My Life So Far, Vol. 5

My next duty station was with the Second Marine Air Wing in Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, North Carolina. As soon as I checked in with the squadron CO at Marine Wing Communications Squadron Twenty- eight, I asked to speak with the squadron legal officer. I explained my situation vis the Okinawa charges and asked what he could do. The man worked for me as if it was the most important thing in the Marine Corps. Although I have had trouble from many senior staff NCOs, the officers of the Marine Corps always treated me fairly and with the respect due to a fellow Marine.

After about three weeks my charges from Okinawa were dropped and expunged from my record. But the snide notations in my Service Record Book (SRB) were still there for other NCOs in on the lingo.

Life at Cherry Point was different than life in the Third Marine Division. The air wing did things in a more relaxed way. I began to make a mark on the radio shop with my knowledge of field expedient antennas. The big RIF caused all units in the Corps to have many unfilled billets for junior NCOs that they were not authorized to promote people to fill. There is a mechanism for putting a person in a job that that person’s rank is not high enough to fill. It is called brevet rank. In the 1970s, there were two methods of giving a person brevet rank, give him an official but temporary promotion that includes the pay and privileges or to give him the authority and responsibility only at work with none of the pay and privilege the rank entails outside of work. I didn’t qualify for the first one because of Gen. Wilson’s fat-body order. So I got to do the job of a Sargent with none of the pay or privilege of that rank.

In the month after I reported in a MWCS 28, we had a change of command ceremony for the squadron. The new Colonel was a veteran of Korea and Viet Nam. He boosted morale and performance significantly in six months. As I stood on the flight line of the auxiliary airstrip in the parade ceremony, I could see the mountains that I had called home since my parents moved there. I experienced homesickness for a place I had only visited once.

From Cherry Point I went on the big Exercise Solid Shield 1978. Marine Wing Communications Squadron 28 was loaded on the old WWII vintage LPA USS Francis Marion, named for the old Revolutionary War hero known as the Swamp Fox for his cavalry campaign in the Carolinas as and Georgia. The ship was manned by an all reserve crew. Marines were not treated as mere cargo on this float, we were cross trained in Naval MOSs as well. I stood radio watch on the bridge and changed out a bilge pump in the engine room.

When it came time for us to debark, LCM8s were brought alongside and we climbed over the side on cargo nets just like the Marines in WWII did. We made a combat assault of Onslow Beach North Carolina and moved by tactical tractor-trailer to Bogue Field on Camp Lejeune, NC. I had trained in Boot Camp to debark via cargo net, but this was the first and only time I ever did.

Later that fall, I was chosen to go on Operation Reforger 1978. This is the big NATO exercise in Europe where we pretended to defend against a Soviet attack. Marines were on the extreme left flank of the defense line, the Baltic coast, protecting the city of Hamburg from communist aggression. As a part of the Marine Air Wing, I set up communications with the sundry commands of the wing as well as the Marine Division doing the actual defense. One Bundes Luftwaffe colonel acting as referee refused to admit that Marine aviation could stop Russian tanks with bombs. I asked the Squadron CO for permission to speak, and when granted I said, auf deutch, “Sir, you may recall the effects of the Stukageswadern on French tanks in May, 1940. Marines invented dive bombing on land targets and your predecessors copied it from us.” The German was more angry that an enlisted man would correct him, and be right, than that he was wrong. But the showing of the Marines in Reforger ‘78 was so strong that Hamburg was deemed successfully defended by the referees.

To be continued…

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until September. If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. You can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.