Just met an Army Airborne '75-'79 with a great USMC story
Too good not to share with you all. Here's the email we exchanged once he found out I'm a Marine...
SFi
C
Chad,
I have a great Marine story for you. I really owe a lot to the Marines... The 82nd 555RDU (Rapid Deployment Unit) was stationed in Rahmstein Germany, but we once had a weekend stop over in Rota Spain and the huge naval base, which at the time also had a Marine carrier docked with 2500 leathernecks. Anyway, I and 2 buddies were in the bar on a Friday night and one of my guy's "Gil" (John Gilmore) got into a tussle with some guy because they said he was looking at their girl. Next thing you know the 3 of us are taking on about 10 guys, I thought we were holding them off pretty good until I got hit with a bottle from behind and could not see from the blood down my face.
10 seconds later these 6 guys' come in with their shirts off swinging chairs and anything they could find and saved our asses. We ran out and then realized they were Marines coming to our rescue. They saw we were outnumbered and saw that one of us had on our red beret and they got us out of there. We were one step ahead of the MP's and I made it to the infirmary on base and the next morning the marine and airborne commanders were asking us who was going to pay for the damages, since the Spanish police were all over them. Since my MO was communications, I was the lead radio man assigned to Colonel Bruce "hammer" Hamilton. He got wing it was me and called the police captain and told them "they were lucky the Marines didn't burn the place down. Our guys were jumped so they better cut their losses and drop the case".
So if it wasn't for those Marines who knows, I could have ended up in a Spanish hospital and jail and lost my cushy job.
Funny thing was, my buddy asked the Marines why they took of their shirts and they said so they couldn't be identified by the patrons. We died laughing cause they all had USMC tattoo's on their arms and backs. I owe those boys...
