Recently I was remembering my two year Marine Corp tour of duty in Hawaii from November 1964 to November 1966. Not the whole tour, just the time that I spent on The Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol Team (Pac/West). I put the question mark (?) in the title of this short story because after fifty plus years, my memory gets a little foggy, especially in the chronological order department. I do remember that when I first got transferred from Camp Pendleton, Ca to Hawaii - it was because my Company Commander said that, “I was running around with some bad Marines.” They weren’t bad, they just liked to booze it up and stay out late. Okay, there were a few fights but that was a normal happening in the Corps. Anyway, my Company Commander, a Major (I’m positive that was his rank), asked me, “Where do you want to go, Vietnam or Hawaii?” Being a single nineteen year old wiseguy (punk?), I said, “I don’t care.” He sent me home for my thirty day leave. While home in New Jersey, I received orders for a two year tour in Hawaii. If I would have gone to Vietnam, I’m sure that I would have been killed...and I wouldn’t have met my wife in Hawaii. So off I went to Hawaii to guard secret weapons in “hobbit-like” bunkers on a base that was hard to find. By the way, a couple of weeks after I arrived in Hawaii, my entire old regiment in Camp Pendleton got sent to Vietnam. Whew!
In the Marine Corps, during those years, you had to qualify with a rifle (in my time it was a M14 rifle) every year. As it so happens, when I qualified in Hawaii, I shot either a perfect score or close to it (I’m a tad vague on that). That impressed the “Green Mother” (the term we used to describe the Marine Corps since we wore green utilities, not camouflage). Anyway, that got me transferred to the rifle and pistol team in Ewa Beach (a thirteen man team). Talk about good duty! I would practice in the morning, sometimes firing rounds in the sky just to get rid of the ammo. Then I would drive (yea, I bought a 1951 Dodge wagon for $125.) to Honolulu where I moved in with two high school classmates who were going to the University of Hawaii. Mike never left Hawaii...he’s still there. A funny story is that one day when we were partying in our apartment at the U of H, we ran out of booze. So one of the guys said he would drive downtown and get some more beer. I flipped him the keys to my three-speed on the column wagon and continued to party. Well, he came back real soon and said that he didn’t know how to drive a stick. Apparently, he started the car and leapfrogged across the street and smashed in the side of a parked car. We all went down stairs and couldn’t believe what we saw. So we went upstairs and wrote a note to the owner of the smashed car concerning the accident. We took the note downstairs to put on the windshield of the car in question and guess what? The car was gone! I didn’t take shooting seriously...I was a partying Marine. Every Marine had ‘crossed rifle’ insignias on their lapels; I imagined mine to be ‘crossed martini glasses’. I even took a job in Waikiki Beach parking cars for a nightclub called the Romney Room. If a customer didn’t tip me properly when I brought their car to the door...I would close the door on their ankle. Ouch! However, I did meet some great people who lived all year round in Hawaii that frequented the nightclub. Who? Richard Boone, who starred in the TV series Have Gun-Will Travel, Curtis Aiakea (I’m not sure I’m spelling his name correctly), the Hawaiian heavyweight wrestling champion, and his tag-team partner Tosh Togo (Harold Sakata). You would remember Tosh Togo as the villain Oddjob in James Bond’s Goldfinger movie (he killed people by throwing his hat). They would get tipsy and judo chop a table or so in half. Great fun! I wouldn’t have but two or three hours sleep and head back to the barracks for more shooting ammo into the sky. Occasionally, I would pick up a hitchhiker in order to try to stay awake. One time when I arrived at the base, the hitchhiker was ashen. I asked what was wrong. He said, “You must have run off the the road a hundred times.” Oh well, that happened every day. In spite of my drinking, when a shooting match came about, I became serious and came in second or third many times against the world’s best.
Then one day the CIA (they didn’t say who they were to me) showed up at the barracks. Apparently the New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, reopened the JFK assassination case in respect to Lee Harvey Oswald’s involvement. If I remember correctly, they showed me and the twelve other team members (individually) a Italian .38 carbine rifle with scope (not the actual one used by Oswald). Supposedly he fired three shots (one must have missed) killing JFK and wounding Texas Governor John Connally. I told the CIA (?) that it would have been a miracle for Oswald to do what he did with that piece of crap rifle. That was the end of that. Not long after (my memory is a bit cloudy), the barracks for the Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol team burnt down to the ground. The team was split up and we went back to our original posts. That was big trouble for me since I was used to partying and not guarding bombs in hobbit holes. I wasn’t your typical Marine...yes I had the ‘Semper Fi’ thing, but I was a free-thinker. The Corps didn’t like that. Once I got to Lance Corporal, I refused any further promotions. Why? Because I wasn’t going to stay in and I thought the promotion should go to someone who was going to re-enlist. The honorable thing to do, right? Well, the Green Mother didn’t think so. As a matter of fact, when it was my turn to get a re-enlistment talk when I had six months left in the Corps, the Sergeant in the office said, “Ohlarik, read a magazine for ten minutes and then get the f**k out of the office." Okay, no problemo! Haha!
Being back on guard duty spelled big problems for me since I lived in Waikiki and was used to the ‘good life’. By the way, (I told you I’m a little hazy) I forgot to mention to you that when I was still on the Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol Team, I was winning the Hawaiian long range (prone) championship with one round to go. It was either 1965 or 1966. Anyway my buddy Sergeant Brissey kicked me in the foot as I fired the last round. It went into the four ring instead of the bullseye, and I came in second. No big deal, Sgt. Brissey was a great guy. But once again I ran into some bad Marines. This time it got me and two others arrested in Waikiki. What happened? A screwball named Private Brassman, another guy (I don’t remember his name), and I went to Waikiki to have a good time. Luckily, I didn’t have my .45 pistol in my back waistband. Why did I go to town many times that way? People would look at me and think I was a cop? A gangster? I don’t know, but it was stupid. However we went to town that night without weapons (thank God). We got drunk and decided to go to the hotel’s rooftop and empty all the fire extinguisher’s on the parked cars and floor. We went downstairs and broke into the closed kitchen and made ourself dinner. It was the famous Princess Kaiulani Hotel. What were we thinking? We went to the bar area and danced with the guests and local girls, but Brassman disappeared. Where did he go?
My unnamed buddy and I went to my car to leave, but it wouldn’t start. Suddenly a large Hawaiian cop appeared at my driver’s window holding my car’s distributor cap. He said, “get out of the car!” Several more officers surrounded us. The big guy said, “What’s under that tarp in your back deck?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He lifted the tarp and there were many women’s purses and two gold hotel ashtray urns laying on my back deck. What?? Suddenly, the idiot Brassman barges through the officer ranks holding more purses. So that’s where the stolen goods came from! No wonder he was missing when my buddy and I were dancing. Obviously, we were arrested and the Marine base was contacted. As a sidebar, during our night of havoc, we saw a Marine and Sailor out together all night. Every time we saw them, they were drunker and drunker, arm in arm, prancing down Kalakaua Avenue. Then I saw them with the Sailor wearing the Marine’s hat and the Marine wearing the Sailor’s hat (I would say cover, but you probably would not know what I meant). The reason I’m bringing this up is because when we were put in a Honolulu jail cell, I saw the Sailor and Marine in different cells...all beaten up. What happened? I don’t know. The Marines came to pick us up in the morning. The hotel dropped the charges, but not the Marines. Fortunately, Brassman confessed to the whole crime. The last time I saw Brassman, he was in a cell wearing a straightjacket.
Okay, I was off the hook...not! The Gunnery Sergeant at the base hated my guts, and he brought me up on trumped up charges (not really, I was real bad that night). So now I have ‘Office Hours’ in front of the Captain. When my date in court came, the Gunnery Sergeant was all smiles as he read the charges against me. The Captain listened and took the papers from the Sergeant. Then the Captain said to me, “Before I go further, would you shoot for our local team and go to California for the state Championships?” I said, “Of course, Sir.” The Captain threw the papers in the waste basket and said, “Charges dismissed.” The Gunnery Sergeant was so mad he turned white. Wow, I’m off to California to reunite with one of my bad Marine buddies, who by now is out of the Corps. That’s going to be a problem...and it was. By the way, getting back to the Princess Kaiulani Hotel for a moment, Kui Lee was performing at the hotel the night of our arrest. If you never heard of this man...He wrote and sang I’ll Remember You, which was a big hit for many singers including Andy Williams, Elvis Presley and Don Ho (Kui Lee’s competitor at Duke’s in The International Market Place down the street from the Princess Kaiulani). Kui died of cancer at the early age of 34. His ashes were scattered over Waikiki.
Anyways, I was off to California with my new team. The Championship was being held at my old base, Camp Pendleton. By the way, the longest road on the base is named after John Basilone (a Raritan, N.J. native), who was a Marine Medal of Honor recipient from WWII. So my team got to the barracks late the first day. The next day was a off day, and everybody was outside stretching and getting ready for the big match the next day. Except me. I called my old buddy Jerry and his wife, Helen. I grabbed a bus and headed to Los Angeles. Jerry now worked for a race track (I can’t remember which one) because his brother, Bobby, was a big time jockey. Helen picked me up at the bus station, and we meet Jerry at the race track. Jerry was among many men holding down two horses that were about to mate (wow, that was something to see!). We finally got to Jerry and Helen’s house around 5PM. Jerry was dead tired and fell asleep. Okay, so Helen and I hit the town and many bars. Somehow we wound up at an amusement park on a pier. I can’t remember for sure, but I think it was the Santa Monica Pier. Needless to say, by the time Helen got me to a bus, it was very late (or early, depending on how you looked at it). I arrived back on the base in the wee hours of the morning...drunk as a skunk. Skunks do get drunk when they eat fallen fermenting fruit (I thought I would throw that in).
So that morning the team heads to the Championship’s site and our first event is the 200 yard offhand with a M14 high power rifle. This was my specialty event when I’m not blurry eyed, hungover, and shaky. The Captain wants me to shoot first...ouch, I wasn’t sober yet. So I went to the line and aimed in on the target. The barrel of my rifle was waving all over the target and my breathing was out of sync...but I fired my first shot anyway. The pit pulled down my target and it stayed down for awhile (they were trying to find where my shot went). I knew where it went...I missed. Can you imagine a world-class high power shooter missing the target? I was a lifetime Master in the NRA. So finally the target came back up and they waived a maggie’s drawers on me. This is a red flag on a long pole that the pit crew waives when you miss the target. Score = zero. I told the red faced Captain to challenge. If the challenge was denied and they still say I missed the target, it would cost the Captain ten dollars. Well, it cost him ten dollars because they reviewed the target and said, “Yes, you missed.” He was furious at me. I told him they were wrong. I fired my second shot. I knew I missed again (I could see my shooting career coming to a swift end). Again the pit crew waived the maggie’s drawers, again the Captain challenged and again it cost him ten dollars. I fired my third shot and I missed for the third and final time before the Captain jerked me out of the lineup. As quick as a flash, I was on a military plane heading back to Hawaii.
So what do you think? Was this a true story, or did I make the whole thing up?
Rick O 1/24/2017
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