By Jack Shanahan
More than 50 Marine veterans from Queens have done the unthinkable … they voluntarily went back to boot camp.
This time, though, they did not go back as new “boots,” the Leatherneck nickname for recruits.
They went back as visitors to recall old times and to see if the training is still as rugged as it had been when they went through years ago.
“It’s very intensive,” said Jerry Vilbig of Little Neck. “Most of the guys didn’t know if they could make it again.”
It’s been 50 years since Vilbig, a Purple Heart veteran of the Korean War, first went to Parris Island, the East Coast home of Marine Corps recruit training in sunny South Carolina.
He returned there with 55 other members of the North Shore Queens Detachment of the Marine Corps League on a weekend train trip in early October.
They found the recruits housed in air-conditioned brick buildings — a far cry from the wooden barracks, “tent city” and quonset huts of their time.
The mess hall had tables for four with individual seats, not the long tables and benches of yore, and virtually no coffee. Recruits also are encouraged to drink water during training — not practice going without it, as before — and “the smoking lamp is not lit any more,” Vilbig said.
Thomas Maher, 62, of Flushing, commandant of the North Shore Queens Detachment, said “some of the high-tech training was impressive. The marksmanship training: it was like a giant video game.”
He explained that computers are used to simulate live combat conditions, with moving enemy targets and laser beam rifles that don’t fire real bullets but do have a “kick” like the real thing. “For the cost of a couple of rounds, you get the same training as if you fired 1,000 rounds,” said Maher, who was a seagoing Marine aboard the Franklin Delano Roosevelt aircraft carrier.
“Basically, it’s still the same boot camp. Some of the nicetie' have been removed,” he mused. “There’s not as much screamin’. Not as much yellin’. There’s still plenty of it. But the training itself hasn’t changed much. The drill instructors are still looking to get that hidden spark lit. And, it’s all teamwork.''
For instance, he said, on the “Crucible” obstacle course, “you can’t complete a station alone – even if you are Superman. There’s no physical way one person can do the task that you've been assigned. It has to be a team effort.”
While there, the veterans met a platoon of recruits in the boots' barracks.
There, Andy Musumeci of Flushing, a veteran of the 40-below-zero fighting at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, told them that his 1st Marine Division suffered 80 percent casualties in that battle, but wiped our six to nine enemy divisions.
“I'm proud to have served. You uphold that tradition,” he charged the recruits.
Joseph Doughney of Douglaston, a retired Fire Department chief, told the recruits that half the 343 firemen killed in the World Trade Center attack had been Marines.
“Just remember what you’re here for,'” he urged. “This is no b——-. It’s on the level. Learn as much as you can – and get out there and do your job!''
The recruits acknowledged him with the Marines’ familiar “hoo-rah!” grunting chant.
David Hill of Forest Hills, who arranged the trip to Parris Island, had been stationed at the base as a bugler in the early ‘50s and had seen many Leatherneck recruits before.
He said of today’s boots, “These kids are tough! Just what they’re carrying in weapons, equipment and other gear alone is much more than we had to carry.”
Hill marveled at their ability to rappel down a 40-foot-high wall on the obstacle course.
One Marine Corps Leaguer, Tom Holloran of Queens Village, wore a T-shirt that summed up the Queens Leatherneck veterans' outlook and pride in having gone though boot camp.
It read: “Not as Lean. Not as mean. Still a Marine.”
