Greg & Daylin, Ann Arbor, MI, January 1973

As you can see, some snow is on the ground.  Daylin, with the super-long blond hair in this picture, was accepted, with a full scholarship, to the University of Michigan for graduate school.  All of the years of hard work and long hours of study at East L.A.J.C. and USC had paid off handsomely.  He was on his way.  I still had no idea what I was going to do, though this year would be decisive.

Now that the draft was over and I had spent my time at Marine OCS--and the Vietnam War was now winding down so significantly--I really did not have to worry about military service any longer.

What I should have done in those days, if I could get into a time machine now and travel back to meet up with my younger self then and offer some sound advice, was to go back to school at Cal State Dominguez Hills, get a Master's Degree in history or the humanities, such as I would from 1974-1978 while in the service, and then become a junior college instructor, as I would do part time from 1980-1991, in Colorado Springs.

That's the real regret I probably have now, given all that was to happen to me in those intervening years. 

While I enjoyed my time in the Air Force and wanted very much to serve 20 years at least and then retire, it did not work out that way for me.  Being gay when there were no legal protections, not even DADT, my career would simply be a diversionary path.  And I would find that I loved teaching but could not get a full-time job in the 1980's in Colorado Springs or around Denver in the 1990's and 2000's.  Had I still lived in California, where new community colleges were being built all the time and just about everywhere across the Golden State, I would likely have been hired decades ago and been able to teach for 30 years and then retire. 

I mistakenly fixated on a military career and then ended up so far off course for the rest of my life.  I never was able to get back to the Academy or back into the Air Force, even now with DADT overturned.  And I have not been able to get a full time teaching job no matter how many applications I have submitted and how much teaching experience I have had.

When this picture above was taken, while I was marking time by trying to get into the Coast Guard and then again trying for the Air Force, was when I could have made the switch to become a teacher instead.  I was still living at home in South Gate.  Mom would not have minded if I put in another year or two, and then began applying to schools all over Southern California to teach.  I would take two years after Dominguez Hills for Marine OCS and Air Force OTS before I finally got a military commission and began active duty.

Perhaps in several alternate universes, I did become a teacher instead of serving in the military.  However, in this universe, I had a whole different set of friends and experiences awaiting me. 

Regarding Daylin, a couple of years ago, I looked him up on the Internet and saw that he's been a college professor at three or four schools over the years.  I sent him an email and got a reply.  He was disappointed over the last years to discover that even among academics, or especially among academics, there is unwelcome politics inivolved no matter where you teach.  But he should be able to retire in the next couple of years, if he hasn't already.  While he was married when this picture was taken, and his wife took the picture above, he's been single ever since.  I don't read anything into that, mind you.  He also has no offspring, whereas his brother Darryl, who married the woman I met back in the 70's, had four children, all of whom have been doing well.  Darryl is also a college professor, and he and his wife of all these years are still married.  Daylin says they get together at least once a year.

He also explained that both his parents are dead (his father was a terrible chain smoker who used to line up the butts in an ashtray while he sat after work in his easy chair and watched TV).  Their older sister, he told me, is also dead.  So, it's just down to the two older brothers and the two fraternal twin sisters who are still alive.  I sent him a followup email, but he did not respond.

To get to Ann Arbor, I flew non-stop from LAX to Detroit on a United Airlines stretch DC-8, and the two of them picked me up.  I spent a nice couple of days visiting.  We played a sort of two-man basketball game on a trampoline apparatus at a rec center near where they lived.  For the next few days, the ground continued to feel as if it were sinking under my feet, even after I flew on to Washington National Airport in DC where John Robertson and his wife picked me up.  I may have flown on a 727-200, and perhaps I also took United Airlines.  I simply don't remember the details of that flight all these years later.

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Lida, Mike & Greg, December 23, 1972

Ann must have taken this picture.  Lida looks very happy.  During the ceremony, she looked entirely calm and collected.  However, when Mike went to put the ring on her finger, I noticed that her hand was shaking noticeably, though not that anyone else in attendance could tell.  Mike looks stunned.  I look unprepared to have my picture taken.

That fall, of course, was the election of Richard Nixon over George McGovern by a margin that Nixon would foolishly call "a mandate"--big mistake right there because the Watergate break-in and especially the cover up would dog him until he finally resigned in disgrace. 

I voted for McGovern. 

Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam when he ran in 1968, and I supported him with NIXON'S THE ONE bumper stickers, involved what Lyndon Johnson had begun doing just before he left office:  turning the war back over to the Vietnamese.  But, of course, the other methods Nixon also used were secret bombings and secret U.S. troop incursions into Cambodia; and so the war widened beyond its original scope and borders.  But none of those moves brought peace any closer; well, they did but not the peace anyone else was looking for after all the dead and wounded and the financial treasure expended.  The U.S., though, did begin to pull out in much greater numbers, essentially giving up and going home. 

Throughout those years, I read Jules Feiffer, Pat Oliphant and Joseph Conrad cartoons in the L.A. Times.  They savaged Nixon as they had Johnson before him.  Conrad had produced one of the best cartoons ever regarding the My Lai massacre:  An effusively be-ribboned and be-medaled general, sitting on the witness stand while dismissively looking at the many photos of dead bodies, casually declares, "Yes, mass suicide is always a terrible thing." 

This election was the first time I was able to vote.  Not that long after, the voting age was reduced to 18.  But I still had to wait until after I turned 21 the fall of 1971 to vote in the 1972 election.  Our generation went off to fight the war but were still unable to register their votes until they were 21. 

I walked to the polling place, which was about a block away, in someone's living room on the block of Cypress on the other side of Firestone Blvd.  They used the innovative punch card method.  I believe I did check the back for hanging chads before inserting the ballot into a sleeve and dropping it into the ballot box.  I knew McGovern wasn't going to win, but I was not going to vote for the man who was, despite his protestations, a crook.

In those days, Del Clauson, a conservative Republican, was our Congressman for years.  But it was in the 60's and early 70's that the city became increasingly liberal when the old folks, like the two old ladies who lived on either side of us, died off.  South Gate was primarily white.  Watts was primarily black.  These days, both areas, and most of the surrounding communities that were also primarily white in the 60's and 70's, are now heavily Hispanic. 

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Greg & Ann at Mike's wedding, December 23, 1973

I am wearing that cheesy mustache.  Ann obviously came to the wedding.  I actually went out with Lida first.  She had tickets to the LA Philharmonic with Zubin Meta conducting at the Dorthy Chandler Pavilion in LA.  But obviously, since I wasn't romantically interested, she turned her attention to Mike.

They would produce two lovely children who have gone on to produce lovely children of their own.  And both of them like Alex, Mike's partner of more than a decade. 

So while some might say that their getting married that night was a mistake since Mike would eventually accept the fact that he was gay, it's more accurate to say that it was a pairing that did produce good results even if the marriage did not last.

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Christmas 1972, 8940 Cypress Avenue

The Christmas tree is behind me.  I am holding onto the handle bars of my new Peugeot 10-speed bike.  Frankly, I don't recall riding this bike much because South Gate, this being the early 70's, did not have bike riding trails.  The side streets were narrow.  The main streets too busy with traffic and no place to actually ride along them safely.  But I had always wanted a really nice bike and bought this one.

I am wearing a fancy (rented) tuxedo because Mike was getting married that evening in Bell, and I was asked to be his best man. 

I was still trying to get into the Coast Guard officer's training program because my scores for Air Force OTS were not good enough.

Although I would not know it at the time this picture was taken, this would be our last Christmas in South Gate.  The year ahead would begin slowly but would eventually send me on the path I am still heavily influenced by today.

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Maine, Beyond Quantico

I wrote a poem about my two weeks in Maine, but I still did not have a camera to take pictures.  As I look back, I am not certain that I initially intended to return to Quantico to see the others graduate.  However, there were no job prospects in Maine, nor did I have a place to stay beyond those two weeks or so.  It simply seemed an interesting thing to do, to see the others graduate since we had all spent so many crucial weeks of our lives together.

Maine, Beyond Quantico

Although time-lengths of light
may be the barrier of our physical dip
                                  into the outer darkness,
will we recognize alternate escape for the coming end?

In the woods of the world,
colorless motion angles through muted green chimes,
easing leaves down the levels of gravity's shelves.

With the full of the sun,
will our falling settle when to await?
And will charred cells remember
and never suffer with their ringing stalks--
all forgotten in the way of frozen liquid?

Should ice ever disengage, and a thaw retain,
then we may find us up reversing roots
that catch a cycling earth in time
to repeat.

Besides the beauty of the woods of Virginia and of Maine, when I experienced the coming of spring in each place as the season worked its way up the Eastern Seaboard, in Maine, as I would later discover at OTS in Texas, it was the bugs.  I'd had never seen so many insects before.  The first week I arrived in Maine, I was able to walk in the woods undisturbed.  By the second week there, the bugs about killed me.  They swarmed everywhere and I could no longer take a comfortable stroll.

The other problem is that while I was no longer getting the exercise that I had gotten at Marine OCS, my appetite was still the same.  I was always hungry.  Initially, after I returned to California, I got heavy, about 185 pounds.  But a series of colds that summer and fall caused me to lose all that I had gained and I was back down to my regular 160-165.

I went back to work at A.U. Morse & Company, though I moved into the office to take wallpaper orders instead of filling them in the warehouse.  It was a bad move.  Our new office manager was a gay guy who was fey.  My stress level increased, working in the office.  When I tried to join, first the Coast Guard, and then the Air Force, my blood pressure levels were up and down.  I wanted to take a week off before I took my next test.  The office manager sent me a letter in the mail, terminating me.  I applied for unemployment insurance.  When A.U. Morse tried to counter my claim, I showed the unemployment rep the letter and he immediately granted my claim.  I did not have to worry about income for the next few months until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life and my future.

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Quantico Generations, before nova

The following is a poem inspired by my weeks at Marine OCS:

No,
none of the destruction yet from this earth,
not even the cloudy bursts of bright heat,
will vanish every remnant.

At least rubble, rubble remains
for Tracers to complain about the uneasy effort.
But the Sun that powered a time of creating
will at last sear molten across the fertile, turning substance,
making a seal of the versatile surface.

When the furnace dwarfs,
leaving a dark, frozen finish,
the hardened thorough mix
shall never again yield up anything former.

The globe may too slowly wander without rest
with only blackened edges of the universe
as a wreath upon the tomb.

And surely it will again lack spokesmen
to say how it once appeared.

My college instructor loved the "rubble, rubble" duplication.  I realized that this was not originally intended, so it must have been an unconscious event, my having typed the word twice.  But I liked it, too, so I have left it that way.

I suppose I was most saddened when I left Marine OCS that I was disappointing Gunny Williams.  He taught all of us so much, but me perhaps the most.  As I said, I would return for the graduation.  I would also fly back on a non-stop from Dulles with 2nd Lt. Darwin Newlin.  I would later chat with 2nd Lt. Mullens when he was stationed at Camp Pendleton.  And I have photographs of the time that 2nd Lt. Dennis Zito, stationed at 29 Palms, visited us in South Gate, CA, and we all drove down to San Diego in my Mustang.  I would remain friends with Den and Beth Zito into the 80's, as well as become friends with his brother Dave Zito, who was in the Air Force and stationed at Edwards AFB after I had returned from Air Force OCS.

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Greg at the "Dirty Name" on the confidence course

The confidence course featured a number of difficult obstacle stations.  This one nobody ever really figured out how to overcome it.  The confidence course was near the chow hall, so we saw it three times a day for weeks before we were required to endure each station.

The one that intimidated me the most was the log ladder that was 2-3 stories high.  We had to climb up one side, cross over, and then climb down the other side.  I have always been afraid of heights, so that was particularly daunting.  But when we had to finally do it, I simply did it.  Guys were behind me and ahead of me on the ladder.  I could not back out even if I wanted to.  I climbed to the top, stopped for a moment to view the entire scene below me, then crossed over and climbed back down.  It was exhilarating, to say the least.

I was able to do all of the other stations, but not this one. 

Another course we had to do, and this was just after a rain, so we all marched back totally muddy, was a course I know longer remember that required that we crawl under barbed wire, through cement pipes, across one-rope and two-rope bridges, and across a stationary, elevated log.

Candidate Wright was tall.  Candidate Booher was big.  He'd played college football and even had a tryout with the Dallas Cowboys.  When he walked across the long log, it had become muddy and slippery at this point.  At the end of the log, he slipped.  I watched as his natural athleticism took over and he did a complete flip in the air, rifle held in both hands, and landed on his feet.  Even the East German judge would have given him a 9.5 or better. 

The cement pipe was interesting because it was narrow.  Each of us barely fit in it, and it did give one a sense of hypochondria once inside.  One of the staff waited at the end.  If he could grab your rifle away from you and you scrunched your way to the end of the pipe, you had to crawl through it all over again.  I held tight as I finally emerged. 

We had our stenciled name tapes (white cloth with black lettering) across our backs, and one over our front pocket, to identify us to any of the staff.  (We had paid the wives of the enlisted staff to sew them on for all of us.)  After this particular course, the name tapes on the green fatigue uniforms we wore that day never were entirely white again.

I do have to relate one of my blunders when I was in charge of the platoon.  The platoon sergeant was required to awaken the platoon in the morning.  I had a watch with luminous hands.  As I lay in my bunk in the darkness, I looked at my watch.  Was it almost 5:00 AM or 12:25 AM?  Which hand was longer than the other, I wondered, growing more concerned the more I stared at the dial.  There was noises of people moving around in the squad bay above us.  Was that platoon getting ready while we were late?  Why hadn't the CQ awakened me to awaken the platoon? 

Finally, I made a decision:  We were going to be late if I did not act.  I jumped from my bunk and made for the light switch.  I flipped it on.  "Get up, get up!" I called out.  Everyone was crawling from underneath his sheet and blanket until someone sleepily complained, "My watch as it's 12:30?"  Someone else agreed.  I looked down at my watch dial and realized that they were right.  I then ordered, "Everyone go back to sleep!"  They obeyed me, glad to get a few more hours of rest.

The next afternoon, as I was in line at the truck which brought our clean and starched fatigues back from the base laundry, the guy ahead of me remarked, realizing that I was from 1st Platoon, "I heard that a guy in your platoon woke everyone up by mistake in the middle of the night."  "Yeah," I responded, chuckling, "that was me."

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Greg atop wall on obstacle course, January 1973

For several years of the '60's and the '70's, I wore blue, Converse low-top tennis shoes, as you can see.  White socks and white jeans then, too.  In this and the earlier picture, you can also see that I grew a cheesy moustache.  I never could grow a decent one, and I later realized that a moustache made me look older.  And who wants that when you are older?

We hiked out into the field to spend the night one time in tents.  I believe that was when we marched over 11 miles with full pack.  But when I later became interested in the U.S. Civil War and read that Stonewall Jackson's Confederate unit sometimes marched over 25 miles a day, I guess what we did wasn't nearly that interesting--but the full backpack, shelter half, two full canteens, and the M-14 rifle did made for a heavy load.  The Conferate units tended to travel light.  And many of them were often in want to decent uniforms and shoes, let alone new boots.

Another time when we spent a couple of nights living in tents in the field, we were flown out there by helicopter, which was a rush.  We were in CH-46's one time, and a CH-54 another time.  I would have flown in CH-46's another time; but when we got to the airfield, they pulled out those of us who were intending to leave OCS and made us march back to the barracks and spend our day there while the others flew down to Camp Lajeune in North Carolina.  We were not allowed to sleep until they returned, which was very late that night.

We learned combat tactics and maneuvers in the field during one extended stay.  The night movement course required us to walk and clamber through a course filled with booby traps and trip wires.  If you accidentally tripped a wire, a flare would go off and everyone had to stand perfectly still until it went out.  One of the nights that we were out there, I finished my course and went to sleep in my tent, which I shared with Candidate Wright.  Wright was from North Carolina and talked like Gomer Pyle.  Gunny Williams used to yell, when we were marching in formation, "Wright, you march like you got a corn cob up your ass."  Even though Wright was a college grad, he often seemed no smarter than Gomer Pyle, or perhaps just as smart but without Gomer's common sense.  That night when I was fast asleep, he crawled into our tent, shinned his flashlight directly in my face and naively asked, "Are you asleep?"

"I was until you did that," I groaned.

We also learned how to maneuver a unit of men in combat situations.  An enlisted man with a rifle and blanks would be hiding somewhere in one of the several individual courses in the wilderness, waiting for us.  We would all be lined up, rifles ready to fire as we moved abreast through the course, with one of us in charge of the three squads.  As soon as we came under fire, we had to fall to the ground and return fire, try to figure out where the sniper fire was coming from, and neutralize our adversary. 

My turn came after we'd done this three or four times.  We were moving down a slope when we came under fire from directly behind.  We dropped to the ground and turned around, easily seeing the guy with the rifle behind a tree.  I used Dennis Zito as the leader of one of my squads and sent him on a single envelopment, using the terrain to cover his squad's counterattack.  The rest of us laid down a base of fire until they outflanked our attacker.  Unfortunately, Dennis and his team went silent after they disappeared from view.  I called out, "Dennis, why have you stopped firing?"  "We ran out of ammo," he yelled back.  Gunny Williams, who was the evaluator on my problem, said, "That happens." 

I then had the guys around me slowly advance up the hill when we again heard fire from Dennis Zito's position.  "I thought you said you ran out of ammo?" I yelled back up the hill.  Dennis called back, "We found some more."  "Then continue your attack," I responded while the squads around me continued to fire. 

Dennis later apologized for the screw up, but I didn't have any problem with that.  I had done well enough.  The following day, we did this again for a guy whose foot was in a cast and who had to lead us from a road as he limped along.  We actually knew what to do but he was befuddled, not having participated the day before.  He was soundly criticized for the fact that we knew what we were supposed to do and made him look better even though he really didn't know what he was doing.

The afternoon before, one incident made me appalled at the waste of resources.  At the end of the day, we had a few brand new, but now empty, ammo boxes.  The sergeant in charge of that last problem of the day told us that rather than carry those new ammo boxes back to camp, we were to just bury them in the ground.  I wondered then how many perfectly good ammo boxes were buried over the years in the Northern Virginia countryside.

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John Robertson on the obstacle course, January 1973

John is on two of the obstacles along the course.  In checking the google map, it appears that the dual course has been moved further west with the addition of what are probably the barracks along the southern and southwestern edges of the parade grounds.  The course depicted above, if I remember correctly, was along that southwestern edge of the parade grounds. 

I actually did well on the obstacle course.  When we were timed, I completed it in 82 seconds for 91 points out of 100.  You had to run the entire course twice, normally, except the rope climb at the end that you had to do once.  I don't have a picture of the first, high, single metal bar obstacle that you could go over one of two ways:  the kip (slamming the bar into your stomach and rotating yourself over it) or the college boy roll (grabbing the bar and pulling yourself over the top and then dropping on the other side).  The first time through the course, I could do the kip.  The second time through, with my arms tired from all of the other obstacles, I would have to do the college boy roll (that was supposed to be a slam on us college grads--that that method was easier and not as manly).

From my first interview with Lt. Nickle, I told him that I did not think I was going to complete the program and become a Marine officer.  Maybe I was a bit homesick.  Maybe I was a bit turned off by the whole program, especially at the beginning when the psychological pressures were greater and the adjustments more significant.  But when I was able to march as we were supposed to march, and run and run the obstacle course and all of the other courses, I gained all kinds of confidence.  I found that I did not need to actually become a Marine officer to prove to myself that I could do all that was required.

Lt. Nickle didn't exactly ride me after that first meeting, but I did become a personal challenge for him during my remaining weeks in the program.  When I stumbled, having put on my boots for the first time at clothing issue, and then being required to ascend small wooden steps so he could check the length of my trousers, he sarcastically remarked, "What's the matter?  Can't you chew gum and walk at the same time?"  I did not respond.

One time when I neglected to clean the inside of my M-14 rifle barrel before an inspection, he was so upset with my lackluster effort that he sarcastically lectured me, "Attention to detail is as important in civilian life as it is in military life!"  He was so annoyed that he forgot to tell me that I got an unsatisfactory but he gave unsat evaluations to the next three candidates on the inspection line.  Back inside the barracks, he called me to his office for the unsat, but I had to explain what had actually happened.  He was not upset with himself so much as amused, I think.  But he did ask me to send in the three whom he did give an unsat to.

Another afternoon, when we fought with pugil sticks (batons with large padded attachments to either end which you had to pummel your opponent with while he was doing the same to you), Zebal was the next to fight.  Lt. Nickle offered me as Zebal's opponent.  I have to explain about Candidate Zebal.  He was a prior service Marine selected to OCS.  The nicest guy on the planet, he whispered once in a boring tin-roofed classroom that "the Z Monster" was about to get him (he was in danger of falling asleep).  However, Zebal, when he had his pugil helmet on and the protective padding and the pugil stick in his hand, entered an entirely different, and savage, world.  I believe we nicknamed him "animal".  I looked into his eyes and there was a blood thirsty beast lurking there.  I knew that I was going to die, and that Lt. Nickle was probably taking some bit of pleasure in this total mismatch.      

Actually, I just kept trying to fend off Zebal's constant and whirlwind attacks with his pugil stick.  I was not going to win, but I did enough to defend myself against someone who was relentless and primed for the kill.  When Gunny Williams finally declared Zebal the winner, I heard Lt. Nickle generously say, "I think Sanchez did pretty well."

My buddy Dennis Zito had to fight a few matches because he kept winning.  When he won what was his last match, he exhaustedly took off his helmet, wondering aloud whom he had to fight next.  John and I ran up and told him that he had beaten his last foe and was the winner.  He was finished fighting.

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Marine OCS, Quantico, VA, Spring 1972

This is John Robertson standing beside the tree overlooking the Potomac River beyond.  Every morning when we bolted from the barracks in the other direction from where I am standing and taking this picture, we could see this tree and the swift river. 

One morning, we were all stunned to see the morning sky a beautiful and incongruous pink.  Most of us just stood for a moment in awe before we had to line up and march to morning chow.       

At various times during my eight weeks with the platoon, we were each given various platoon and company assignments:  company commander, platoon commander, platoon sergeant.  I occasionally got my left and right foot confused while marching the platoon.  One time, the guys had had enough of my confusion and decided that when next I said, "Column Left" when I meant "Column Right," they were going to do just what I told them to do. 

We were between two buildings when I got it wrong once again and they headed off onto the grass between the buildings.  Well, actually, half the platoon went right while half of them kept marching straight ahead since they were not going to obey an improper command.  It was a mess.  I managed to get the two halves back together while maneuvering the one half within the tight spaces.  But it must have looked like a total cluster*** to the staff.  (I later heard that Gunny Williams looked skyward when he saw the confusion that I had caused.)

Several times during OCS, dignitaries would visit from Washington and review the troops.  Gunny Williams always referred to these unwanted events as "Dog and Pony" shows.  It was all timed perfectly to have guys running the obstacle course when the dignitary reached that location.  Or guys were marching on the parade field just so, or running by when the dignitary walked past.  We often got more time off if the dignitary was especially impressed with us. 

When we were able to leave base in the first few weeks, we often stayed at the Crystal City Marriott where they had military rates that were much cheaper; and with three or four candidates to a room, it was cheaper still.  As the weeks went by, though, a few of us who did not have family in the area decided to simply stay in the barracks.  Without the staff or the whole platoon hanging around, we had a great time just relaxing or eating at the Slop Shoot, a fast food place near the barracks.  Some of us would visit the little berg of Quantico itself.  Often someone had a radio tuned to Casey Kasem's American Top 40.  This was the spring of 1972, so we heard America's A HORSE WITH NO NAME or STARRY, STARRY NIGHT by Don McLean, or A WALK IN THE NIGHT by Junior Walker, or OH GIRL by the Chi-Lites or (LAST NIGHT) I DIDN'T GET TO SLEEP by The 5th Dimension.  I stocked up on cheaper record albums from the BX and bought an inexpensive suitcase to carry them in when I left. 

I did see some of Washington DC in the first weeks when John Ormbreck left us his four-door VW as he flew to NYC for one weekend.  I remember one rainy night that we drove around the Capitol buildings. 

Dennis had hung out with another group in the very beginning, but when they got hotel rooms and hired local laddies of the evening, he did not feel comfortable, so he just hung out in the lobby until the women left.  He was engaged to a girl back home, Beth, whom I would later meet and become friends with.        

John Robertson's wife was back in Tennessee with their newborn son.  That was probably why he decided to leave OCS.  He still owed the Corps enlisted time, but it would not last as long as he would have to stay in if he'd accepted a commission.  He did leave when I did and was stationed at Quantico, hence my deciding to come back and visit early the next year.  Dennis and Beth Zito invited me to spend a few days of my stay with them, and I should have taken them up on it before my presence grated on John and his wife.

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Marine OCS Barracks, January 1973

Our barracks were on the left in the foreground.  I have just looked at google maps, and all of these buildings appear now to be gone.  The road in front of the barracks appears to still be there, but there are now different buildings here.  There are new buildings to the south and lower west edges of the parade grounds on the other side of the tracks.  They probably have constructed new barracks there.

The problem with where these old barracks were located was that we had to march north down the road in front, and then cross over the railroad tracks, to reach the chow hall, the classrooms, the parade field, and the various obstacle and confidence courses, as well as the several trails through the woods where we hiked with full pack and rifle.  Our running paths were also on the other side of those same tracks.  We would always have to send out "track guards" to ensure that no trains were coming which might kill several candidates crossing the tracks.

Just beyond the barracks in the background were chain link fences on either side to keep anyone from crossing the tracks as a shortcut.

At the end of our bay was a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall.  I was given the duty of polishing that metal extinguisher as one of my personal chores.  We were also required to maintain a CQ (charge of quarters) in the office and a fire watch patrolling the entire two floors and both sides of the barracks, as well as provide a guard at the armory, and two guards at the candidate parking lot.  These were provided at night.  So even though we could sleep from 10:30 PM or so until 4:30 AM or so, that did not take into account those who had one of those shifts at various times during the night, which took away from our few precious hours of sleep.

In addition to our metal bunks, we each had a wooden footlocker.  Our thin mattresses had also to be taken out and aired on the grass between the two barracks entrances above, once a month, I believe.

Candidates Fitzpatrick from Boston and Fitzgerald from New Orleans became friends, as much because we were given bunks in alphabetical order.  Their wives, when they eventually met, could not understand one another because of their and their husband's regional accents.

My buddies at OCS were John Ormbreck, John Robertson, and Dennis Zito.  John Ormbreck was allowed to leave at the six-week point, along with Palms.  They realized almost immediately that they were not cut out to be Marine officers.  In 1973, I met up with Palms who was in a class behind mine at Air Force Officer's Training School at Lackland AFB, TX.  Ormbreck had a friend who was appearing on Broadway in NO NO NANETTE.

I also felt out of place.  But when I went up before a review board at the six-week point, as had the others, I was not allowed to leave.  I think they believed that, with a bit more training and experience, I might come around and enjoy the life of a Marine officer. 

After I was allowed to leave at the eight week point, taking another week to out process, I visited a good friend of mine from high school, Bill Vogt, who was living in Maine.  I flew up on a Northeast 727-200 Yellowbird to Boston and an Air New England twin Beechcraft from Boston to Waterville, ME.  I got so sick from the bumpy Air New England flight that after Bill picked me up, I was put to bed and slept for at least twelve hours. 

When the others were ready to graduate in two weeks, I flew back down to DC, again on Northeast, though from Portland, ME, on a DC-9.  One of the guys picked me up at the airport.  I stayed overnight at a motel nearby and then visited the barracks while the others were getting ready to graduate.  Lt. Nickle (whom the others had nicknamed Nicklenuts in my absence) saw me and asked, "Do you regret your decision to leave?"  "No," I responded, adding however, "Though I hope I don't reach a stage in my life when I do regret leaving." 

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Marine OCS, Quantico, VA, March-May 1972

I don't have any photographs of my experience at Marine OCS in 1972, except the previous one of the whole platoon.  I don't recall that anyone brought a camera, but some must have.  I certainly did not.  (I returned to OCS in January of 1973, when I visited the Robertsons, with whom I had become friends, though that friendship would not survive my visit.  The following photographs that I am using in the next few posts were from that trip.  Our barracks is the one I am standing in front of.)

Those of us candidates from the Los Angeles area flew on an American Airlines 707 red-eye to Dulles, stretching out in the several available rows while trying to sleep as best we could.  We bundled into a single cab at the airport and headed to Quantico.

I had become friends with Bruce Culp, who lived in Bell, CA, just north of South Gate when I was given his name by the recruiter's office since he was going to be in my OCS class.  (Bruce and I would leave Marine OCS about the same time, but we would actually live in the same BOQ building in Minot, North Dakota, a few short years later.  We both were in the Air Force, having gone to Air Force OTS at the same time and both getting missile assignments from there, although Bruce would not graduate from missile training but would become a security cop at Minot.)

The weather was cold and gloomy that early morning as our taxi, packed with five of us, made its way toward Quantico, the trees winter barren and bleak, the ground a full carpet of so many dead leaves.  Living most of my life in Southern California had certainly not prepared me for such a lifeless landscape. 

We were all nervous, the more so the closer we got.  When the cab stopped at the main gate and we all got out to see where we were to report, we awakened a sergeant who was cranky and mean.  Fortunately, we would later learn that he was not to be in our platoon or even our company.  Frankly, he was jerk.

Using the directions we got, we continued on to an HQ building where several others were waiting around to be assigned to their respective platoons for training.  I got singled out and asked to pick up broken glass from a shampoo bottle in the shower that the guy taking our names had dropped.  I later found out that he was nobody, not even an enlisted Marine--and I could have told him to go pick up his own broken glass. 

The rest of the day was a blur.  I do recall that we met our platoon enlisted staff who marched us to our barracks.  We were issued minimal gear, perhaps watch caps, if I recall.  Late that night, we finally went to sleep, though for most of us, our sleep was fitful and intermittent.  You see, our barracks were located right beside the tracks of Florida-bound express trains from the Northeast, often with car-carriers along their length.  They rattled the old wooden barracks several times each night as if they intended to bring them down around our shaved heads (yes, I believe that we were shorn of our civilian haircuts that first day, regardless of how short we had kept them before arriving).  Soon enough, we could sleep through anything; but not this first night.

I had finally fallen into a deep sleep just before we were trashed awake, literally.  Others later told me that they had heard, and seen, Gunny (Gunnery Sergeant) Williams and Sgt. Blazer quietly sneak into our platoon bay, one grabbing an aluminum trash can, the other poised at the light switch.

On queue, the trash can was hurled; the light switch was flipped, flooding the bay with light and noise.  And then they both started screaming at us to get up and stand at attention.  

I was, unfortunately, sleeping in the top bunk.  Still half asleep, I leapt off my bunk, grabbing the metal side of the bunk for support.  However, it slid across the slick floor instead; and when I landed, my right leg hit the side of the lower metal bunk, opening a gash on the front of my leg that, I quickly learned, would not stop bleeding.

Mark Lombardo, with whom I had trained and run all those months before arriving, had told me:  "Don't get yourself noticed, especially in the beginning."  I tried to stand at attention without hopping on one leg in pain, blood oozing down in a stubborn trickle. 

Sgt Williams passed by me with that withering look:  eyes clenched, open but narrow, just daring anyone to mess up or make a sound.  Most reluctantly, I spoke up:  "Gunnery Sergeant?"  "What do YOU want?" he bellowed, the witheriing look now focused entirely upon me.  "Uh, I hit the front of my leg and it won't stop bleeding," I almost whimpered.  He looked down at the obvious bloody trail and lowered his bark, "Oh, OK.  Go to the head and stop the bleeding."  He had almost sounded human and even concerned.

In the next few weeks, we noticed a change in the roles of these two sergeants.  In the very beginning, Sgt. Blazer was the nice guy.  Gunny Williams was the ogre.  But then they began to shift personalities.  We began to feel that we'd walk through fire for Gunny Williams.  Sgt Blazer we could easily be persuaded to push into that same fire.

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Officer's Candidate School, Marine Corps Base, Quantico, VA, April 1972

Top Row:  Paul Fitzpatrick, Bruce Culp, Clayborne, Dan Hunter, Wright, Booher
Second Row:  Kramer, Jim Schloss, John Robertson, Wilson, Greg Sanchez, John Ormbreck, Jerry Moore, Ken Zebal, Olsen
Third Row:  Jim Mullen, Walczak, Laviglio, Smith, Stuart, Darwin Newlin, Raese, Kent Nix, Anderson, Fitzgerald, Langdon
Bottom Row:  Lt. Nickle, Tourek, Moffatt, Dennis Zito, Campomenosi, Hudnall, Unknown, Delacroce, Sgt. Blazer, Sgt. Williams

Not pictured:  Palms, Kelly Stage, and one unknown from California

B Company, 1st Platoon

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California coastline at the end of LAX, 1967

This was taken from the unobstructed window of a Bonanza Airlines F-27A as we took off from LAX one morning.  I have lost one photograph I always prized of the wheel of that F-27A going up into the engine housing.  Everyone who saw the picture assumed that I had been hanging under the aircraft to get that shot when I was simply looking out the window as the landing gear was retracted.  The F-27's were one of the few high-wing aircraft then in service with the airlines. 

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Uncle Robert, Pat, Uncle Pug and Mom, December 28, 1967

Mom always liked my Grandpa Breeze's brother, Pug.  (I found out years later that Aunt Jean did not like Uncle Pug because of a driving trip they had taken together in the 1940's--and she still carries that grudge.) 

When we began to live with mom in 1963, that's when we met our Great Uncle Pug.  At the time these two photographs were taken, Pug had remarried the woman in the top photograph when they both lived in trailers in the same mobile home park in Southern California.  Pat remained married to him until Pug died in the 1970's.  She had him cremated, which appalled mom. 

I was unaware of when these photographs were taken until I just now removed them from one of my albums and found the date on the bottom.  Obviously, I had graduated from high school and was attending East LAJC.  I believe the trailer they now lived in was her trailer.  She had a dachshund name Mr. Free.

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Greg, Mom and Ann, and Ann's TR-6 in South Gate

Just as in the last photograph when I did not even recall Grandma Breeze visiting us in South Gate for Christmas that year (since the house only had two small bedrooms, I don't even know what the sleeping arrangements were), I did not recall this picture being taken.

The TR-6 is likely parked in the driveway of 8940 Cypress, South Gate, because you can see some of the grass between the concrete driveway lines beneath the car.  Ann bought this powder blue car, but it was a piece of junk, mechanically.  At some point she had stopped at a gas station in Long Beach to have it looked at, and that's when she met Mark Egan.  At some point they moved in together and would live "in sin" for a couple of years before they got married.

Perhaps they were living together and Ann simply stopped in her car when this picture was taken in either 1971 or 1972.  Mark's aunt worked for Western Airlines, and she was able to get Ann a job working for Western.  Ann would continue to work for Western until after they were bought up by Delta Airlines when she worked for Delta until she retired a few years ago.

I look at the above photograph of myself, or of Ann for that matter, and I marvel at how slim we both were in those days.  I had been working out with free weights in Daylin's garage even after he'd graduated from USC and went to graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  Even being able to bench press 165 lbs, slightly above my body weight at the time, I still wasn't showing much muscle.

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Christmas 1971, Greg, Ann, Mom and Grandma Breeze

Another Christmas in South Gate, CA.  This time 1971, according to mom's annotation on the back of the photograph.  I would have just finished college that month at Cal State Dominguez Hills.  Ann was attending Long Beach State College, but she never did graduate though she was not too many units shy of graduating.

Again, there is no way to tell who took this picture.  Ann was dating Mark, whom she would eventually marry.  I do not believe that it was taken by Kenny Morse, mom's boyfriend of a number of years because they probably broke up before this.

Now that I had graduated, and my draft lottery number was 119, I was going to have to make plans to join a branch of the service rather than be drafted by the army.  The Marines had been wrapping up their time in Vietnam and would soon be out if they had not already left. 

Initially, I had joined the Marine Corps Reserves and was going to be attending basic training in San Diego that spring.  However, before graduation, I became friends with Mark Lombardo who was in one of my classes at Dominguez Hills.  He told me that he had been at Marine Corps Officer's Candidate School in Quantico, VA the previous spring.  He encouraged me, since I would soon have a degree, to go there instead.  It made more sense than being an enlisted Marine.  At this point I may have already done so because I was slated to attend Marine OCS starting in March of 1972.

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Greg, Mom and Ann, January 1970, 8940 Cypress

These precede the previous Pat Byrne photos by more than a year.  They could have been taken during Christmas but were not developed until January, 1970, the date on the two prints.  I am not sure what I am holding that seemed so important to have in my hands with a photograph.  Ann is carrying an Instamatic camera and also something else that is unidentifiable.

Mom could have taken the first photograph, but I have no idea who might have taken the second picture with all three of us in the frame.  The apartment building is visible in the second picture, as well as the lane of grass between the lines of concrete that made up the driveway in those days.  It was home for me from the summer of 1964 until I left for the Air Force in 1973, and mom then moved to San Pedro, near the water where she had always wanted to live.

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Pat in San Leandro, Easter week, 1971

Pat is carrying his clothes back to the Mustang when we left.  The house just off to the left of the photograph is Jean and Lloyd's house. 

We stopped for lunch on the way back to Los Angeles.  Either driving to or from the Bay Area, we stopped at the gas station at the Madonna Inn.  Guys were coming back from the restroom laughing.  We discovered why.  The urinal was a large hole in the floor where anyone who had to go stood around and peed in communion with others.

I graduated in December of 1971, but Pat finished in June.  He had been saving his money from working part time at the post office for a trip to Europe.  When he got there, he bought a VM van and toured extensively.  Eventually, he got a job working the lighting for an Ice Capades show touring Europe.  He was able to stay several more months than he'd planned with the unexpected income.

I sent him letters with newspaper articles to keep him informed as to what was happening while he was gone.  When he returned, he applied as Dennis Madura, a friend from East LAJC, and I had in the summer of 1972, when the airlines began to hire men as flight attendants.  While neither Dennis nor I got hired by Continental Airlines or TWA, Pat was hired by TWA almost immediately. 

One of his letters to me after he'd finished training and begun working on their International routes was that he really loved his job since he could see even more of Europe than he already had.

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Pat in San Francisco, Easter Vacation, 1971

These are companion pictures to those of me in San Francisco.  The first is Pat at Coit Tower.  The second is Pat walking near Fisherman's Wharf.  We drove north in my Mustang convertible again, as I had with Dave, his sister and my sister, and with Daylin, Darryl and my sister.

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Greg in San Francisco, Easter Vacation, 1971

Pat and I drove to San Francisco and stayed with Aunt Jean and Uncle Lloyd.  The night after we arrived, we drove across the Bay Bridge, but it was raining so hard and so steadily that we turned back halfway across the bridge. 

The next day was beautiful.  I'm standing at Fisherman's Wharf and at the high point of Coit Tower in the second photograph.

Even in the pictures of Pat at Point Loma, you can see that white jeans were popular.  Plus, I bought several of those pullover short-sleeved shirts, like the one I am wearing above, from a clothing shop managed by a friend of Daylin's not far from their house in South Gate. 

It was tough, that first night in San Leandro to actually sleep in the same bed with Pat, although nothing was going to happen since he was gay.  Pat was one of the very few guys I came out to, and it clearly did not matter to him, even if we simply remained friends and nothing further.

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Pat Byrne at Point Loma

Pat and I drove down to San Diego one weekend, stopping at Point Loma cemetery.  He saw the headstone of one of his Marine buddies.  He also lost his best friend to the War.

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