Leatherneck Sea Stories

Leatherneck Sea Stories
Recollection of Marines, Korea, and the Corps of the 1950s

By Dave Easton

214 Pages - Paperback

Product #985

All profits from this book's sales will be used to buy Christmas gifts for the paratroopers of the US Army 82nd Airborne - Charly Company - 2nd Platoon - 2/508th Parachute Infantry Regiment - with whom Ed's Son, Jeff, is stationed with in Afghanistan.

Dave Easton served in the Marines from January 1951 until January 1954, with the time split between the 2nd Division in North Carolina and the 1st Division in Korea. He re-enlisted in the Corps for another three-year hitch in February 1957, and later agreed to a two-year extension to qualify for embassy duty. He finished his enlistment in C Company, 2nd Recon Battalion, and was honorably discharged in February 1962.

Containing items of historical interest for military enthusiasts as well as bits of nostalgia that will appeal to general readers of Americana, Leatherneck Sea Stories: Recollections of Marines, Korea, and the Corps of the 1950s is an informal collection of profiles and memories culled straight from the heartfelt experiences of its author.

As a member of the "old breed," Dave Easton might bristle at being labeled a literary artist, but the reader of Leatherneck Sea Stories will quickly discern a clever turn of the phrase to go along with his eloquent demonstration of the fine art of storytelling.

Note from Cindy Rhodes, Leerburg Kennel Manager

This book was written by my father, Dave Easton. I hope you will take the opportunity to purchase this book for yourself or for the military buff on your shopping list. My dad is one of my biggest inspirations, and has always encouraged me to do in life what is meaningful to me. As many of you know, DOGS really are my life and because of my dad’s support and encouragement I have been able to follow my dream of making a difference in dogs' lives and hopefully have made a difference for their owners as well. He told me once if I could do something I love for my job that I would be way ahead of the game in life.

Writing a book has always been my dad’s dream and I can’t tell you how incredibly proud I am of him, today and every day! Seeing the dream of publishing his book come true has been a great experience for all of us who care so much about this very special Marine.

Table of Contents

Preface

Glossary of Marine Speak
The Beginning
The Bucket
6th Marines
The Fleet Landing
The Scarlet Letter
Bob
Dick
J.P.
The Greek
Doug
Al
Tom
Charlie
The Great Shit Detail
Joey
March 26, 1953
Reserve
Pop
Rosie
Mikey-San (Ed Mon Soo)
Hedy
Lennie and the Poster Girl
The Rock
Friends and Neighbors
Showers
Dollar Bill
Other Recollections and Ponderings
Sergeants
Red

Afterword

A REVIEW:

A good memoir, like a good oral history in book form, is very readable, engaging, historically accurate, and credibly revealing of its narrator. Author Dave Easton gives us such a work in Leatherneck Sea Stories.

Having traveled extensively in the Midwest, I see and hear in Easton the clear, direct, plain-spoken qualities typical of folks in that region. He reflects a solid American tradition that eschews hyperbole and literary embellishment, one that gets to the core of experience honestly and simply, often with powerful understatement.

Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, Easton served two hitches in the Marine Corps, the first from January 1951 to January 1954, the second 1957 – 1962. This book (214 pp) deals mostly with his major experiences in the earlier period when he served with the 2nd Marine Division in North Carolina and then with the 1st Division in Korea.

Ever mindful of the reader, Easton begins with a “Glossary of Marine Speak.” For example, MLR is “main line of resistance,” where the author spent many a dangerous hour in the final bloody months of the Korean War; birdlegs (nickname for a Marine with scrawny leg calves); leatherneck (synonym for Marine dating back to the days when Marines on sailing ships fought with cutlasses and swords and wore high protective leather collars); piss tube (155 mm artillery shell used as a urinal); salt (a Marine with lengthy service); sea stories (ideas and tales exchanged by Marines about subjects of any nature).

Easton’s Glossary contains terms like the following that we Army “dogfaces” of the 50’s and 60’s also used and I’m guessing they’re still part of “military speak”: boondocks (any place in the field whether on maneuvers or in combat), head (bathroom), police call (the command for all troopers to clean up a unit area).

Informative, colorful, in places downright funny, suggestive of qualities that make the Marine Corps distinctive, the Glossary sets a narrative tone for the memoir. In thirty short chapters Easton recollects the rough discipline of basic training; fun and mischief on liberty (leave); sergeants whom he had run-ins with; terrible combat in below-freezing weather; fighting bunker rats, “the only things in Korea that outnumbered the Chinese”; and other happenings and ways of life in the Corps of the early 50’s.

In basic training, Easton says, “the terms ‘maggot,’ ‘shitbird,’ and ‘idiot’ were interchangeable and applied to all hands” who fouled up. A boot (Marine recruit) who failed to shave had to go to front of his platoon where his bucket was placed over his head and with his nondominant hand he was ordered to take a strain on the handle. He was then ordered to reach up under the bucket and commence shaving. After a stroke or two, the next command was “mark time, double time, march.” When their faces healed, these guys were faithful shavers for the rest of their time in boot camp.

Most of the chapters are entitled with first names or nicknames like Bob (Bob Garza), a fellow Chicagoan who joined the Marines with Easton; Pop, an old salt decorated for valor in World War II and “a hard charger” in Korea who braved Chinese 76s (devastating artillery) to man an abandoned observation post; Doug (Anthony P. Douglas) who during “a ferocious firefight” took command of his patrol when “the lieutenant came unglued.” For this action Douglas was awarded the Bronze Star.

One friend whom Easton recalls especially fondly is “Greek” (John Kyristi, Jr.). After meeting some French Foreign Legion troops while on liberty in Oran, Algeria, Greek persuaded the author to sign a blood oath to return to Oran and join the Legion after their Marine hitch was up. “Obviously this contract was never executed,” Easton writes, “but I still have my copy in my scrapbook.” On p. 97 the “contract” appears in Greek’s own words.

Easton gives a visual dimension to his memoir with telling photos of Greek, Bob, Doug, a number of his other buddies, and Marines in action. He also includes news clippings of his division's bloody struggles to retake “Vegas Hill” near “Old Baldy Mountain.”

I remember following these battles while a newspaper carrier in high school. I’ve always been interested in history especially as it unfolds. Korea was of particular interest then because a neighbor friend was a Marine serving there and we all hoped for his welfare and safe return. Fortunately he did return but with a bad limp, the result of a nasty leg wound. I never heard him complain about his disability. He just said he was prepared to live with it the rest of his life. Reading Easton’s “Scars” (pp. 186-7), a section on Marine wounds, I immediately thought of Bob Baird.

This book does not glorify war or the Corps. Easton is almost self-effacing about his own hazardous duty in “a police action” [my quotes] marked by long stretches of trench warfare and agonizingly slow attempts at armistice that recall the Western Front in World War I. The author is brutally honest about his most fearful day in combat, March 26, 1953. And more than 50 years later his sense of Semper Fidelis still rings proudly: “Once a Marine always a Marine.”

Canopic Publishing, an innovative press in picturesque Gatlinburg, Tennessee, is to be commended for adding this memoir to its growing list of important nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. I highly recommend that readers check out these publications at www.canopicpublishing.com

As for Dave Easton, as he says in his Preface, “my health and memory permitting, another volume [about his second Marine hitch that included embassy duty] might be considered for the future.” Let’s hope so, Dave!

Reviewed by Robert B. Gentry

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