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thedrifter
11-11-05, 12:31 PM
Seven became Marines
Friday, November 11, 2005
By KAY RUDDEROW
Staff Writer

BRIDGETON -- When the Magnificent Seven went off to boot camp, they didn't include Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner, or any other members of the 1960 western movie cast.

Local residents George T. Byrd, William (Skeeter) Chew, John T. Coursey, Joseph Butler, Robert J. King, James T. Massey and Jerry T. Mink made up this "magnificent seven."

They didn't star in the classic film, or make a fortune from it.

They did what a lot of other young men were doing back in the mid-1950s: They joined the Marines for a taste of adventure, to serve their country and, as Byrd put it, "not to have go out in the field and pick beans."

Byrd, a 1954 graduate of Bridgeton High School, and the others who were classmates or near that class year, joined the service together and went off to bootcamp at Parris Island, S.C., where together they became Marines.

All but Joseph Butler survive, and most reside in this area.

Byrd was the only one, however, to be shipped to Camp Delmar in California for tank training.

"That's because when I was 15, I stretched the truth and enlisted in the National Guard, and had already learned something about tanks," Byrd said.

"One reason they sent me to tank school is because I was working for Hunt's, (a former Bridgeton food processing company) and had missed a drill," he said.

"They sent MPs after me, and took me to the Armory in Vineland, where the captain, Sid Brody, busted me," Byrd said. "I had thought my enlistment was going to be over in January 1953, but they extended my tour 'at the convenience of the president,' they said, for another nine months."

"Funny thing is, after I completed my training to be a tank driver, I never saw another tank. They put a Browning automatic rifle in my arms and I became a rifleman," he said.

The Korean War was over, but Byrd was sent to Hawaii, and later to Kobe, Japan. He was there for five months, serving in the bitter cold of that region.

"The other guys (his friends) went to Camp Lejeune, and some of them went on Mediterranean tours," he said.

After returning home from the military, Byrd became a police officer for several years.

Chew became a minister, King was into construction, Mink is a beautician and Coursey owns a security firm.

Butler had been a fire chief for Gouldtown Fire Company.

Byrd, a member of several organizations, is past commandant of Bridgeton Marine Detachment 193, and serves as manager of the Bridgeton Senior Center.

All of the surviving six members of the group are retired now, he said.

"But we get together every year about this time and take our wives to dinner," he said.

Where the Magnificent Seven again reminisce about boot camp, and not having to spend their summers picking beans.

Ellie

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