Tribute to United States Marine Corps.
CONTRIBUTED BY CLYDE COOK
“Marine, How Did You Kill Your Mother?”
The winter of 1946, I was stationed at the French arsenal just outside the city of Tientsin, in northern China. It was an old fort built by the French during the Boxer Rebellion. The only compound I ever saw in the Marine Copps where the front gate was also the garbage dump. The war had completely destroyed the Chinese economy. People were starving and freezing, so we dumped our garbage there for the people to dig through. I’m sure it saved quite a few.
Our living quarters held ten men each and each one ha a Chinese houseboy to keep our living quarters clean. One day ours invited me over to his house in the village to meet his family. I could hardly wait to see how their people lived and how the Japanese treated them during the war. After a few drinks loosened our tongues, he got close to me and very confidentially asked, “Marine, how did you kill your Mother?” That floored me. I could not believe what I was hearing. I asked him “Where did you hear that?”. He replied, “is true, everybody knows marine has to kill mother to be a Marine. Wow! After that, every Chinese I knew, who could speak a little English, I asked if they had heard those rumors. “Is true, oh yes, is true – everyone knows” was their answer you must remember at this time the communists were tying to get us out of China – You know, those “Yankee Go Home” demonstrations.
Fast forward to spring of 1951. We stopped the Chinese offense and were moving up again. We had taken 15 Chinese prisoners. I was told to get my fire team and take them to the rear. Their heads were hanging low. They would not look up and kept stealing glances at the USMC sign on my dungaree jacket. I could see the fear and anxiety in their eyes. It dawned on me that these people were going to go rabbit on me. I did not want to have to shoot them. So I made them face me, then made a fist of my right hand with thumb extended, raised it in the air, and shouted “Tow shun ding how” (translated “you surrender very good). You would have thought the fairy godmother had touched them with her magic wand. You would never believe all the bowing and “ding-howing”, for at that instant, they knew the war was over for them. They started smiling and talking with their heads up. After a while, one got close to me and asked, “Marine, how you kill your mother?”
I certainly hope they survived the war and lived to a ripe old age.
That thumbs up sign started in WWII among Americans and Chinese, meaning everything is A-OK. Here my memory fails me, for I can’t remember how it got started.
THE COLONEL’S ORDERLY
It was late in December 1950 in Masan, South Korea. The First Marine Division had just fought their way out of the disaster called the Chosin Reservoir. I was one of three thousand replacements of the Third Replacement Draft, most of us were assigned to the 7th Marines.
The Chinese had come very close to achieving their objective of destroying the First Marine Division. Some of the line companies (infantry) had only a dozen men left. So the Corps was quickly building the units back up to strength so, once again, we could go into action.
One day a Jeep drove up with an officer and an enlisted man. They told us to muster the company, they wanted us to meet the Colonel’s new orderly. This one little man, who didn’t even look like a marine, looked more like the mal-nourished, illegitimate son of a Mississippi moonshiner, had held off an assault by the Chinese army with a machine gun and grenades, allowing his company to withdraw to the M.S.R. (main supply route). It was unbelievable the death and destruction he brought onto the Chinese army. They say he had killed more than 100 Chinese, had them stacked up like cordwood around his position. Anyway, he was promoted to sergeant, awarded the Navy Cross and made the Colonel’s orderly. It was a real inspiring story. It was a privilege and honor to shake the hand of this one-man army. But like I said before, he didn’t even look like a marine and he was not the Colonel’s orderly very long. But one lesson I did learn from this incident, you can’t judge the courage, character and tenacity of a man just by looking at him.
SEMPER FI
Cpl. Cook 609315 Lectures from the Good Fairy
USMC
We had been on the front lines for over a hundred days. The scuttlebutt was going up and down the lines that they were going to pull the 2nd Battalion 7th Marines off the line into regimental reserve because we had men dying in their foxholes from some form of bloody diarrhea. The idea was to give us some hot food, let the doctors look at us and give us some lectures on field sanitation. This rumor was true. We went back into regimental reserve. They had carved a stage out the side of a hill with dozers and set up mikes and amplifiers to make sure everyone could hear. Then they got the battalion around the stage close to 1,000 marines packed in like sardines. A corpsman came up to the mike and said “Men listen up, this is very important.” Then he introduced this Navy doctor to us. We noticed as he walked across the stage he looked like he was light in the loafers. He adjusted the mike then flipped a wrist, you could hear a stirring from the troops. Then he said “Now fellas, now fellas,” by now you could hear snickering everywhere. “Now fellas, you might not know it but you are all a bunch of sh__ -eaters when you hit the deck and crawl through those rice paddies that are fertilized with human waste. You all carry your toothbrush in your pencil pocket and it becomes contaminated with this waste. The laughter kept getting louder and louder. Nobody had ever told these doctors that toothbrush they saw in our our pocket was used to keep your weapons clean and nobody needed to tell us about rice paddies. The irony of it all a little Navy fairy calling us sh__ -eaters. The laughter turned into a roar with clapping and cheering. The officers and corpsmen lost control of the troops and could not get us to stop laughing. What the hell, how could they punish us, send us back to the front, which they did in a couple of days. The good fairy never did get to finish his lecture, so much for field sanitation.
I’ve often wondered what old salt arranged to have this particular doc speak. I’d be willing to bet if he is still living he’s still laughing. Anyway, to a bunch of tired, exhausted troops it was a great morale booster for it had been a long time since we had anything to laugh about. Pure genius!
NOTE: Evidently the doctors and corpsmen thought those toothbrushes they saw on the dead and wounded were used to brush our teeth. Their illness must have been the first sign of the Han River virus which they have isolated and diagnosed a few cases in this country a few years ago. I have never seen it mentioned in any of the history books I have read of the Korean War.
Semper Fi
Clyde Cook