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thedrifter
09-06-05, 06:23 AM
Marines say their 1950 departure was city's largest since WWII
By THOMAS B. LANGHORNE Courier & Press staff writer 464-7432 or langhornet@courierpress.com
September 6, 2005

Sgt. 1st Class Marke Parsons, a senior noncommissioned officer in the Indiana Army National Guard's 163rd Field Artillery, said the unit's Iraq-bound contingent of 155 men is the largest deployment from Evansville by any branch of the Armed Forces since World War II.

Saying he had exhaustively researched past deployments, Parsons added that he would "bet my house" on the 163rd's being the largest.

But now some members of a long-defunct Marine Corps Reserve unit are saying that their departure from Evansville for Camp Pendleton, Calif., in August 1950 was the largest local deployment after World War II.

"There were more than 155 in our group," said Marion U. "Tex" Graham of Evansville, a platoon leader when he was in the Marine reserves.

"We were the biggest unit to leave Evansville," seconded Paul McDaniel of McCutchanville.

Graham and McDaniel both stressed they meant no disrespect to the 163rd. The men were members of Evansville-based C Company, 16th Infantry Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, which departed Evansville by train for Camp Pendleton on Aug. 28, 1950.

"We left ... for a two-week combat refresher course," Korean War veteran Ross Compton told The Evansville Courier in 1995. "Then we were split into different detachments and sent over (to Korea)."

Though local newspaper accounts of the departure from Union Station contain no information on how many men boarded the train, Bonnie Eberle of Boonville, Ind., offers an answer.

Eberle, wife of now-deceased Cpl. Richard Eberle and co-organizer with him of C Company's 40th anniversary reunion in 1990, is the unit's unofficial historian.

A microfilm copy of a typewritten report dated Aug. 28, 1950, signed by now-deceased C Company commander Maj. Paul T. Torian, lists the names of 175 men under the heading, "Roster of Personnel Departing for Initial Deployment Station."

In an entry dated Aug. 31, 1950, Torian concludes that, counting the men who drove to Camp Pendleton, a total of 182 went there from Evansville.

In addition, a black-and-white group photograph of C Company taken at Camp Pendleton and dated Sept. 2, 1950, appears to show 176 uniformed men. Some veterans said a few members of C Company weren't present for the photograph.

But whether C Company's trip to Camp Pendleton constitutes a deployment is a matter of some dispute.

It is undisputed that the company was disbanded within weeks of arriving at Camp Pendleton and its members sent to Korea - or other places - in other units.

"We didn't stay together," recalls Newburgh resident Raleigh McGary, who says he went to Korea as a member of another unit.

"Most of us did go to Korea. Others took the place of regular Marines in training and maintenance battalions on the west coast so those Marines could go fight. Some of the younger fellows went for further training in Marine Corps recruit depots."

McGary says he thinks more than 155 C Company members ended up going to Korea, but he can't be sure.

The Deployment Health Medical Research Library, a library of government-sponsored research created by the U.S. Defense Department, defines a deployment as "a troop movement resulting from a Joint Chiefs of Staff/Unified Command Deployment Order ... to a land-based location outside the United States."

Ellie