|
|
|
I left my house and was going toward Harrisburg on a back road called 19th Street. When leaving Steelton there is a small dip in the highway before it straightens out, directly opposite from the farm I grew up working on. Coming toward me were two small black kids on two wheeled bicycles. They were carrying on between themselves completely ignoring traffic.
All of a sudden, from the opposite direction that I was travelling, came a dark grey 1949 Mercury. It was going like hell. I began trying to signal the kids to get out of the road. Before I could do anything the Mercury topped the road and smashed into the kids. Both of the bicycles and their cargo exploded. Parts of bicycle flew everywhere and the small bodies were thrown over a high embankment. The Mercury kept on going.
I had mixed emotions about what to do. In the movies it seems forever until someone calls an ambulance. I wanted to call quickly but this was an era when even pay phones were at a premium. I also wanted to catch the driver of the Mercury. I spun my car around and chased the Mercury toward Steelton. I drive well and soon caught him. With my shiny new car I simply ran him off the road. When I jumped from my car the driver of the Mercury staggered out of his. Before he could do anything I elbowed him as hard as I could. The guy was big and before he could recover I quickly piled him into the trunk of my car and raced for the police station about two miles away. Turning into the station I told our Chief of Police, Mr. Wolfolk, that two kids were hit and where to find them. Without asking a list of movie questions, they sent an ambulance.
The chief then asked me if I had seen it happen and if I saw who did it. His face transformed into bewildered delight when he found out that the guy who did it was in my trunk. Thank God there was no Miranda ruling at that time. We went back to the scene of the accident. One little boy was dead. I found out later that the other one lived but was crippled for life.
Fate was at work. The driver of the Mercury was on leave. He was an officer in the Marine Corp who had been dead drunk. Within two weeks two Marine lawyers from the Inspector Generals Office interviewed me. They weren't really interviewing me. They were brainwashing me into joining the Marine Corps. They offered me what I thought at the time was a romantic and exciting deal. How wrong I was.
I talked Larry Kostelac into joining up with me. Larry and I left for the recruiting station in Philadelphia. The Marines put us in a Philadelphia hotel where the whole upper floor was filled with females who were also enlisting, plus some who were working at their profession. I was impatient. Looking out our room window I saw a way to climb to the second floor. Two women were waving at us. Enthusiastically, I climbed part way into the window of the women's room where some other guy immediately slugged me. He knocked me back out the window. I landed on an adjoining roof. The fall hurt my ankle. At Parris Island I ended up in the hospital and was separated from Larry.
While I was recuperating in the hospital, the same two officers that had quizzed me on the accident came to see me. They had an assignment for me. The platoon I was being put in was run by a Drill Instructor suspected of taking money from the recruits. The details of the D.I.'s methods were not known. There were numerous complaints but no one would step forward and swear out a formal statement.
The officers had arranged for two M.P.'s to pick me up every night after chow. I was schooled on a credible story for me to use if anyone questioned me about the MP's.
I joined the platoon and began the hardest training I had ever experienced to that point in my life. Our D.I. was good. He was also a suspected thief. After about two weeks the D.I. made me an assistant squad leader. Assistant squad leader is a fancy name for someone who carries out the D.I.'s orders when he isn't around. I immediately fell in love with the job even though the training was hard and monotonous.
After chow every marine is expected to do all his work until taps. This is also the time when you are most physically and psychologically whipped. One particular night two large M.P.'s came into the squad room and bellowed for Private Smith. They told me my school records had come in and that I would have to go to school three nights a week until I got my grades up. I was escorted from the squad bay scared to death.
The schooling was not what I had expected. They took me to the gym. Several different instructors used me as a training dummy for the entire time I was on the Island. Funny, but as I reread this I realize that they did not even speak the word karate much less knows about it. This training consisted of standard Marine Corp drills, self defense techniques and the like.
At times the additional training lasted into the early morning hours. I was already exhausted from my regular daytime conditioning. What I initially believed my physical and emotional limits to be was greatly extended.
I didn't know it then but the government was forming my entire life in that gym. I gained three things from boot camp: great physical condition; preliminary martial arts training; and, the beginning of a good service record. Additionally, I caught the Drill Instructor who was stealing from the recruits. The thief was not the D.I. they had me watching, but the Junior Drill Instructor.
He called me aside one day and said that our Senior D.I., the one we thought was the thief, was expecting his wife to have a baby. He wanted to know if I would talk to the platoon and see if they wanted to chip in and buy him a present. I talked to the platoon and they all agreed to chip in a dollar apiece. With the size of the platoon that wasn't a lot of money but we did it for three paydays in a row. The last time I collected the money the Feds were there to watch me hand him the money.
~HGS
|
Copyright © 2005 Harry G. Smith
