Bob Keeshan"s USMC Service, Lee Marvin, The Tonite Show,etc.

[gunnyg]

Here's something I just received from the WWII Dicussion List, to which I subscribe.

Some of you may know that I regularly complain to anyone who will read/listen about the Capt Kangaroo/Lee Marvin/iwo Jima Hoax that has been going around the internet fo some time now.

My main complaint is that some Marines have even posted the Hoax to their websites, as well as forwarding the e-mail on, as if it were just the truth.

Once again, here it is!

No, neither Bob Keeshan (Capt Kangaroo) nor Pfc/Pvt lee Marvin ever set foot on Iwo Jima.

In Keeshan's case, he came into the Corps too late in WW II to go overseas at all, as indicated below.

Marvin indeed was shot in the ass--but on Saipan not Iwo Jima--and, of course, he never received the Navy Cross on Iwo Jima--neither of them were on Iwo.

He did get a PH for his wounds, though. After Saipan, Marvin spent about a year in Navy Hospitals and was discharged at Philadelphia in 1945.

Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 07:34:17 -0700
From: [Send an Instant Message] "Greg Kelley" | This is Spam | Add to Address Book
Subject: Bob Keeshan's Military Service (WAS Re: Lee Marvin)
To: WWII-L@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU

excerpted from GOOD MORNING, CAPTAIN: 50 WONDERFUL YEARS WITH BOB KEESHAN (Fairview Press, c1996) --

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The war tunred about, and, after several years of desperation, the good guys were coming out on top. I knew I would be drafted in a few months in the summer of 1945, so I beat the draft by joining the Marine Corps.

The war in Europe had just eneded when I reported for duty on Flag Day in 1945, two weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Anyone who has gone through boot camp in the Marine Corps will know what the next few months were like for me.

Parris Island is not a place of fond memory, but it is a place of fond memories. I would never trade my Marine Corps experience for anything. The training, the character building, are second to none. To this day I call upon that training, and it has never failed me.

The marines were all training for the assault on the "home islands" of Japan, which we knew we would be part of in a few short months. The atomic age changed all that as my boot camp days wound down.

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Keeshan was discharged from the service shortly afterwards; there is also a photograph of him with his training unit, Platoon 345, the caption referring to his drill instructors Sergeant Hargrove and Corporal Taylor.

Bob Keeshan has two older brothers, Bill and Jack (also a younger sister Catherine), both of whom are said to have "... left home for the navy and the army as the reality of cruelty in Europe and Asia encroached upon our golden world."

This would appear to be 1941 or 1942, as his mother died when he was fifteen, i.e. 1942. No details available as to their service records. Perhaps Mr Marvin encountered one of them during the war?


Glad To Be Of Service!

Greg Kelley
Provisionally Designated Simulacrum
Nordost Research Archives
[Nordost Office, Station NZ 08, WARLORD Network]
nordostNZ08@yahoo.com

[gunnyg]

for those who may have never seen this (unlikely as that may be.)

Dialog From a Tonight Show ... Johnny Carson ...

His guest was Lee Marvin. Johnny said, "Lee, I'll bet a lot of people are unaware that you were a Marine in the initial landing at Iwo Jima ... and that during the course of that action you earned the Navy Cross and were severely wounded." And you know how Lee was ...

"Yeah, yeah ... I got shot square in the ass and they gave me the cross for securing a hot spot about halfway up Suribachi ... bad thing about getting shot up on a mountain is guys gettin' shot hauling you down.

But Johnny at Iwo I served under the bravest man I ever knew ... We both got the Cross the same day but what he did for his Cross made mine look cheap in comparison. The dumb bastard actually stood up on Red Beach and directed his troops to move forward and get the hell off the beach.

That Sergeant and I have been life long friends. "When they brought me off Suribachi we passed the Sergeant and he lit a smoke and passed it to me lying on my belly on the litter ..."Where'd they get you Lee?"... "Well Bob ... if you make it home before me, tell Mom to sell the outhouse.".....

"Johnny, I'm not lying ... Sergeant Keeshan was the bravest man I ever Knew ... Bob Keeshan ...You and the world know him as Captain Kangaroo."