When I enlisted, it was kind of like that old cadence song, “You had a good home but you left.” I had always wanted to be a baseball player, and somebody said to me, “They have a lot of sports in the military service.” In 1940 people knew a war was coming, and they were building up the glories of being in the service, back there in 1940. This old boy in Farmington, Arkansas, he’d been around, he’d been everywhere, and he said, “What you want to get into is the Marine Corps—now there’s an outfit!”
I was sent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for boot camp training, and it was tough. It was drill, drill, drill. They kept us busy all the time, sometimes until midnight. Some guys couldn’t take it and were sent home. I was determined I was going to make it, and I did. They were forming the Seventh Defense Battalion, and I wound up in the artillery. I didn’t choose it. They just sent me over there and I was in it. I wound up on those six-inch naval guns, and since I weighed 200 pounds and was pretty athletic, my job all the time was carrying shells.
We sailed from San Diego on the transport William Biddle. I got seasick when we sailed out of the harbor and stayed sick all the way to Hawaii, but I had to work in the mess hall anyway.
When we arrived at American Samoa we had cases of measles aboard. Measles are deadly to the native people out there, and so we were put under quarantine. At first we were quarantined aboard ship, but then they let us off and into a roped-off compound. And we had to stay there three weeks after the last man had measles. It was really a boring time, sitting on that ship and then in that compound.
Here is a letter of mine, dated one month to the day before Pearl Harbor, that my mother saved:
Dear Folks, I don’t have anything to write but the mail leaves today. I have been setting here about fifteen minutes trying to think of something to write but I guess there isn’t anything. It is raining today. I am a mess cook and we have got the mess hall cleaned up for tomorrow’s inspection. It is a good job and I might ship over for another month. It is better than working under the hot sun. This is the ultimate of boredom and there is no hint of war.
My mother had a grocery store in Farmington, Arkansas. I sent her a picture from Samoa during this time before the war, and she put it up in the window. Other people seeing it began bringing in pictures of their boys in service. When I got home from the Pacific that window was solid pictures.
On December 7, there in American Samoa, I had garbage detail. Every Sunday morning we hauled off the garbage. Getting the barrels, lifting them, and splashing them around, there wasn’t any way to do it except to just get it all over you. And the part that really hurt was hauling off the officers’ garbage. They allowed them to bring their wives down there—I just hated that, but I did it anyway. I didn’t hesitate to just get it all over me. Then, it was probably eight o’clock when I went to the head, and I was setting there on it when defense call sounded.
When defense call sounds, you run down and get your rifle and get your gear. To do that you run through some tents there, and that was the ammunition dump. It wasn’t even underground. Instead of just running through there and then going up to our guns, they kept hanging these bandoleers of ammunition on us. Well, you can imagine what it would be like if you had a bunch of ammunition out in peacetime, you’d be shooting each other and shooting at everything else. So now it seemed odd that all of a sudden they were loading us up with all this ammunition, live ammunition, for our Springfield rifles, which is what we had.
Then we marched. These guns were up on each point of the hill. But the sergeant, instead of just marching us up the road, he spread us out, and then somebody said that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Well, we didn’t believe it. But anyway, we went up and we sat on the guns all day, and we stayed there. So for several days I had all this garbage on me, and no baths or anything like that up there! It was several days before we could begin to go down and clean up and get some stuff, soap and whatever else you might need. Now, if you can imagine the size of that hill, whatever you took up there you carried on your back.
Anyhow, finally we got to go down and take a bath, but from then on we lived on the guns. You’d go down and man them before daylight; then about noon you’d go and play cards. Then just before dusk you’d go down and man the guns again. Then at night after dark you’d go backup to the quarters.
We were ready for the Japanese. With all that monotony of manning the guns day after day, you really began to wish for a target. At that time we may not have had more than 150 effectives to defend that whole island, but we wanted the Japs to come anyway. Finally they did come, and started shooting at us—and that’s the kind of shooting that’s loud! They did it most all of one night. It was naval fire, either one or two submarines or surface ships. You’re asleep, then all at once there is this loud noise. We thought it was our own three-inch guns shooting at somebody. They were shooting down into the harbor area, apparently trying to blow up radio stations and whatever else they could shoot up there. They were lobbing them over those mountains, and the terrain was such that there was only one place where they could do it, and it was on the reverse side from where we were.
Now, we could have shot at them there, if we’d had anything for control. We had put up an observation post over here so that we could fire at that point, but that night there was no communication. Apparently they had cut the wire. It lasted minutes, or an hour, then it was over with. I remember thinking, “Now if everybody will do just what they are supposed to do, we can whip them,” but actually, probably that submarine or whatever it was could have come in and took us over.
Later we found a rubber boat—I didn’t find it, because we were up there on top of that hill—but anyhow they’d landed and apparently came ashore, looked around, spied on us or whatever, then left.
During this time, right after the war started, you’d stay down there on those points by yourself—we were lookouts, one on each gun, one here and one fifty yards up the hill. One night this sergeant came down—by then we didn’t know if you went down you may or may not come back up again that night. He didn’t say if he was coming back or not, he just went down. We didn’t stand four-hour watches, we just stayed on half the night until somebody would come at midnight, and you were scared. Well, I didn’t know he was coming back and I heard something. I kind of slipped over there, but didn’t hear anything else. Then I heard it again, and then a third time. I knew there was something down there. Then here came this figure lunging up this hill right at me. Boy! I pulled my .45, and when he heard that bolt slam back he hollered, “Metzger!” That was his name. Man, that scared me. I couldn’t even speak because I’d almost shot that man. I’d have hated to kill him, because he was the one who knew how to run our raisin-jack still! But he should have told me he was coming back, and not just come charging back up there.
After a period of time, when the Marines had got enough men through boot camp and trained, they sent a brigade down there to Samoa. We looked out in the harbor one morning, and there was the Mariposa, the Monterey, and the Lurline sitting out there waiting to unload. They were loaded with a brigade.
Then we were sent over to another island, British Samoa, over to Apia harbor. We had a great big old house there. It had belonged to a French doctor, but the military had taken it over and our whole battery moved in there. This was where some American Marine outfits got final training before going on to Guadalcanal or wherever. The Twenty-second Marines came through there, and the Seventh Marines. When those outfits came through I volunteered to go with every one of them, to go into combat and get out of the boredom of Samoa. And they all turned me down. Then there were some guys who were going up to take their flight physicals, and they said, “Mac, here’s something you can volunteer for.” And I said, “What the hell. Okay, what is it?” And they told me it was for flight school. Twelve of them were turned down, but two of us passed.
A little later I went to sick bay with the “mu mu,” which is elephantiasis, and it starts with a mosquito bite. Your arms and other parts swell up, so I was in the hospital to come home. They told me there was no cure for it over there, but if I got back in the States it go would go away by itself. Then they came to me one day and said I could stay in the hospital and go home that way, or my outfit was going home and I could go home with them. So I said I would go back with the outfit. So I came home in March of 1943. I’d been out there in the islands for two years.
They sent me to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. You’d have six months in the States before being reassigned overseas. It was boredom. We went to those little old towns in North Carolina and drank that bootleg whiskey. I couldn’t get a whiskey ration. I went into the sergeant and asked for one, and he said, “How old are you?” I said, “Twenty,” and he said, “You are not old enough to drink!”
After about ninety days I got hold of two buddies and said, “Let’s go overseas again.” I talked them into it, and we applied and the orders came through. But my orders didn’t come. Iwent into the sergeant major again, and he said, “Oh, you’re going to Boston to flight school.” So I got into flight school, and that’s where I spent most of the rest of the war.
Let me give you my views on the Marine Corps. They will take a boy eighteen or nineteen years old, and they will change him into a Marine. The first thing they’re going to do is to try to break him down. And in boot camp if he does crack they will send him home. It is incessant pounding. Close-order drill hour after hour, until midnight sometimes. Then you go and pack your gear and do this and do that. Busy every second and always under the eye of the drill instructor. After about three weeks of that you begin to believe that you really are what they often call you—a simple shithead. Then they take you to the rifle range. Now, a Marine’s rifle is his most important possession. They teach you to shoot for about three weeks, day after day and hour after hour. They put you in positions they want you to be in, and if your body doesn’t want to go that way they will bend it that way. But also you develop a comradeship and a fellowship with the other men going through the same thing. And you develop the idea that you’re a Marine and able to do whatever you have to do with very little equipment. By the time you leave boot camp, you have been put back together as a Marine and you’re proud of it, and you discover that your drill instructor is proud of you, too. And you will remain a Marine for the rest of your life.