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SEMPER FI
JUNE 10, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
Jim Fisher returned to Parris Island for a reunion marking the 40th anniversary of his being inducted into the U.S. Marines corps. As he reports, it stirred up a lot of memories for him and the other ex-Marines that gathered.
(BAND PLAYING)
JIM FISHER: This is a place of restless memories, Paris Island, South Carolina, former prison, United States Marine Corps recruit depot, a place where you were once told you'd leave marching or in a box. Many of those memories have disappeared over the years--the old quonset huts and tents. But what's here is essentially unchanged--the sentries at the gates, ranks of marching youngsters answering some inner call, and above all, the glue--the Marine Corps drill instructors, campaign hats, creases sharp enough to shave with, gleaming brass, and the always unforgetting eyes. Last month, these older men gathered for a reunion--black, white, and Hispanic, most retired, a few now nearing 80, but the majority in their 50's and 60's, no casual tourists these. No passers-by on their way to nearby Hilton Head Island. Just look at them--men at ease, salted. They know this place well. Well they should. These are former drill instructors, some veterans of World War II, some even survivors of the place called Iwo Jima. Here at the reunion they raise scholarship money, play golf, tour the base to make sure their corps is still squared away, have a few drinks, and tell wondrous tales about those scabby-headed, four-thumbed, worthless-as-warhog recruits that made their lives miserable, and who, for the most part, they turned into men. The DI's are older now, not quite so erect. Amazingly, like all of us, they've aged. They're different. These men unapologetic about their disdain for the get-along, go-along attitude that seems to pervade America now, and they'll talk about it, even retired Master Sergeant Stuart H. Floyd, senior drill instructor of Platoon 363 in 1956--my platoon.
MASTER SERGEANT STUART FLOYD: We had to take 'em off the street. We had to remove some of that what went with 'em, and then we had to instill something in them that we wanted them to learn but not forget.
MASTER SERGEANT WALT PADGETT: A drill instructor has to be part actor, like, like cleaning a urinal, making sure it's spotless, drinking out of it with a canteen and asking, asking a recruit if he ever seen a urinal that clean.
JIM FISHER: And what'd he say?
MASTER SERGEANT WALT PADGETT: He never had, but I made him fall in front of it with his canteen cup every morning. He never did drink out of it, but it had to be clean enough for him to drink out of. So you had to use mind games with them.
SERGEANT MAJOR LONNIE LONG: A drill instructor might be considered as a, as a very heartless person to a recruit over the first three weeks until he sees there's a point that he has to get to or she has to get to. Once, once they realize that there's a point that they have to get to, then you're not that monster that they thought you were that first day. The acting is over; leadership begins. And what we're leading 'em to is tomorrow's society in America.
MASTER SERGEANT MIKE WEST: You'll never forget the name of a drill instructor. You'll meet a lot of good Marines that you, that you go into combat with, but the years go by, I don't know, maybe your brain gets muddy, maybe you get a little older, but you, you forget their names. Oh, I remember old what's his name, but when it comes to who's your drill instructor, oh, Sgt. So and So--you never forget that guy.
JIM FISHER: No, I never forgot his name either. But I remember something else, perhaps apropos, now 40 years later, as America seems to be coming apart at the seams. Platoon 363 in a word was diverse. It was Hispanics and blacks, New England Yankees and a bunch of tough New York Jews, Carolina Crackers and Tennessee Mountain Boys. We would get along, Floyd told us, summing up the awful majesty of the Marine Corps in his cold eyes, no ifs, ands, or buts. And so we did, taking out our teen-age anger on him, which was probably what he intended all along. But there was a deeper lesson, one rarely seen now in this era of voluntary service, prerequisites of high test scores and character references and utter nonchalance most kids now seem to have about military service. In my day, most everybody went into the army, navy, air force, or marines. And the suburban kid was thrown in with the inner-city tough guy, the white with the black, educated with the not-so-educated. There was a leavening, one that would carry us into civilian life. Take me, I'd never been around blacks much, but below my bunk was that of Joe Forts, a big black kid from New Haven, Connecticut. How, after 14 weeks, could I look at Joe any other way than as somebody just like me--a Marine. (bugle playing) Who did that? These men--the soul of the Marine Corps. I'm Jim Fisher.
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