This was the first of two important lessons—that healthy feet and clean rifles were nonnegotiable in the Marine Corps.
Dog tags were stamped and hung around our necks, where they would remain until we were released from active duty or killed. I wear mine to this day. We were given sheets, towels, toothbrushes, soap, canteens, mess kits, razors, shaving cream, shoe polish, and all manner of necessities that would be req
uired in our new life. We were not issued a hairbrush. Our arms, still outstretched, ached. Our heads pounded. Staff Sergeant Hilton screamed. We were neither fast enough nor good enough. We would NEVER become marines!
At the last stop we were given a seabag in which to put our new possessions. We filed outside and again fell into formation on the yellow footprints, this time more quickly and with an air of familiarity.
I had never before been in the coastal South, so the pungent early-morning low country smells mixed with military web gear that first entered my senses that morning made an indelible imprint on me, a smell I can occasionally conjure up even today.
We marched in our scratchy new outfits, seabags weighing heavily upon our shoulders, to a building across the base that would become our barracks. The stark intensity of the occasional spotlight provided the only illumination. There was no sound except the marching cadence of boots on pavement, the rustling of clothes, and the occasional clanging of a canteen. There were no more little jokes or asides among my new comrades. Staff Sergeant Hilton had by this time made vivid examples of several more boys.
We were very tired.
Home was very far way.
My platoon, number 3076, consisted of one hundred ten boys of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Andover prided itself on attracting “youth from every quarter,” but the mosaic of America that was this platoon helped me understand how culturally limiting my prep school experience had been. Here, we really were from every quarter: sons of coal miners, truck drivers, farmers, convicts, factory workers, and sharecroppers from every conceivable ethnic enclave in America. There, however, the differences ended.
At any given moment of any day, we wore exactly the same clothes: white boxers and T-shirts to bed; utility pants, T-shirts, and combat boots during the day; shorts, T-shirts, and sneakers for physical training. Any self-imposed attempt at identity was stripped. We each had a footlocker at the base of our bunks in which we had exactly the same gear—down to the size and color of our toothbrushes. Noses, lips, and ears seemed disproportionate in size, given the absence of hair.