Let’s be damn sure that no man’s ghost will ever say “If your training program had only done its job.”
I have been advised by an e-mail correspondent (namely, Dr. R. E. Sullivan, PhD and Col USMC (Ret.) who is a historian and many other things) that the above well-known inscription is no longer seen on the masthead of The Parris Island Boot (base newspaper), and has been replaced by We Make Marines.
“Sully” states that:
“Also, digging through some of my older (what I laughingly call) Archives I resurrected a copy of the Parris Island Boot from late 1944. The masthead proclaims: “Let’s Be Damned Sure That No Boy’s Ghost Will Ever Say, ‘If Your Training Program Had Only Done Its Job….’”
Just for the heck of it I looked up the present masthead on the Parris Island Boot which is: ”We Make Marines.”
No more mention of “Boy’s and Ghosts.” Probably would not go over too well with the Recruiters in this day and age, to say nothing at all about the parents of would be warriors. When in 1944 we were all assured that we’d be dead within six months of leaving P. I. at least some of us breathed a sigh of relief. The thought of returning to any kind of school was much more fearsome to those of us who were not academically gifted than dying a hero’s death on an enemy shore. Ah, the romance of it all!
Oh, well. Different times, and different strokes for different folks. On the other hand, thinking back to my days as Piedpiper 6 in ‘65/’66 during the SEA War Games, if we couldn’t show ten enemy bodies for every Marine we lost (i.e. “became a ghost), it was considered prima facie evidence of our incompetence to command. And not infrequently old Lew Walt would descend from his Deus ex Machina to place his right foot on the chest of a deceased enemy, and smile as he said “One.” At the same time he gazed down the aligned corpses that were presented for his inspection. My guess is, from reading between the lines of current goings-on, that commanders must fight a bloodless war, at least on our side of the ledger. Must assume that those who insist on such fanciful outcomes never cringed under direct fire or ranging mortar rounds trying to land in our back pockets as did lesser mortals such as I.”
It seems to me that I have seen that inscription on a sign (in Marine Corps colors, of course) many times online, I suppose the sign itself somewhere aboard MCRD, Parris Island, South Carolina, and it may have also been at the Drill Instrucror School at PI.
A long Google search online has been unsuccessful in finding an image of that sign that I have seen many times online, though the words themselves abound on the Internet.
Questions arise in my mind-housing-group regarding this:
Is the sign still alive and well aboard PISC?
Or maybe the DI School, PISC?
Was it passed over for the possibly more PC We Make Marines?
etc.
Lest ye think maybe all this is my own personal pipedream, here is just one reference fyi.
“As a machine-gun section leader in Korean combat, McKeon had learned that survival depends on discipline. He had fresh in his mind the grim stricture of the D.I. school: “Let’s be damn sure that no man’s ghost will ever say, ‘If your training program had only done its job.’” And McKeon saw disturbing signs in Platoon 71. “There are still men in this platoon,” he fretted, “that could not have made the grade in Korea.”
Ref
http://www.furl.net/item/35377000
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