The large green bus left Highway 101 at Oceanside, California, to turn into Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in northern San Diego County. All four platoons from our series (371 – 374) had boarded Greyhound-type buses owned by the Department of the Navy early in the morning of December 13, 1963.
We had spent the night of graduation folding and packing uniforms and equipment into our sea bags (called a duffel bag in the Army). We vacated our Quonset huts after chow and marched to the buses. This is known as a movement in the
THE MAIN GATE at Camp Pendleton. This is the main road for traffic into the base. This gate has been open and manned by Marines 24 hours a day since 1942. We used the gate at Oceanside to the south. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Marine Corps. Missing a movement was a court-martial offense.
Orders directed us to report to the 2nd Infantry Training Regiment, which we called ITR. The 1st regiment trained at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to train men from Parris Island.
We were to spend about a week at Camp Pendleton before the Marine Corps granted us Christmas leave. The thought of returning to civilian life made me giddy.
The buses passed through the Oceanside gate heading for Camp San Onofre, the home of 2nd ITR. The Marine Corps had created Camp Pendleton in 1942 on 125,000 acres of a former Mexican ranch. The ranch house – which held an Episcopal chapel I attended — served as base headquarters.
The name Camp Pendleton honors Major General Joseph H. Pendleton, who pushed to create the base. Since World War II, the base has been home to the 1st Marine Division. But the base also houses training commands, such as 2nd ITR.
Caption From Lady Leatherneck Forum: ITR at Camp San Onofre at Camp Pendleton [1961]. The view is the company street, from one row west of [the photographer’s Quonset Hut], over the top of the rifle bench towards Horno Ridge. Beyond the ridge is the Pacific Ocean. The top of the mountain is shrouded in low-hanging clouds.
The troops lived in larger Quonset huts than those at the Depot. We did not live under the constant presence of a non-commissioned officer, and our evenings were our own. But our area lay in the Sierra Nevada range in which winter had set in. A large oil-based heater warmed our hut, but cold set in a few feet away from it. We could not keep warm.
Our series became “C” Company, known to us as Chickens**t Charlie Company. Our company commander, whose name began with a Mac and who affected dark glasses, we knew as Captain MacArthur. I remember none of the names.
In place of drill instructors we had troop leaders, the non-coms who ordered us around. They proved less sympathetic than our DIs, who seemed to want us to succeed. The troop leaders acted like petty dictators. Our main tormentor was a pudgy Irishman from New England, who traded off with a wiry black sergeant. The Irishman liked to take us off on rapid uphill hikes on Sunday afternoons.
Many of my bunkmates from the Depot found themselves in 4th Platoon with me. But there were a smattering of men from the other units who I got to know. One in particular was a tall, woebegone 38-year-old artist who had served in the Navy in the late 1940s, 15 or more years before. Some cataclysm, a divorce I believe, had caused him to enlist in the regular Marine Corps for four years. It was the American version of the Foreign Legion for him. He seemed downcast over his decision.
Our interests the first few days were sleep, food, and tobacco, pretty much in that order. Taps in ITR went at 2200 (10 p.m.) instead of 2100 (9 p.m.) as at the Depot. That cut an hour off our sleep , because reveille remained at 0500 (5 a.m.). When you hump hills during the day, seven hours of sleep felt like insomnia.
The battalion mess hall sat a few hundred yards away down the hill, and we no longer marched to chow in formation. We dressed and ate on our own, then reported back for the morning formation. But the food fell short of the food at the Depot. It was passable but not more. I recall eating a meal of fried chicken – only to discover I had eaten rabbit.
The smoking lamp still had to be lighted, and the troop leaders watched us for surreptitious smoking. This took place at the head on the hillside (a head is the Naval bathroom), perhaps 30 or 40 yards removed from the huts. That required a climb up the hill. But there we posted lookouts and smoked.
Caption from Lady Leatherneck Forum: This is Camp San Onofre, part of Camp Pendleton, California, up against the Horno Ridge, a part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains on a weekend afternoon in January 1961. The dark areas in the shade of the Quonset huts are groups of Marines relaxing and swapping sea stories.
Every so often, a troop leader would ascend the hill to check for smokers in the head, but he never caught me. I had thought to myself in boot camp that the commanding officer ought to ban smoking for the duration. That might have cured me.
Instead, I bought a newspaper one day at the mess hall (there was an actual newspaper rack, and we could read The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner every day). The lead headline reported that the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health had concluded that smoking caused lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men. I read the headline in the rack and bought the paper. I decided to quit smoking. That took me four-and-a-half years.
We looked forward to departing from 2nd ITR almost as much as graduating from boot camp. That was in the future: right now we had leave to go home, in dress uniform, for Christmas.
9 Responses to Into the hills: infantry training
Jan, 61 . Navy “seabee” battalion 10, went there, while rotating back stateside from a 1 yr Guam deployment .
what memories !
I was a hospital corpsman at the 2nd ITR dispensary from Jan of 1960 to Apr of 1962, it was good duty and some of my fondest memories of my service life were from 2nd ITR
William Pannill: two of the pics, those of the Quonset huts – one with the low hanging clouds and the other showing the full range of huts – were both taken by me in early January 1965. I still have their originals. Apparently they were harvested from a web site I kept in the very early 2000’s. The loneliness of the camp was palpable. It was like a half mile to the mess hall and the chow lines were unbelievably long.
To keep from casual duties, and before we were formally organized (there was a week or two of just hanging loose there) we’d walk around the side of the same mountain I took the pics from and shoot the bull and smoke. We called it “Golf-Brick Hill.”
It was all a very memorable experience.
That was not our experience: the Marine Corps moved a whole series of boot platoons (Platoons 271 through 274) up to Pendleton the morning after graduation from Recruit Training and becoming “Marines,” a title our senior drill instructor (Staff Sergeant Jack Guinn) greeted us with after we left the Chapel grinder for our four-hour base liberty. That was our first liberty in 13 weeks. Next day we stepped off into four different platoons in Charlie Company, 2nd Infantry Training Regiment. The experience was quite a comedown, especially the troop leaders, after the spit and polish and good food of the Recruit Training Regiment. We did find the large head on the hill at San Onofre and learned quickly to post men at the corners so we could smoke at will — no smoking lamp for us, which was too bad. The Surgeon General’s report that linked smoking to lung cancer came out during combat training, and I read the newspapers at San Onofre. Even then, I wished the Marine Corps had barred me from smoking to shake the habit. It took me four more years to quit. My younger brother continued to smoke, after Parris Island, throughout his life and died of lung cancer at 69.
William Pannill, I enjoyed your blog comments. Two of the pics, those of the Quonset huts – one with the low hanging clouds and the other showing the full range of huts – were both taken by me in early January 1960. I still have their originals. Apparently they were harvested from a web site I kept in the very early 2000’s. The loneliness of the camp was palpable. It was like a half mile to the mess hall and the chow lines were unbelievably long.
To keep from casual duties, and before we were formally organized (there was a week or two of just hanging loose there) we’d walk around the side of the same mountain I took the pics from and shoot the bull and smoke. We called it “Golf-Brick Hill.”
It was all a very memorable experience.
I have not been back to Camp San Onofre in 57 years, but your pictures place me there again.
Hi William?
I’m the photographer of the two pictures of Camp San Onofre. I took those in early January 1961. It’s still a. Ice place to remember. One thing was that I had returned from 30 days leave following my 13 weeks at MCRD San Diego. When I reported in at San Onofre I was among the very first in and had to wait about a week for guys like me to drift in and then we were to form up the company, Delta Co, 1st Bn, 2nd ITR.
Your photographs are evocative of the place and very moving. I can feel the heat of the big stove e nearest my bunk in the squad bay on those cold California nights in 1964.
I arrived late San Onafre February 1963. I still remember those days. When I look at those pictures of MCRD, and Pendleton it is almost like looking at pictures of a lost era. I will always my time in the Corp with mixed emotions. Semper Fi