Bloods (24 page)

Rick Ford before Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Luke Benton
(left)
with pastor, the Reverend Dr. Ben A. Beamer, Sr., at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Portsmouth, Virginia

I heard the Marines were the toughest outfit in the world, and I knew they couldn’t be any tougher than what I was going through. So I decided to join.

Mama said, “Son, I don’t want you to go into the service, but it was your father’s wish. He wanted a soldier boy and a Red Cross girl.”

So I walked down to the post office at 6th and Broad. But the Marine recruiter wasn’t there. I asked the Army recruiter when he would be back. This Army sergeant said, “Ain’t no niggers in the Marine Corps, but we got ’em in the Army. Come on. Let me sign you up.” It was a common thing in those days for a white man to talk to you anyway he wanted to. He call you a nigger, it’s like, “Hello, James.” “Hello, Ed.” It wasn’t no big thing. And besides, I looked good to him. I was 6 foot 6, and 202 pounds.

I saw the Marine recruiter the next day, and he didn’t talk like this Army sergeant. He said, “Boy, can you read?”

I said, “Yes, sir.”

“What does that sign say?”

“Walk on in.”

“Well, come on in.”

Well, I passed the written test, but I needed $1.80 to get the bus to Birmingham and back for the physical examination. I had seven cents. Mama had thirteen cents. Well, Mr. Wilcox loaned me $2, which I paid him back on my first payday in the Marine Corps.

They notified me on June 26, 1942, that I was going into the Marine Corps. One of the first 50 blacks to get accepted.

In September I got my papers, my orders, and train tickets to report to duty in North Carolina. I put on my big apple hat, my triple-E shoes, peg pants, and zoot suit. And went down to the railhead. It was the first time I ever left home. Of course, I never been on a train in my life.

When I got to North Carolina, I felt like a foreigner. It was the first time I ever talked to anybody that wasn’t from Alabama.

We got trained at Montford Point, next to Camp
Lejeune. We had a completely Negro Marine Corps. We had our own barracks, our own infantry, our own tanks, our own guns. It couldn’t have been more segregated. Of course, the officers was white.

When I went to bed the first night, I heard this music. I started crying, wondering what my mama was doing. So I asked this boy, why in the world is they playing that song. They told me that was taps. I had never heard a bugle before in my life. I swear ’fore God.

When I went to dinner the next day, I tried a little piece of this ham. It was the toughest ham I ever ate in my life. So I wrote to Mama to send me some pieces of ham out the smokehouse. Later on, they put that ham out there again, and this friend of mine said, “Ed, that ain’t no ham.”

I said, “The hell it ain’t.”

“That’s corned beef.”

And that’s the first I ever knew they had corned beef.

In December I had just finished boot camp when Colonel Woods called me in. “Got a telegram. Your mother is real sick. They want you to come home. At once.” See, I don’t have a brother or sister or nobody. Just my mother and myself. And I said, “I can’t. I don’t have no money to go home.” We wasn’t getting but $30 a month, and I had me an allotment out to my mother. He said, “I tell you what. I am going to give you fifteen dollars so you can go home to see your mama.” I said, “Yes, sir.” You don’t ask him no question. You do what the hell you told. And he gave me a furlough.

So I got on the bus, and when it pulled into Atlanta, I got off and went in the station. It was two Marine MPs. They walked up to me. One said, “Hey, boy. C’mere.”

I started out with my little bag.

“What you doing with that uniform on?”

I say, “I’m a Marine.”

They say, “There ain’t no damn nigger Marines. You going to jail.”

I give them my furlough papers. They tore ’em up right in my damn face. Said I was impersonating a Marine.

They started to turn me loose. Say, “You go in there and pull that damn uniform off. You ain’t got no clothes to wear, you go to the relief.”

I say, “I’m not impersonating a Marine. I
am
a Marine.”

“You going to get it.”

They took me down to the city jail and had me locked up. That night a Marine captain came in to get some white Marines who’ve been locked up for bein’ drunk. I knew a captain when I see a captain, so I ask him to get me out, too.

“Ain’t no nigger Marines. We heard about you.”

I was there the twenty-third, the twenty-fourth. And they took us out to pick up trash and garbage. And there I was in jail on my first Christmas in the Marine Corps.

When the Navy chaplain came in for Christmas prayers, he wouldn’t even talk to me.

Finally, a Marine major came in. It must have been the twenty-eighth. And I convinced him to call Colonel Woods, even though he thought I was making up a bunch of lies. He didn’t know about Montford Point, being as it was a brand new camp.

Colonel Woods told the major to get me out now, and he told me to go home and don’t worry about any papers.

Colonel Woods is dead now. But I got his picture. Colonel Samuel S. Woods, Jr. The first commanding officer ever commanded black Marines.

General Larsen was somethin’ else. He was the commanding general of Camp Lejeune. One day he came over to speak to us at this smoker. No Negro was allowed to be on Lejeune unless he was accompanied by a white Marine to go to a specific place with a chit stating what he was going to do there. I’ll never forget when he walked in. It was the first general we had ever seen. Here I am, a hard charger, thinking I want to be a general. I want to be like him.

Well, he started talking about the war. He said, “I just came back from Guadalcanal. I’ve been fighting through the jungles. Fighting day and night. But I didn’t realize there was a war going on until I came back to the United States. And especially tonight. When I come back and I find out that we have now got women Marines, we have got dog Marines, and when I see
you people
wearing
our
uniforms, then I know there’s a war going on.”

Goddamn. You never saw so many Coke bottles fly. Knocked him down. And there was a riot that night. The
first black riot in Marine Corps history.

Well, I went from private to first sergeant in just 23 months and became the sergeant in charge of training all the black Marines. When we shipped out to the Pacific, we moved supplies to the fighting units that were all-white. After that, I took the first black unit into Tsien Tsin, the first to step on Chinese soil. In Korea I fought in a weapons company, which, of course, was integrated by then. But over the years, I was so unhappy sometimes in the Marine Corps, I didn’t know what to do. If there’s ever a man should be prejudiced as far as the white man is concerned, I should be. ’Cause some of these officers kicked me every way but loose.

Back in ’57, when I was sergeant major right here in Camp Lejeune, the executive officer of headquarters battalion got half drunk and called me into his office.

He say, “C’mere, boy.”

I’ve been called boy so many times you automatically move like a robot even knowing you wasn’t a boy.

He said, “How ’bout a drink?”

“No, sir. I don’t drink during working hours.”

“You think you too good to drink with me?”

He shoved the bottle in my face. And when he did that, I turned right around and walked right out. If I had hit him, I would have been in the penitentiary for striking an officer.

Another time I was in a general’s office, and he was talking on the phone. He says, “Now, Colonel. The problem is not how many watermelons you have. It’s how many niggers you got to eat ’em.”

After he hung up, he look at me, and he said, “I’m sorry.”

I say, “What did the general say?” When a general is on the phone, I don’t know what he says. “You don’t owe me no apology.”

He said, “Ed, I’m telling you, ain’t but one of your kind. Thank you very much.”

And the sergeants could get to you, too. But by me being sergeant major they had to watch their step with me.

Take this time at Camp Geiger. This gunny sergeant
was reporting in, and he telephoned my quarters. This was 1963.

“Did you know what the damn chief clerk of yours done this evening?”

“No. What did he do?”

“He assigned me to stay in a room with a damn nigger.”

I says, “Is that right?”

He says, “Yes, sir, Sergeant Major. And I’d rather sleep on the parade ground under a flagpole than to sleep with a goddamn black nigger.”

So I says, “Well, I can take care of you tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll assign you to your permanent quarters. I make it a practice to do everything I can especially for my staff NCOs.”

So I arranged for this gunny to have the VIP quarters that night in the staff NCO club.

The next morning I told my driver to go down to supply and draw out a half a tent, five tent pegs, and one pole. I said, “You know one Marine don’t rate but half a tent.”

So I’m sitting there in my office with about 25 yards of campaign ribbons, a bucket of battle stars, and each one of my sleeves look like a zebra. Ain’t no way in hell a man could not know I was not the sergeant major.

When the gunny walked in, he stopped and looked at me as though he saw a ghost.

He said, “Are you the sergeant major?”

I said, “Well, Gunny, you are familiar with the rank structure, aren’t you?”

He said, “You not the one I talked to last night, are you?”

“Why sure I am. Sit down.”

I made him drink some coffee, and the cup was rattlin’ like it was a rattlesnake. Then I drove him out to the parade grounds, up to the flagpole, and said, “Here is your quarters. Now you pitch your lean-to on the flagpole like you requested.” And it was raining like hell.

When I came back, the tent was running full of water. I said, “Get this tent trenched out like it’s supposed to be. You are ruining government property.”

Then he said, “I’ll stay with that fella.”

I told him he would have to get this black sergeant to
agree and bring him to my office. Well, it was all right with the sergeant, and the gunny moved in.

In about three weeks, I went down to the club and this black sergeant had a white woman, and the gunny had a black woman. Having the best time you ever saw. And a few months later, the gunny and the black woman was married. They live up here near me now and got two children. Doing real fine.

But I never let any of these things make me prejudiced right back. Especially in combat. Especially in Vietnam. I am the sergeant major. I take care of all my men, black and white.

Now when the Tet Offensive broke out in January of 1968, I was sergeant major of the 1st Military Police Battalion in Danang. At the time, our headquarters was right across from the main airstrip. Well, the rebels was trying to get to the headquarters of this Vietnamese general. And they made a breakthrough down on River Road. So we had this blocking force right between the general’s headquarters and the rebels.

The colonel and I was in a bunker at the time. The fighting was going on for about an hour, and we figured everything was going pretty smooth ’cause we had radio contact and everything. Then Kenny called in. He said, “Send help! Send help!”

I thought to myself, That’s not the way Kenny calls.

And the colonel said, “What the hell’s wrong out there?”

Kenny said, “The whole area’s moving. The whole area’s moving. Send help! Send help! They got us surrounded.” Then he said, “Help! This is my last transmission.”

And it was just like a breath was rolling out. And that was his last transmission.

And I told the colonel, “Let’s go.”

At that time I carried a shotgun, a pistol, and a grenade launcher. And two bandoliers also.

And when we got to the scene, you never saw a fire fight more horrifying in all your life. The boys were in a spot as hard as it could be, but they was holding it.

And I looked up, and the best radio operator you ever saw—name was Rick—was hit and pinned down out there
maybe 50 yards. They saw him out there in this field, and they were trying to finish him off. They was shooting with automatic fire, you know. And every time Rick’d move a little, they would fire out after him. Just tryin’ to finish him off.

Rick was hollering, “Mother. Mother.”

I could stand it no more. I started out. And the colonel said, “No. No. Just wait. Just wait.”

I said, “Sorry, Colonel.”

This wasn’t a black boy. He was a white boy. I knew I might get killed saving a white boy. But he was my man. That’s what mattered.

And I took off. Ran through an open field. They was firing from a tree line. And I got maybe 20 yards, and I was hit on the head. It hit my helmet. And it spin me around, knocked me down. And I got up and started again. And another round hit on the side of the helmet and knocked me down again. And I started crawling. And it seemed like round after round was kicking at the dirt all around me.

And I jumped up then, and I started running. Then I got to him. Then they opened up everything they had right there into that position. And I fell on top of him to keep him from getting hit again, and this fragmentation grenade hit us and ripped my flak jacket all into pieces. And it got me in the shoulder and arm.