Chapter Two
Tank Training
When we got to Jacque's Farm, we had to put up our own pyramidal tents. These were 14 x 14 feet square, 4-feet tall at the four sides, and about 12-feet tall at its peak. Ours already had a deck with 4-feet stud walls (open) with a 2 x 4 running from each corner to the peak. There were about eight rows of tents cut into the side of the mesa like giant stair steps.
Our day started before daylight and lasted until after dark. The only check on us was morning roll call in the dark, where the first sergeant read our names by flashlight. One guy went AWOL for 29 days (over 30 days was classified as desertion). When he got back he reported in 30 minutes after liberty had expired. He got only three days "piss and punk" for coming in 30 minutes late — because his buddy had been answering "Here" for him for 28 days.
There was a small conical hill near our outside classroom called "Nellie's teat." If someone was caught sleeping (or for other reasons), everyone had to run to the top and back.
Major Beale was agony for second lieutenants, but he was very protective of his enlisted men. Once we were at the driving range, about two miles up the valley, when the tank we were training with threw a track. By the time we got back it was too late for evening chow. Major Beale went to the mess sergeant and had him cook us steak and eggs — the only time we had steak while there.
We had a sentry post up on the mesa behind our tents. One night the OD [officer of the day] found the sentry asleep. Instead of waking him up, he took the bolt from his rifle and went to get the sergeant-of-the-guard as a witness. Before that, however, the PFC woke up, rushed down the side of the mesa (about 100 yards), borrowed his buddy's rifle bolt, and got back to his post before the OD had returned. He yelled "Halt!" at the OD three times, but when the OD didn't stop, he put a round through the windshield of the jeep between the OD and the sergeant-of-the-guard. He beat the court martial.
We drove tanks around on the top of the mesa, where it was always dusty. One day a driver couldn't see where he was going and went off the side of the mesa at an angle. The tank turned corner-to-corner somersaults down the side of the mesa, right through the tent area while taking out two tents per row, then landed upright and ran through the post office. Only one man was hurt when he tried to bail out and the tank hit his arm and broke it. The other four men were scratched and bruised but otherwise unhurt.
We graduated from tank school at the end of March and were transferred to the 5th Tank Battalion, 5th MarDiv, then in the process of being formed at Camp Joseph H. Pendleton, Rancho Santa Margarita, Oceanside, CA.
The tank battalion was at Aliso Canyon (eight miles from mainside) and I was assigned to the 4th platoon, Company C. Our CO's name was Captain Edward C. Nelson, and our executive officer was LT Hazaleus. The first platoon leader was 2ndLT Long; the 2nd platoon leader was 2ndLT Short; and the 3rd platoon leader was 2ndLT Baker. My platoon leader was 2ndLT Anderson.
Most of our training here was gunnery (I was our tank's gunner) for the gunners, driving for drivers and assistant drivers. The loader got his training with the gunner. We had tank-infantry training with the 28th Marines (infantry), "A" Company was with 26th Marines and "B" Company with the 27th Regiment.
Apple-Eater
We had some "snooping and pooping" — night dismounted training sneaking through another company's bivouac areas. One night PFC Janeolowicz (from boot camp) caught a skunk. He killed it, skinned it and draped the skin atop his steel helmet like Davy Crockett. His tent mates threw him out. He later went to OCS and we never saw him again.
One night we snooped and pooped (in three-man teams) through "A" company to a tank trail about five miles from camp and then back again. Our team went through and back with no trouble. One of the others in my team was on mess duty and he went inside the mess tent to see if we could get a snack before hitting the rack. The only thing he could get was an apple apiece. We walked to the tent area where the company had just fallen out to go look for us (we were the last ones back). The XO yelled "Stockton, what are you eating?"
"An apple sir" I replied. Next morning a detail (shots or something) had to go mainside. As he called off the names, he said "That includes you, too, Apple-Eater." From then on I was known as "Apple-Eater." I think most of the men in the company never knew my real name.
We'd go on liberty to Los Angeles (Ciudad De Los Flores De Los Angeles) or LA. One of our guys had a 1935 Ford roadster, and one night we were going up Highway 101 when we came around a curve, on a foggy road, and a mule was standing in our lane. We hit it and rolled the car about four times down on the beach. The mule went over the car. We thought we'd killed it, but he got up and ran off. The car was totaled. Although we all had some minor bruises and scratches, none of us was seriously injured.
In LA at this time were "Zoot Suiters," so-called because of the way they were dressed. They wore flat-crowned, very wide-brim hats, their coats were long with swallow-tails that reached their knees and had extremely wide-padded shoulders. Their pants had about four, four-inch pleats and tapered down to a very tight cuff. Each wore a watch chain that hung in a loop from his coat pocket on the left to his knees and back up to the pants pocket on the right. They wore their hair long, greased and swept back — what we called a DA haircut (for "duck's ass," not district attorney, because that's what they looked like).
While here our colonel (W.B. Collins) had a goat. Every time one of the units spent the night on bivouac, when they returned they found that the colonel's goat had used someone's bunk for a commode. The goat went missing. The word was the goat used the mess sergeant's bunk and the fresh lamb chops we had were really . . . Naw, he wouldn't do that — would he?
Shipping out
Finally our stateside training was finished in July 1944, and we drove the tanks down to the beach to go aboard LSMs for the trip to Hawaii. Most of our supplies were shipped out of Dago and it took several days and many convoys to move them to the dock. Someone had run out of
gas on a motorcycle between Camp Pendleton and Dago and
Captain Nelson stopped the convoy, loaded it on one of the
trucks and took it to Hawaii. He drove it all over Hawaii's
Big Island.
Our camp on the Big Island was Camp Tarawa. It was located on the Parker Ranch, said to be the second largest cattle ranch in the world, second only to the King Ranch in Texas. It was located at Kamuela, a town of about 100 souls. It was said the U.S. leased Camp Tarawa for $1 a year. The only other
stipulation was that we were to leave all permanent structures (Quonsets, maintenance sheds, motor pool, etc.). Here in the paradise (?) of lovely (?) hula maidens, swaying palm trees (or is it lovely palm trees and swaying hula maidens?) we began our advanced training to prepare for war.
I don't know why the mess sergeant fed us this, whether he couldn't get anything else, or if he was putting some of the mess fund in his pocket. However, for about six months we ate Spam, pineapple, and tomatoes three times a day. For breakfast we had fried Spam, stewed tomatoes and sliced pineapple. For supper it was Spam and breaded tomatoes and diced pineapple. I think the Red Cross woman was giving the mess sergeant a few favors, because he used our flour, spices and mess men to cook doughnuts for her to pass out in the Red Cross hut.
The Red Cross woman was something else. She would drive up in the jeep assigned to her, lift both feet together and spin around to get out. Her knees were usually about 18 inches apart, and she didn't wear underwear.
Our camp was located 5,000 feet above sea level and only eight miles from Kawaihae Beach. We were high enough that most of the time we were above the clouds, except when we were dressed in freshly pressed khakis and stepped out of the tent to go on liberty. It was almost always the same . . . a cloud would swirl around us and we were soaked to the skin. Our water supply was via snow run-off from the Kohala Mountains and was ice cold. We had no water heater for our showers, so shaving and showering was an adventure.
Our showers were located at the end of the tent rows, but since no women were in the camp area (except Red Cross girls at their huts) we'd strip off our clothes in the tent, throw a towel across our shoulder, grab our shaving gear and head for the showers. One guy used a straight razor and was shaving one day when a fly landed on his rear end. He instinctively tried to flip it off with his straight razor, which resulted in slicing a biscuit-sized chunk off his posterior.
Some Marines had a weird sense of humor. Two guys were good friends and were always pulling jokes on each other. One of them always slept bare (except for his socks in case his feet got cold in the 80-degree heat). He was asleep one day on his back when his buddy took a boondocker (boot) and tied a string to it. He made a loop on the string's other end, looped it over his buddy's manhood, then sat the boondocker on the sleeper's chest. His buddy woke up, saw the boot on his chest, grabbed and threw it — and came flying out of his bunk after it.
In early October 1944 at morning formation, the XO said for all men who wanted to vote in the presidential election to fall out. I fell out with the rest although I wouldn't turn 18 until 26 December. The executive officer said "Apple-Eater, you're not old enough to vote."
"Sir," I replied, "in 1943 the Georgia legislature passed a law lowering the voting age to 18. They said if a man was old enough to die for his country, he was old enough to vote for who ran it. And with all due respect, sir, I'm going to vote in my first presidential election."
He sent the company clerk to call Division Headquarters to see if this was correct. When the clerk confirmed this, he said, "Well I'll be god-damned." This was the only time I ever heard Lt. Hazeleus use profanity. (Footnote: Before the next presidential election, the national voting age had followed Georgia's and been lowered to age 18)
Tank-retriever lugs a sick tank
Camp Pendleton, 1944
Readying for war — Jim Stockton (3rd from right, in jeep's rear seat) while with 5th TkBn, 5th MarDiv at Camp Pendleton, 1944
January 1944 — Brig time for
Jim Stockton (right) and PVT Odie
J.L. Ausbrooks of Paducah, KY
Parker Ranch, founded 150 years ago by John Palmer Parker and his wife Kipikane, granddaughter of King Kamehameha, began as a small parcel of land which soon grew to 650 acres. In the 1830s, Mexican vaqueros came to the Big Island to teach the Hawaiians how to manage the ever-growing herds that originated from the cattle given to King Kamehameha by Captain George Vancouver. The Hawaiian cowboys became known as paniolo, long before cattle ranching began in the American West. Today the 225,000-acre ranch is the largest privately owned cattle ranch in the United States.
Rodeo Marines at Camp Tarawa, Parker Ranch,
on the Big Island, Hawaii, WWII
Liberty at Pendleton leads jarheads to Tijuana. . .
