So You Served

I recall my early days on a cruise and climbing down a rope ladder hanging over the side of an APA ship. The rope would be hung over the ship and you would climb down the rope and look down at the papa boat below you. The papa boat was going in the motion of the waves, up and down, and it seemed like it would never stop.

I was doing a favor for my sergeant because I’m a teletype operator and all my equipment was on one of the communication trucks and the sergeant needed this radio on the beach as a backup. I continued down the rope, and the seas were very heavy, and the papa boat was really dropping several feet with each heave from the waves.

Finally, I thought the papa boat was settled down from the last heave and decided to let go of the rope ladder and jumped into the papa boat. I misjudged and the papa boat had fallen another foot or two and I tumbled down into the steel deck of the papa boat. I hear the sergeant yell down to me to make sure the radio was in good shape and I responded with a few prize words for the sergeant but the nose from the activity in the boat muffled my response.

Over the three years that I was in this section of the Marine Corps, it was called 1st Landing Support Company and then later it was renamed Shore Party Battalion. I was a teletype operator in the Communication section. My job was hooking up the teletype and keeping communications with the battalion communications while on beach landings. When we were on the ship, we were assigned a communication station on the ship where we kept active for the remainder of the cruise.

There was very little to do on these cruises for a Marine, especially on an LSD, as we were basically like passengers on a cruise ship. The grunts (infantry) on the APA ships were the bulk of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines were in a more disciplined atmosphere. We were what the grunts called, a “red patcher” because we wore red patches on the pants portion of our fatigue uniforms, so as to distinguish us from regular Marines, who were not assigned to operations on the beach.

Just wanted to show a picture of the red patches that we used to wear on our uniforms, and in this picture, were also on the front of our helmets. Only a person who wore a red patch was allowed on the beach. Actually, at times, it was a bit of a joke with the infantry because, on one cruise, we had a green Lieutenant who was gung ho on becoming an officer in the U.S. Marines and wanted to spread that enthusiasm with fellow red patchers.

As you can see from the above picture, fellow red patchers were taking a hike up a mountain with this green Lieutenant on Corsica. It was an embarrassing situation for the red patchers because the infantry had just finished their operations on the landing at Corsica and was relaxing and chatting with each other as the red patchers came marching through their section on the way towards the mountain that we had to climb.

The word went out fast when the grunts learned that it was the red patchers who were marching through their bivouacked area. The word went out fast and a bunch of grunts got up to cheer us on as we, red patchers, marched to the mountain. It was a very embarrassing moment for a red patcher. You had to be a red patcher to really appreciate the moment as we marched through the grunt’s area.

If memory serves me right, this could be the view of the beach where we as red patchers hang out during the landing operations. You can see the cranes which were used by the Seabees, the beached LCM, and the floating dock that the LSD hooks up to and unload their trucks and equipment. In this picture, you can make out several of the ships that are involved in the landing operations.

One of the perks of being a red-patchers was the ability to avoid using the mess hall during the landing operations. The mess sergeant would visit the beach at times when supplies were coming in and would question why they never saw a red patcher in the mess hall on landing operations. I don’t think that he ever put together that all the supplies that he got for his mess hall would have to come from the ships and through the beach operations of the red patchers.

One of the funniest times that we had on the beach was at the end of the landing operations and the battalion commander had the ship operations send in a few pallets of beer for the troops to chill on at the end of the landing operations. One on occasion, one red patcher grabbed two cases of beer and ran through our communication tent. The red patcher dropped the two cases of beer where the other red patchers were playing cards, who quickly hid the two cases of beer in the hole under the blanket, and ran out the back of the tent. The mess officer asked where the guy with the beer was and we told him that he ran out the back of the tent. We suffered from 48 more cans of beer.