I enlisted in the Marine Corps on the delayed entry program on April 9, 1975 prior to graduating from Tekamah-Herman High School.  I went to boot camp on July 25, 1975.  After three months of boot camp in San Diego, California, I had 10 days leave then I reported to 29 Palms California for Field Radio Operators Course (FROC) MOS 2531.  I reported to 29 Palms around November 1, 1975.  My classes started soon after that.  I believe the course was seven weeks long.  I was promoted to PFC (Private First Class) on December 1, 1975.  It was a big day to finally have a stripe on my sleeve.  I graduated first in my FROC class and was meritoriously promoted to L/CPL on June 22, 1976.  I had just sewn PFC stripes on my uniform and was now had to change it to the stripe and crossed rifles.

Because I graduated 1st in my class, I was given choice of duty station.  The choices I could pick from were Hawaii, Iwakuni, (Japan), and Okinawa.  I chose Iwakuni, Japan and arrived sometime in February of 1976.  I was assigned to MWCS-18 (Marine Wing Communications Squadron 18).  My unit was training at Mt Fuji and when I arrived I got assigned to mess duty for one month.  I spent 30 days straight cleaning pots and pans for the one chow hall on base.  Those were long days as I worked before sun up to late into the night.  But 30 days goes by real fast when all you do is work and sleep.  With the wing, there was no PRC-25 or PRC-77 (for encrypted coded messages) radios so I started getting trained on the TSC-15 van (25 34 mos).  Now our unit was training for an operation in Korea in July of 1976.  This would be a large joint exercise with ROK (Republic of Korea) Marines.  Sometime in late June, 1976, our unit was transported to Taegu, Korea and we truck-convoyed to Pusan, Korea.  At this time I recall seeing locals in the rice paddies with their oxen.  I also remember seeing locals cleaning their clothes on rocks in the dirty ditch water.  Our base camp was set up Pusan and I recall the ocean being close and there was also a steel-matted air strip.  While on radio duty in the TSC 15 van the ROK Marines would be running to the beach with their rubber life rafts to train.  They must of also been training paratroopers as a couple of the days there were hundreds of ROK Marines parachuting into our landing zone.  This joint exercise was occurring in early July, 1976 and it was then that I and fellow Marines figured out that it was the 4th of July back home.  We were all  wishing we were back home celebrating the 200th birthday of the United States of America.  We  sat around and drank beer and pretended we were watching the fireworks.  Our unit went back to Iwakuni on the USS Fredrick , a LST ship (landing ship tank).  I don’t remember how long our return trip was but I know it took longer than the plane that took us over to Korea.  When my unit returned to Iwakuni we prepared to move the entire unit to Okinawa.

There are several bases on Okinawa and I was stationed at Camp Zukeran.  My son Ross was on Okinawa in 2010 on one of the deployments and I asked him to look up my old base.  He told me I was crazy and there was no such base on the island.  After some research I found that the camp was renamed to Camp Foster and Marine Wing Communication Squadron 18 is still housed there.  From some pictures I could find on the internet, it appeared to have some newer structures and I don’t think my old barracks still stand.

With our transition to Okinawa we started preparing for a joint exercise with the Australians and would be going to the land down under in November of 1976.  The nicest part of being part of the wing is that we usually fly to our destination and the grunts take the ships.  No disrespect to the grunts as I have two sons that chose that MOS. (What were they thinking?)  But as we said in the Corps, “fly with the wing.”  In November we departed for Australia in several C-141 cargo planes.  We routed through Guam with a short layover in route to Australia.  We had technical difficulty when we left and had to turn around and fly back to Guam for repairs.  So instead of being the 2nd plane of our group to land in Australia, we ended up last.  While on Guam, I witnessed the B-52 bomber taking off on missions.  That is one massive plane. 

We landed at Rock Hampton, Australia on the eastern side.  A lot of civilians showed up for arrival as it was quite a huge plane on a small airport.  A nice thing with the joint exercises now with the Australians rather than  Koreans was we could communicate the same language.  Those bloody Australians loved to get pissed up (drunk) with us Yanks.  It was a lot of fun down under, and we’ll leave it at that.  I returned back to Okinawa and remember trying to make a MARS (communications center) call to my folks that Christmas of 1976.  It was one-way communications back in that day.  “Hi, Mom and Dad! over” and then they could talk.  The communications have come a long way as I recall our son Ross calling when he was in the rough in Afghanistan in 2010/2011.  He called home in what was to us the middle of the night on a satellite phone.  After Christmas I would become what you call a short timer with a little over 30 days left on Okinawa.  In early February I was promoted to Corporal E-4 meritoriously, so I would be checking into my unit back in the states as a NCO (non commissioned officer).