About the author: Dick Bailey, an 84-year-old retired insurance broker living in Santa Clarita, California, served in the Corps from October 1940 until September 1945. His duties included being a Grunt, a BAR man, a chaplain's assistant, and a member of D-3, Second Marine Division. He is active in veterans affairs as a Past Commander of Santa Clarita Chapter 107, Disabled American Veterans; Southwest Regional Vice President of The Guadalcanal Campaign Veterans Association; and a member of VFW Post 6110, Canyon Country, California. He is married, has three children and four grandchildren.
We lived near a small lake in a rural area of northeastern Minnesota, near a widening in the road called Twig. My mother had been born 10 miles from there and had never been more than 20 miles away from her birthplace at the time I enlisted in the Marines. The people in the area were farmers, the lakes were full of fish, and there were plenty of game birds as well as deer and moose, so we always had enough to eat. Because of the Depression (1929~40), however, there was very little cash money so clothing was a scarce item.
For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to get out of Minnesota and see some of the places I had read about, especially China, the Panama Canal and the Hawaiian Islands. When I was ready for high school, I moved to Duluth to stay with some relatives and attend school. I was fortunate to get a job clerking in a grocery store that paid $5 a week for seven days of part-time work totaling 38 hours a week. I was able to save nearly everything I made, so when I graduated from high school I had several hundred dollars. Because tuition at the junior college was only $80 a quarter, I enrolled with enough money to take me through my freshman year. However, about Christmas I lost my job to the nephew of the owner of the store, and my funds began to disappear rapidly.
I thought about joining the CCC camps (Civilian Conseveration Corps), which was a make-work project of Franklin Roosevelt's administration. A portion of each paycheck was automatically sent to the family of a person in the C's. It was hard to get into the C's because there were so many applicants and long waits to be selected. I began thinking about military service as a career.
After a summer without any work, I went down to the Federal Court House in Duluth and talked with the Army, Navy and Coast Guard. I decided to join the Navy and was waiting outside their door one day when a Marine sergeant came down the hall and asked me to come into his office next door.
Frankly, I did not think I would qualify physically for the Marines because I stood six feet tall but weighed only 130 pounds. The sergeant said, "Don't worry about it — you can be our secret weapon. If you stand sideways the enemy will never see you." I was more hurt than complimented, but before we completed our conversation I knew I had to be a Marine — somehow. The rest is history. I never got to see China, but I did see the Panama Canal, the Hawaiian Islands, and a lot of other places I could just as well have done without.
The Marine Corps had an authorized strength of 25,000 when I signed up on 10 Oct. 1940, but it was not up to authorized strength. I went through San Diego and immediately knew I had made a good choice. That beautiful place, then called "The Marine Base," has always held a special place in my thoughts and memories. I nearly went over the hill when I found that K-3-6 was quartered at Camp Elliott, 14 miles north of the Base.
The day we checked in it was raining, and I think it rained every day thereafter until we left. We found out in short order that there were no paved streets (wooden catwalks for walkways) and no barracks. Just two-man tents — with a wooden deck, a small oil stove for heating, and one light bulb hung from the center of the tent for illumination — were erected along both sides of the company street. The only difference between officers and enlisted-men's quarters was that the officers had one-man tents erected at one end of the company street. There was no running water, and obviously no hot showers, 8-holers were installed at the opposite end of the street from the officer's quarters. At that end were the Lister bags of water for drinking purposes.
General Vogel, who I saw once during my initial tour of duty at Camp Elliott, had a small one-story, one-bedroom house (shack) about 200 square feet, that he used when he was at the camp. There was an Officers Club, but I don't recall an NCO Club. We always met those guys at the slopchute across the highway. Water was piped in for the galleys and for cold showers, if anyone felt that dirty.
There was no PX on the compound, no theater and no laundry or dry-cleaning facilities. Those luxuries were all privately owned, and across the highway alongside the slopchute. We had open-gate liberty but no money even though San Diego with its joyhouses and other pleasures lay just 14 miles away. Of course, there was no bus service and old US 395 carried little traffic, so hitch-hiking in the rain did not appeal to any except the most hardy.
We stayed through the California winter at Camp Elliott. In those days we didn't go through a chow line, but marched to the tent that served as the company mess hall where we stood at attention behind the benches and tables with their 10-place settings (as shown in the accompanying photo taken at the Marine Base, until the order was given to sit and dig in. Mess duty for most consisted of bringing huge trays of whatever the meal was from the galley to the end of the table where the meal was then passed from man to man.
Pitchers of coffee, tea, milk, lemonade and water were plentiful. We learned all the names for each of the dishes — SOS (shit-on-shingle) and FOT (foreskins-on-toast, i.e., creamed chipped beef) were our favorites. When someone asked that something be passed, beware of the consequences if someone else short-stopped it. The cups we used were the large white ones without handles, and many a cup was bounced off the head or body of a short-stopper. The mess hall was a dangerous place to eat.
I was a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man at the time. That helped preserve my sanity because I made disassembling that monster, cleaning, oiling and wiping its parts and re-assembling it a daily routine. Later that skill paid big dividends.
Two silly events stood out in my mind about my introduction to the Corps. The first time we drew clothes, after filling out the requisition slip and marching over to the quartermaster a few days later, this big, pot-bellied six-striper called all the new men over to one side and said "I know you new men want to get along in the Marine Corps, so one secret I will give you now is this: If you have one, draw one; if you have two, turn one in."
After we drew our clothes, I knew I had made a wise choice in signing up because for the first time in my life I had more than one of everything. Secondly, there were many European immigrants among the enlisted men and many had been in for some time and were rated, including the first three pay grades. Some wise guy coined the phrase that in order to get promoted you first had to complete a course in Broken English.
We also had a couple "China Marines" who had served there long enough to wear the title, "Asiatic." Unfortunately, they were the brunt of many cruel jokes. Later on I will comment on Corporal Russell and "POP" Sergeant. The only shoes we had were the high-top leather cordovan ones (no boondockers yet). Everyone had a minimum of three pairs of shoes: one for daily use, one for liberty and one for inspection. I had never had two pair of shoes at one time in my life. I knew I'd found a home.
In December 1940, we were still known as the First and Second Brigades, with the 1st on the East Coast and the 2nd on the West Coast. The nickname of West-Coast Marines was, of course, "Hollywood Marines." In addition, the Sixth Marines carried the name "Pogey-Bait Sixth," which had originated when a troop ship returning from China with the Sixth was said to be loaded with nothing but candy bars and one case of toilet paper. We moved to the Base in January 1941, and were hardly settled in when the entire compliment was formed on the parade ground and the official announcement was made that we were re-designated The Second Marine Division, 1 Feb. 1941.
This didn't make much of a ripple at the time and our duties continued as before along with open-gate liberty — if you didn't have the duty you were free to go ashore. Many of us now had lockers at the Army-Navy YMCA, and we'd change to civilian clothes, which was permitted, and head for whatever pleasures San Diego had to offer. We soon found out that even as civilians we didn't rate high in a strong Navy town.
During this lull I got a 10-day furlough that allowed me three days at home. About this time Hollywood made a movie about the Marines starring Dick Powell [The Singing Marine, 1937]. In the film he always sang a song to his girlfriend-of-the-moment whenever he was being transferred. It was called, "The Song of the Marines." We adopted it and whenever packing our seabags the barracks would ring with the whole troop singing:
Over the sea let's go men,
we're shovin' right off,we're shovin' right off again.Nobody knows where or when,
but we're shovin' right off,we're shovin' right off again.It may be Shanghai,
farewell and goodbye,Sally and Sue don't be blue.We'll just be gone
for years and years and then,we're shovin' right off for home again.I recently attended a recruit graduation at San Diego and heard the band play the same tune as part of a medley of songs. I wondered if anyone knew its title or the words or if it is still sung. I do know it was sung loud and long as we packed our gear for the return trip to Camp Elliott, to be the first to occupy the newly completed barracks, on 1 April 1941.
