Thread Rating:
11-11-2011, 01:39 AM
ANDERSON TOWNSHIP - When you love life as much as Bill McGee does, there is no time for hate.
He learned that lesson when he joined the Marines during World War II and found himself fighting two enemies, the Japanese in the Pacific and racism at home.
On this Veterans Day, the strapping 6-foot-3-inch, 86-year-old quipster finds himself with "a special spring" in his step. Here's why:
The House of Representatives recently voted 422-0 to award the Congressional Gold Medal to McGee's fellow GIs - the Montford Point Marines, the service branch's first black troops.
Senate and Presidential approvals are expected.
"I hope to live to see it," McGee says from his easy chair. "I'm diabetic with one foot in the grave, another on a banana peel and somebody pushing me from behind."
The medal honors the Montford Point Marines' color-barrier breaking service at home and abroad.
"I've been walking around with my chest stuck out ever since that vote," McGee declares. He stands and sticks out his chest. Before snapping off a salute, he adjusts his wool overseas cap showing that former Sgt. McGee belongs to the Montford Point Marine Association.
McGee's figures he is "the 4,000th black Marine. I base that on being in the 84th platoon of 48 men that came out of Monfort Point starting in 1942."
Named for the swampy, segregated North Carolina boot camp where they trained, the Montford Point Marines endured the horrors of racism and war.
Either horror could sour a man and produce enough bitterness to eat him alive. Not McGee. The sunny disposition of the twice-divorced, retired interior decorator could brighten the darkest day.
"I see the funny side of everything," he says in an unmistakable Brooklyn accent. He left New York after 9-11 to be near a niece in Cincinnati.
"There's no point in being a hater," he adds. "Most of them are dead."
The same goes for the Monfort Point Marines.
During World War II, the boot camp produced 19,168 Marines. James Averhart, the Virginia Beach-based president of the Montford Point Marine Association, estimates "there are fewer than 2,500 left. We've only been able to contact 300."
McGee belongs to that last number.
"I'm proud of my service," he said. "Others were disenchanted. Still are. But, I was gung ho. Got that from John Wayne movies."
He realizes no one was really shooting at the movie star.
"But, hey, I didn't get shot at either," he admits. McGee's battalion had "a series of backwater assignments in the South Pacific. The Japanese never got near us."
John Wayne's war films differed from reality in another aspect. No one dared call the Duke "boy."
The same can't be said for McGee. After he was drafted and assigned to the Marines, he boarded a train headed for boot camp.
"I got off the train at Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, to get some food," he recalls.
One restaurant near the tracks had a sliding window. As he approached, the window slid open. A voice barked:
"What you want, boy!?"
Welcome to the South, circa June 1943.
"I was used to that behavior," McGee recalls. "I visited Baltimore in 1939."
But that was not the way he was treated back home in his predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. McGee lived and played on the same street with Italian and Irish kids. He was one of only five blacks in his high school.
"I was amalgamated with white people," he says. "I got along fine with them. I couldn't understand why these white people in the South hated me."
Segregation extended to the Marines, the last branch of the armed forces to integrate in 1941. The Montford Point Marines were kept five miles away from the white Marines at Camp Lejeune.
"I never saw Camp Lejeune," McGee says."Camp Lejeune was the holy of holies. You could only go there if you were invited by the pope.
"We had to stay in our clapboard huts. We had no can or head. We had a latrine that they spread with lime and burned every morning. That smell got in your nose when you came out of the chow hall after breakfast."
He remembers "marching in the swamp and coming out with blood suckers, leaches, on us. That's how I learned to smoke. Stick them with a lit cigarette, they let go."
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111...304&Ref=AR
He learned that lesson when he joined the Marines during World War II and found himself fighting two enemies, the Japanese in the Pacific and racism at home.
On this Veterans Day, the strapping 6-foot-3-inch, 86-year-old quipster finds himself with "a special spring" in his step. Here's why:
The House of Representatives recently voted 422-0 to award the Congressional Gold Medal to McGee's fellow GIs - the Montford Point Marines, the service branch's first black troops.
Senate and Presidential approvals are expected.
"I hope to live to see it," McGee says from his easy chair. "I'm diabetic with one foot in the grave, another on a banana peel and somebody pushing me from behind."
The medal honors the Montford Point Marines' color-barrier breaking service at home and abroad.
"I've been walking around with my chest stuck out ever since that vote," McGee declares. He stands and sticks out his chest. Before snapping off a salute, he adjusts his wool overseas cap showing that former Sgt. McGee belongs to the Montford Point Marine Association.
McGee's figures he is "the 4,000th black Marine. I base that on being in the 84th platoon of 48 men that came out of Monfort Point starting in 1942."
Named for the swampy, segregated North Carolina boot camp where they trained, the Montford Point Marines endured the horrors of racism and war.
Either horror could sour a man and produce enough bitterness to eat him alive. Not McGee. The sunny disposition of the twice-divorced, retired interior decorator could brighten the darkest day.
"I see the funny side of everything," he says in an unmistakable Brooklyn accent. He left New York after 9-11 to be near a niece in Cincinnati.
"There's no point in being a hater," he adds. "Most of them are dead."
The same goes for the Monfort Point Marines.
During World War II, the boot camp produced 19,168 Marines. James Averhart, the Virginia Beach-based president of the Montford Point Marine Association, estimates "there are fewer than 2,500 left. We've only been able to contact 300."
McGee belongs to that last number.
"I'm proud of my service," he said. "Others were disenchanted. Still are. But, I was gung ho. Got that from John Wayne movies."
He realizes no one was really shooting at the movie star.
"But, hey, I didn't get shot at either," he admits. McGee's battalion had "a series of backwater assignments in the South Pacific. The Japanese never got near us."
John Wayne's war films differed from reality in another aspect. No one dared call the Duke "boy."
The same can't be said for McGee. After he was drafted and assigned to the Marines, he boarded a train headed for boot camp.
"I got off the train at Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, to get some food," he recalls.
One restaurant near the tracks had a sliding window. As he approached, the window slid open. A voice barked:
"What you want, boy!?"
Welcome to the South, circa June 1943.
"I was used to that behavior," McGee recalls. "I visited Baltimore in 1939."
But that was not the way he was treated back home in his predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. McGee lived and played on the same street with Italian and Irish kids. He was one of only five blacks in his high school.
"I was amalgamated with white people," he says. "I got along fine with them. I couldn't understand why these white people in the South hated me."
Segregation extended to the Marines, the last branch of the armed forces to integrate in 1941. The Montford Point Marines were kept five miles away from the white Marines at Camp Lejeune.
"I never saw Camp Lejeune," McGee says."Camp Lejeune was the holy of holies. You could only go there if you were invited by the pope.
"We had to stay in our clapboard huts. We had no can or head. We had a latrine that they spread with lime and burned every morning. That smell got in your nose when you came out of the chow hall after breakfast."
He remembers "marching in the swamp and coming out with blood suckers, leaches, on us. That's how I learned to smoke. Stick them with a lit cigarette, they let go."
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111...304&Ref=AR
![[-]](https://bluegrassrivals.com/forum/images/lifestyle/collapse.png)
11-11-2011, 01:39 AM
Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)
