Marines: Semper Fi, Corpsmen Always Sly

I recall several incidents where Marines and Navy Corpsmen met; not all of them were mutually supportive of each other. Although many Naval Corpsmen were cross trained to accompany Marines in the field, they didn’t always see eye to eye. One of my friends was a prime example. His name isn’t necessary at the moment, but at one time he had a definite Hippie type personality, caught in Uncle Sam’s military machine. He preferred the feel of sandals on his feet, puka shell bead necklace around his neck, and when he talked about a joint in his hand, he wasn’t talking about a knuckle bone.

Who says that the U.S. government doesn’t have a sense of humor? The fickle finger pointed at him, sending him to Field Medical School and then assigned him to a Marine company. This occurred during the Vietnam War when the feeling between Hippies and the Marines weren’t at their best. I wrote my friend a letter and accidentally included his middle name Felix. He wrote back saying it wasn’t hard enough being with these gung-ho meatheads and now they had his middle name to harass him. Sorry man.

Another tale of crosscurrents between Marines and Corpsmen happened while I was stationed in Keflavik, Iceland. The Marines guarded the base while the corpsmen handled the hospital and ambulance needs. There were times when they would mix at the enlisted men’s clubs to eat, drink, and gamble. One challenge that often occurred was a drinking game. A tab would be opened at the bar with the loser responsible for the bill. Beers would appear and disappear until one or the other of the contestants would allow his beers to reappear. They would take turns fetching the drinks from the bar. When the corpsman had his fill, he would pour ipecac syrup into the Marine’s beer. Ipecac is an emetic agent that induces vomiting. By then, the Marine’s taste buds were dulled and he didn’t notice the flavor change. Corpsmen rarely had to pay the tab. As a teetotaler, I was only a casual observer.

One good story shared with me happened while I was in Orlando, Florida. I was caring for a corpsman who’d been injured in Vietnam. He stepped on a land mine and had chunks from his buttocks and one calf missing. He said the Marines asked a Seabee bulldozer operator to clear a path across a field. The Seabee refused and the corpsman was the one who’d found the buried mine. Only by throwing himself forward was he able to escape death. He said that the Seabee later had fallen to friendly fire. Nobody messes with the Marines’ corpsmen.

One Holiday Season I’d Rather Forget

One year while I was working at Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania during the holidays, we had two incidents that appeared to be suicides. One incident was on Christmas Eve and the other on New Year’s Eve. I was “fortunate” enough to have been working both evenings.

Christmas Eve in the emergency department, we received a radio alert from an inbound ambulance, a trauma victim from a motor vehicle accident. We only knew that it had been a head on collision between a car and a large truck. We got the rest of the story when the ambulance crew arrived. A middle aged male was going the wrong way on a four-lane divided highway. There was little more we could do than to pronounce him deceased. He had massive trauma to his head, legs, and chest.

Later that evening when we were able to identify the driver, we were crushed to find he was the husband of one of our medical/ surgical nurses. She was a nurse with whom I had worked the nightshift several years earlier. They were going through a divorce and had two young sons; eleven and thirteen. The sadness of that tragedy affected the entire hospital. Actually it affected the whole town. It was as though someone dimmed or extinguished the Christmas spirit. Shortly after his funeral, the nurse quit her job at our hospital, sold her home, and moved away.

The second suicide occurred on New Year’s Eve. Again I was fortunate enough to be on duty. The ambulance crew called with an abbreviated report. A young man had been found unresponsive in his garage with the car’s engine running. He was slumped over the steering wheel. Not knowing how long that he’d been there, the ambulance crew attempted to revive him and brought him to the hospital.

He was a well known person in the community and the ambulance crew did all they could to resuscitate hem. We continued for a short while after his arrival, but to no avail.

It was rumored that he was heavily in debt and he left behind a lovely young wife to deal with the chaos of his death. They had a new house and a new baby, but with all the things she had, she’d lost so much.

The tragedy of these two deaths extinguished my Christmas lights and silenced the New Year’s bells for me. It was as though that year’s holidays were wrapped in a gray blanket. I remember nothing more about that Christmas and New Year other than those two deaths and the grief and sympathy I shared with those two families.

Catch a Falling Star

Almost seventy years ago, the song “Catch a Falling Star and put it in your pocket.” It was a catchy little ditty that was sung by many artists. In 1958, one of the most prominent artists to release it was Perry Como. His crooning voice made the song a hit.

I have no idea what its actual meaning is, but for myself it means to capture moments in time before they fall away into obscurity. Like meteors that shoot brightly across the dark night sky, memories flare intensely for a moment before they begin to fade and finally disappear. So many things that my dad, Carl Beck and my mom Sybil Miner Beck have slipped into dark crevices and may never be recalled again. Stories of my grandparents Edson and Anna Kalp Beck and Ray and Rebecca Rugg Miner have been lost. Sometimes someone will breathe on the coals of a memory and I can fan it into flames. When that occurs, I quickly write about it in my BlogSpot. I try to replace as much of the facts from the incident. Sometimes it’s not completely accurate and when another relative furnishes more facts, I will go back and correct the mistake or expand the scope of the story.

I wish that I would have paid closer attention to the details passed down in an oral tradition. I’m trying to record the pieces of my heritage and pass it to my children and grandchildren. I don’t have the patience or the ability to do the research of the genealogy of our family. I will let that task to others. To me that path is dry and dusty. I try to add flesh to skeletons of the past and make the readings of them more interesting.

Catching that falling star is what I am attempting to do. I want to create a verbal picture sharing the beauty, the sadness, or the joy of our family’s past. I share some of my own stories of my life growing up; from the time of my youth through school, the Navy, college, and days of work. Not too long ago I shared a story that I hadn’t shared with my children. They were surprised to hear that when I was in the Navy, my “friends” had planned to kill me, thinking I was a snitch.

Keep Christmas Merry

The Christmas season is often filled with the rush of buying gifts, wrapping presents, and with the many other tasks like writing greeting cards, baking cookies, or creating an extravagant meal. These are the temporal things that will keep us busy, consume our time, and will frustrate us. When Christmas gatherings occur, it’s a blur of activities that are over and done within a matter of a few hours. Then what? Sitting among the crumpled colored paper and discarded boxes, we sigh and often feel let down, depressed, and deflated. We may think, “Is that all there is?” Is this what the Christmas season is all about…or is there more?

Celebrating Christmas isn’t about the lighted and decorated tree in the center of the living room nor is it about the stockings on the mantle of the fireplace. It’s not about Santa, the elf on the shelf, or a sleigh and reindeer. The Grinch was close to finding the true meaning of Christmas, yet missed it by a mile. He recognized that Christmas was so much more than food, frolic, and favors, but didn’t look far enough for the reason. Perhaps the celebrants of Whoville didn’t know the real reason either.

There was no mention of the birth of the Christ child, no mention of the baby Jesus. There was no mention of the angels announcing the virgin’s conception of the prophesied Messiah. There was no mention of the shepherds being directed to visit this special child that was swaddled and lying in a manger, no mention of the heavenly omen of the star that guided the magi to Bethlehem seeking this newborn King of kings.

Television renditions of Christmas have purposefully removed and avoided any mention of the Christ child’s birth, yet they invoke his holy title in each Christmas story that they create. They use only his title without sharing anything else about this Holy Child who is God and yet willingly took on the form of a human. God loves us so much that he sent his only begotten Son to understand the trails and temptations of mankind and yet he remained sinless. He came to suffer and to die; carrying all of our sins to the cross at Calvary that mankind could be redeemed from sin’s curse and to provide a way to heaven and to dwell eternally. This was the ultimate Christmas gift. This is reason for the joy of the season. This is the true blessing of Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all of my readers and thank you for your supportive comments.

The Christmas Corsage

After Mark died, I was going through the boxes that had been stored in our closets. I was trying to sort through my emotions and the years of accumulated things. There were boxes of books, old clothing, and souvenirs stored over the many years. Near the bottom of a box I found a much smaller carton that held a souvenir. It was dried and wrapped in thin white tissue paper.

Immediately, my mind went back to 1949. I was a senior in high school and had accepted a date with Mark. Earlier, Mark volunteered to join the Marines. After the war, he was discharged and returned home. He was considered a man even though he was only nineteen. He was often somber and held the memories of the last two years tightly inside.

Our date was for the high school Christmas dance. I needed to find a fancy dress to wear, but it wasn’t going to be easy for me. Money was still tight and formal wear wasn’t readily available. Mom decided to take me shopping to see what we could find.

We searched through the several stores in town. Either the prices were so very high or the designs didn’t fit my body or the color of the material didn’t go well with my hair and skin color. We were almost out of options when my mom said, “Let’s try one last store before we give up and go home.”

It just happened to be a store which sold recycled clothing. I’d walked past that store many times, but I’d never gone inside. It seemed to me that the shop had been there forever. Pushing open the wooden door with glass inserts, we were greeted by the soft tinkling of brass bells hanging on a thick cord from the door handle.

Across the narrow sales floor I saw a mannequin wearing a dark emerald green gown with a full, flowing skirt. I somehow knew that it would fit. I nodded to my mom. She smiled.

The tall, gray haired sales lady came from behind a sales counter and asked, “May I help you?”

Mom said, “Yes. We’d like to look at that green gown.”

“It is a lovely satin gown.” The sales clerk replied as she removed it and handed it to me. She pointed out the dressing room near the back of the store.

I quickly slipped out of my clothing and carefully climbed inside of the gown. I loved the feeling of the smooth silkiness in the material as I slid my hands over the skirt. I stepped out of the dressing room for my mom to see the dress.

I heard my mom gasp. “Honey, that gown looks like it was made for you” as she eased the zipper up on the dress.

The sales woman said. “Come here.” Reaching beneath the sales counter, she pulled out something shiny. She slipped the narrow rhinestone covered belt around my waist, cinching the dress tighter. It looked beautiful.

The clerk said, “I have one more thing. It’s been around the shop for awhile and I’ll make it a great deal for you. You will look stunning.” She disappeared into the back room returning with a short garment bag. She unzipped the bag and withdrew something white. It was a white fur stole. Draped around my shoulders, it completed the outfit.

Mark had bought the corsage of white carnations and holly. He pinned it on me just before we went to the dance nearly sixty-three years ago. Although the carnations had withered, my memories of Mark had not.

Voice of an Angel

Overnight a light snow fell creating a winter whitened world where ice and lace graced the bare trees surrounding the cabin. In the past she’d often entice me to walk with her when there was new fallen snow, I dressed her warmly and taking her hand, we walked beneath the crystal and powder covered canopy. I was lost in the beauty of the moment, while my wife was lost, somewhere inside of herself. As we explored, I noticed a stand of pines behind the cabin.

Nearly forty years ago, I said, "I Carl, take thee, Sybil…."

It had been years since I’d decorated the house for Christmas and even longer since we’d brought a live pine into our home. I felt that it was time to do it again; after all, this might be our last holiday together.

It was December 1976. We’d just moved into this rustic cabin. It was the home place where my wife was raised. It was a long shot, but her Alzheimer’s was progressing rapidly. I thought if she was in familiar surroundings it might slow the invasive nature of the disease. It wasn’t called Alzheimer’s back then. It was called hardening of the arteries or dementia.

I could see it all slipping away, she scarcely recognized me as her husband. She’d been forgetting things for a long time and eventually she retreated into a shell of silence. We still had occasional moments of intimacy. I would sit beside her, hold her in my arms, and stroke the hair which had turned from gold into silver. I would remind her of the things I loved about her and memories which we shared.

Helping her to dress, eat, and wash controlled my life. She had given so much of her life to me, what could I do but share mine? It was very stressful at times, but she was the love of my life.

Seeing the group of young pine trees we turned back to the cabin. I unlocked the shed, removed a hatchet from my toolbox, and led her back to the small grove. She stood nearby watching as I chopped at the tree. Snow sifted onto me with each swing of the blade. The evergreen groaned once, then fell. I tucked the hatchet behind my belt, grasped a branch of the tree with one hand and took her hand with the other, towing the tree behind us. Our progress back to the house was slow; stopping to catch my breath several times.

I helped her climb the steps onto the porch, then pulled the tree onto the veranda, I leaned it by the side of the door and made a hasty trip to the shed to fetch the box of ornaments and the tree stand. Leading her inside, I helped her remove her coat and gloves, then sat her in her favorite chair. Trading the hatchet for a saw, I trimmed the pine’s trunk to fit the stand and brought it inside. The tree was soon covered with lights and ornaments. It looked so bright and festive. She watched as I worked, but I was unsure what registered in her brain.

I was in the kitchen making cups of cocoa for us when I heard her stirring. I needed to check to see what she was doing and to be sure that she was safe. She was standing and staring at the tree. I watched her lift a tentative finger to touch one of the ornaments. I held my breath. It was the first Christmas bulb that we bought after our wedding. Our names Carl and Sybil were painted on its smooth, silver sides. A light flashed from her normally dull eyes.

Touching the bright, shiny orb, she glanced around. A vaguely familiar voice spoke. It was rusty from many years of disuse. “Where’s Carl? I love him so.” The voice stopped as suddenly as it started. The flicker of light in her eyes went out, but an angel had spoken.

Divine Intervention

Have you ever heard a small voice inside tell you that you needed to do something? Whether it was to call someone on the telephone, stop by for a visit, or send a text or a card. I know that there were many such incidents in the past, too insignificant to remember. It’s almost like the pay-it-forward movement. The past month or so instead of reclaiming the quarter from the return grocery cart, I pass the cart along to the next person. It gives me an especially warm feeling when it’s an older person who looks like they count every penny and that person gives a big smile and says, “Thank you.”

Life is made up of many such moments that make someone’s day a little bit better. A smile and saying Merry Christmas to employees of the bank or grocery store may make their day just a bit smoother or a ray of sunshine in a bad day. I made a resolution many years ago that if I was grumpy, I wouldn’t leave my house; no one wants to deal with a grumpy old man. I sometimes share that resolution with people at the checkout counter. It’s surprising the smiles and responses I get when I share it. I feel amazed when they tell me they just had a rude customer that caused them grief.

This entire prelude was to share something that occurred Thursday as I returned home from shopping. I saw our Pastor emeritus standing behind his vehicle in his driveway. His eyesight has been failing lately and has become a definite problem for him and his wife. She has to carry more of the burden and she was sick last Sunday. That little voice began to tickle my ears, “Stop and see how they are doing.” I almost ignored it and turned to go home when the voice got a little louder, “See if they’re okay.”

I pulled into the driveway and asked how his wife was doing. He told me that the doors were frozen shut on his car and needed to get them open. His face was reddened from the cold. I was worried about his health. Getting out of my car, I used the heel of my hand to loosen the ice on one door. I pulled it open. The other door was coated more thickly and I couldn’t loosen the ice the same way. I said, “Let me get inside and push while you pull” It was a success. It was then he shared they needed to go to the hospital to have blood work for his wife. Thank you for prodding me into action God.