Dropped by the Post Office a few days ago to send off a box. In the parking lot was a car with a Disabled Vet and the USMC logo. The Post Office is small, so it was easy to pick him out, over at the counter with the slips for insurance and the like.

I stepped up and commented “So, you’re the Marine I’m supposed to shake the hand of!” He smiled under his 1st MARDIV ballcap and gave me a nice firm hands shake.

I asked “When were you in?” and it was the beginning of a 1.5 hour mostly listening session.

His name was Joe and he joined up in 1943 to fight for his country. He was trained as a relief tank driver, but went ashore at Peleliu as an infantry man, since all the tanks had been knocked out on landing.

He lost a lung, and was out of the war. He came home to begin work at the post office, bad had a hard time working in the back rooms due to the dust generated. Will 1/2 your lung capacity, that’s a problem. He was put at the windows, and the Union guys objected…enough they moved him around the area until the heat on the supervisors became too much. He next worked at Squibb Corporation while working on his degree at night school.

While there, one of his supervisors asked if he wanted a wooden chest out of a storeroom that had to be cleaned out. His wife talked him out of bringing it home. He did look at it and in it. It had a brass plate engraved “Capt E.R. Squibb.” It was full of medicine canisters and surgical tools from a time long past. Turns out it was burned because no one wanted it. Capt Squibb had been a US Navy Medical Officer during the Mexican-American War.

After getting his degree, he found it was time to move along, and ended up at Bulova as the Marketing Manager. He worked for General Omar Bradley, who was the Chairman of the Board. Much of the time we spent talking was about that phase of his life. He was regularly in General Bradley’s office and worked closely with him. Joe said he never called him by name, always as “Young Man.” The stories of the offer to sell Joe the old limo (Joe had 5 children) (once more, his practical Irish wife said no), to the making of the watch presentation cases for the Pope’s visit were but a few of those he shared with me.

It was an enjoyable hour and a half, and hearing little bits of history from a first person reporting viewpoint.

I hope to get more time with Joe one day soon.

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• Islands of Hell: The U.S. Marines in the Western Pacific by Eric Hammel (collectedmiscellany.com)

How better to begin a day, than to be invited to a long standing group os mostly Naval Aviators, and some Marines, who span military history from 1942 to the mid-90s (I was the youngest one…and moved that goal post)?

Via business networking and meeting and doing business with told me to show up for breakfast. I didn’t get al the names right, I’m sure, but a Navy Cross winner, a retired Admiral who wnet “downtown.” The man with the most CUTLASS traps every. A P-3 pilot who was one of my CO’s roommates at USNA, and…we had met at the change of command, and figured out he and I had crossed paths in Dec 76 @ Comm School in Newport. And that’s not all the history I sat in the middle of, but, I was the lone “Shoe,” and non-USNA. They still welcomed me in and told me to come back…They do this every two weeks.

More later. Much more I’m sure….maybe an interview from a Cutlass pilot….