45 years ago today, June 22nd, 1968 I entered Marine Corps Boot Camp

 45 years ago today, June 22nd, 1968 I entered Marine Corps Boot Camp

I had been prepared and told what to expect, but nothing
can really prepare you. My biggest asset was the knowledge
that I could and would take what ever abuse and humiliation
the DIs (drill Instructors) could dish out.

My father and Catholic school (nuns) prepared me for that.
Marine Corps boot camp is all about S&M. The Drill Instructors
are sadist, and have a blank check to smack the hell out of
someone.

the worst thing that happened to me was the day I had eight
teeth pulled out by the dentist. When I got back to the barracks
one DI didn't know I had been to the dentist and smacked me
square in the mouth.

But, I survived the nine weeks, and went on to advanced infantry
training, Staging Battalion in California and then Vietnam. I was
there just over two months by days when medevaced to the states;
dysentary and I had a seizure.

I went back to Vietnam because as odd as it seems I felt more
at home in a combat zone, than back in the US.

Below are some photos of the war; they are not my photos.

http://tinyurl.com/p6ovw8w

Dirty, exhausted looking US Marine on patrol with his squad near the DMZ during the Vietnam War.









 

 Wounded and shocked civilian survivors of Dong Xoai crawl out of a fort bunker on June 6, 1965, where they survived murderous ground fighting and air bombardments of the previous two days. (Horst Faas/AP)


 http://tinyurl.com/nn9ca2f
 
 Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon, on January 1, 1966. Paratroopers, background, of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade escorted the South Vietnamese civilians through a series of firefights during the U.S. assault on a Viet Cong stronghold. (Horst Faas/AP)

 http://tinyurl.com/p8q95g5
































Shell shocked wounded Marine being bandaged in muddy jungle during OP Prairie US mil. sweep just s. of DMZ, S. Vietnam.





 http://tinyurl.com/p2hdrph
 

 A South Vietnamese Marine, severely wounded in a Viet Cong ambush, is comforted by a comrade in a sugar-cane field at Duc Hoa, about 12 miles from Saigon, ..



 http://tinyurl.com/qx9dzgc

 
 Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk torched himself on 11 June 1963
in Saigon to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by Ngô Đình Diệm. Diem was installed by the US government, and was notoriously corrupt and authoritarian. Wiki source

http://tinyurl.com/pfdz2c9

  
vietnam war rally girl with naphalm burns classic shot


 http://tinyurl.com/pelhdt7
 
 Military police, reinforced by Army troops, throw back anti-war demonstrators as they tried to storm a mall entrance doorway at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 1967. (AP)


 http://tinyurl.com/pnxka2e
 
 Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio screams over the body of 20-year-old Kent State student Jeffrey Miller after he was shot by the Ohio National Guard during a protest against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War on May 4, 1970. (John Paul Filo/Library of Congress)



 http://tinyurl.com/ou7xkgt



 
Don McCullin Shell Shocked US Marine, Vietnam, Hue 1968, printed 2013 © Don