Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Edward Joshua Simon was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
This tape is made June 17th, 2002, with Edward Joshua Simon. His date of birth is April 30th, 1932. Mr. Simon resides at 6727 Highway 64 Northwest, Depauw, Indian, 47115. He's a native of Depauw, served in the United States Marine Corps as a Captain from August, 1949, through March, 1971. We have many locations noted, several promotions per the attachment also a winner of the Combat Action Ribbon. Mr. Simon, you were I presume at this time living in Depauw?
Living in Depauw, right.
And a young man. What made you decide to enlist, and where did you go for induction?
I went to Louisville, Kentucky, where I was inducted with __. Did my basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina. I guess the reason that I went in was because there was nothing going on, just a young boy, I was only 17.
Did you graduate high school?
I didn't graduate. I took my GED test after I was in the military. Smart move, but, no, I didn't graduate. I was only 17.
I see. Where did you go for basic?
Parris Island, South Carolina.
How rigorous was Marine basic training for you?
Back in '49 it was pretty rough.
What was the daily routine like for you there. What was it like?
It's kind of hard to describe after 50 years, but I guess in the eyes of a young kid under 20.
How tough was that to adjust to?
Well, some of us use to say it was just like home only not quite as bad. It was -- you had to do what they said. You had no free time. You were rushed from one place to the other. You wasn't allowed to think for yourself. They thought for you, and they told you what to do and when to do it, and after a while, you just -- you get to believing that, and they make you the way they want you to be. Get rid of your civilian attitude and adopt a military attitude. Of course, you have your military subjects and your physical fitness training, rifleman training. It's all 10 weeks of it. Takes 10 weeks. You get no liberty. You get no free time to yourself away from the drill instructor. You may have time to write letters and stuff like that, but actually having free time, there was none.
What was -- when you think of your drill instructor, what image comes to mind?
Number one Marine. He was sharp.
Do you recall his name?
Brogdan (ph), his name was Staff Sergeant Brogdan, and I seen him one time in my 20 years. I saw him five years out of Boot Camp. I had no -- I liked him, you know. He hit me a couple of times, but I still liked him because I think I had it coming. He was a good Marine. I don't know where he's at now. He was quite a bit older than me. He might have passed on by now.
After Parris Island, then what?
I went to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, I was assigned to the artillery.
Was there some specialized training involved?
Not really. I'm just an artilleryman, and we had some maneuvers and stuff like that they call it, gun drills, practicing on your trade. Of course, I never seen a Howitzer, millimeter Howitzer, until I went to Camp Lejeune, and you had to learn how to operate them and stuff like that. It was nice__+. Then in November of '49 the Korean War started in June so I didn't stay there. I left pretty soon after that.
Were you deployed to Korea?
Yes. Straight from Camp Lejeune.
Really?
I went on the troop train across the United States. I think we loaded up some time in early July. The War started on the 27th of June if I remember right, and by the 15th of July we were on our way to Camp Pendleton, California, and there we got a new organization, and I think I went aboard ship on the 12th of August in '50, went to Korea.
What kind of trip ship did you take?
It was a U.S.S. Regal was the name of it, Regal, and it was run by a civilian crew. Transport.
Was it a passenger --
Transport ship.
Okay. I see.
I don't really -- accommodations wasn't too good. It was a troop ship.
Roughly how many men might have been on that ship?
Two thousand. Roughly 2000 I would say because it was just like cattle almost, canvas bunks.
And what -- for a lot of guys who really had not been on the water before, what was that like?
I don't know. It didn't bother me. I never got sick, but there were many that did. We call it sea sickness, it's motion sickness. It didn't bother me a bit.
How much were you aware of the situation that was brewing in Korea? Did you really understand the situation that was occurring, the political aspects of it?
No, I didn't. I happened to hear a story last night of another Army guy that was there. He was the same as me. He didn't even know what Korea looked like until his wife sent him pictures of the country. None of us knew much about the country, you know. We was there less than a month and a half after it started and we couldn't even pronounce the word Korea hardly. Didn't know nothing about it or why we were there.
Did you understand that at the time you were going to be part of a coalition force?
No. I had no idea. I was only a PFC. I think the people senior to me, I don't think they knew either.
So you really didn't grasp what the mission was?
No. We didn't.
How did you arrive in Korea then? Do you remember what was your first recollection when you went off the ship?
We went into Incheon, landed in Incheon on an LST, and I remember when I stepped off of it, it was supposed to have been on the beach but it wasn't. It was about hip deep. I went in the water to about my hip, then I waded on out, of course, but that's my first time in Korea jumping off of a ramp of an LST. I was in the artillery, and I was assigned sort an escort for one of the guys that was driving a caterpillar that was pulling the gun, and as soon as you got off of that, I got on the tractor, rode with it.
How soon after your arrival there did you have your assignment?
I went with a unit.
So you knew --
I stayed with the unit that I went with.
What was your mission as assigned once you were there?
My personal mission was a cannoneer on the 155, and the unit's mission was to support the artillery, support the infantry as they went up a little bit further ahead of them, you know, they would pick out a target for us and --
How did you get word of what the targets were? How --
There was a system that the infantry would maybe run into something that they couldn't take for themselves so they would call back the coordinates to our direction center they called it, and our direction center would plot it on the map and they would find out how many elevations, deflections. They knew where we were at and they knew where the target was at and then they figured it out and then we fired the rounds. Maybe fire one or two to make sure that we were close and then move it -- make adjustment, adjustment, and artillery to me was really interesting that they could do that, but now it's different now. I'm talking about 50 years. Now they use global satellite positioning.
Uh-huh.
They do that now. I know nothing about that.
How did you feel about the men who were in face-to-face hand-to-hand infantry situation? That had been to an awful situation to be in over there.
It was.
The terrain was so erratic, the heat was so extreme, the cold was so extreme.
Yeah. I personally was involved in that. I wasn't afraid at all. When we first went in to Korea, it was warm weather, it was September, September 15th, 1950, and then we captured Seoul, and I stayed in the artillery. I didn't have no hand-to-hand combat, but later on when we went back to Wolsong and they went up to the Chosin reservoir, that's when it got real cold, down below 30 below zero and stuff, and we were surrounded, had to walk out. I mean, we had been riding on trucks and caterpillars and things, but we got so far north that the supply lines couldn't keep up and some of our vehicles wouldn't operate because they run out of fuel, and it was kind of a nightmarish thing. Seemed like it always happened at night and there were people trying to kill you, even__+. Only lasted about 10 days so.
When you say only 10 days?
Could have gotten you the first night __+.
You get into these situations when you were constantly -- you had to constantly be on vigilance?
Oh, yeah. The thing is that, when it happened, the guns run out of ammunition, too, a lot of big guns, so we had to disband them. They had six guns in a battery, I think we came out with two or three in one battery. And some people didn't do as good as that. When we didn't use them, we just brought them out because they were expensive, at that time we thought they were expensive, and they wanted to save them. The Company Commander wanted to save them as much as he could. Then the people was assigned to infantry units to replace the infantry unit with artillery people, and they were assigned to infantry units to replace the ones that were injured or killed in the infantry units, and we went up in the mountains, the ridges, to keep them back off of the main supply route, MSR, so that we could get the vehicles and the wounded and the people out. We had to walk on both sides of it. We were lucky that -- I'm talking from an 18 year old, no combat experience at all, the Marine Corps called back lots of people from World War II that were corporals, sergeants, staff sergeants. Some of the officers had combat duty. I guess it was only, what, 7 or 8 years from World War II to Korea.
Yeah.
So some of those guys hadn't forgotten.
Less than that in some cases I suppose.
Yeah. The Marine Corps was very lucky that way. We had qualified, experienced people with the young guys like myself right out of high school.
But those people that they were very experienced?
Yes, experienced and knowledgeable.
And hardened to the realities of war, too?
Yeah. That's right. They had been used to fighting in the Pacific where most of the Marine did fight, but now they were below zero, but they knew how to do it.
Did you have a good sense of how that conflict was proceeding?
Not then, but I do now.
Yeah.
As a matter-of-fact, I watched it on TV last night. The History Channel had four hours of it, and the same place where I was at, and it was very good. I mean, it was real. Yeah, I didn't --
Excuse me for asking this, did you understand really how you fit into the larger scheme of things over there?
No. No, I didn't. I did, I guess, really what I was suppose to do and I was at the low end of the food chain, and we were all in Vietnam and I was a First Lieutenant, and I had a view of what was going on in Vietnam in my area because I was First Lieutenant and I was suppose to know more, but the average grunt or corporal and below some sorts they don't realize what's going on unless someone tells them. They didn't then. Today's Army might be different but then they didn't tell us more than we needed to know.
When there was finally a cease fire, things were still brewing in that area, though, weren't they, in the Indochina area, it was still very much unresolved in terms of political stability, wasn't it?
That's right, yeah. As a matter-of-fact -- yeah, it was. Like I say, I was still in the Marine Corps, and I knew a lot more when I got out of Korea than I knew when I was there.
After you got out of Korea, what was your assignment?
I went to a Reserve Recruiting Station in Dayton, Ohio, and I was there for a couple of years recruiting Reserves, which is a hard job because you're in Dayton, Ohio, and several others across country mobilized with very little notice and paid very little attention to the needs of the parents and the people. They just said, come on, buddy, you're going, and they really had a bad taste in their mouth, the reservist, and we had a hard time getting a new unit up and running in that city because the way that the old ones were taken out.
I'm not sure I follow. Give me a for instance.
Okay. For instance, the Marine Corps says to mobilize First Rifleman Company in Dayton, Ohio, well, they did it, quickly. They didn't give -- they had to do it quickly, and it made a lot of people feel bad so I didn't want to be tied up with an outfit like that anymore. They didn't give you no slack. They didn't give me time to settle my business, or they didn't give me time to move my family or nothing. They just said they give you a day, maybe two weeks, and say you're going. Anyway, that happened throughout the United States.
So there was no time for wrapping up personal business?
Personal business, that's right, and that made it hard for the Marine Corps. I don't know about the other services.
I'm sure that for a lot of people that went in, they left with their minds not focused on the task at hand?
That's right, and then we went back and tried __+. I spent a couple of years doing that. I spent time -- we did all right I guess. It wasn't as easy.
So recruiting was a vastly different task than --
Well, the War was still going on when I got back.
That was in --
I got back in '51, and the War was over about '53.
Okay.
And the War was still going on, and we were still trying to get these new units up and running. Well deserved units. It was a task. Meanwhile, I changed my job from an artilleryman to personnel administration, in Korea I changed. Even when I was still working on the guns, they made me the First Sergeant's Clerk.
Did you have some leeway in that decision?
I volunteered. I volunteered for it, yeah, I thought it would be a better job than working on those guns all the time. That was kind of hard work.
I'm sure it was.
And they weigh a hundred pounds and you had to dig in. You had a trailer, you had to jack up a gun, you had to dig it in the ground. It was a stevedore job is what it was, and I went into personnel administration. Spent the next 20 years in personnel administration.
What were some of your primary locations?
After I went from Dayton and I went to Cherry Point, North Carolina, and fire squadron down there as a clerk in the office, and let's see, after Cherry Point, get my cheat sheet out, I guess from Cherry Point then I went to an outfit called Angla (ph) Corps in Hawaii, and they were going for a liaison company, and I was there for two years, and then I went to headquarters of the Marine Corps in Washington for a tour and again I was working at the Reserves. In the Marine Corps if you have a successful tour working with the Reserve Unit, they always look for you again when it comes time for assignment. I ended up with three tours in the Reserve Establishment because I had a good tour the first time, and I had two more tours before my career was over working for the Reserves, Marine Reserves. It's kind of an independent type thing. You have to kind of work on your own, and I guess you do one good job for them, they want you to do another one.
What was it like being at Marine Headquarters? What was that environment like?
Well, it was a lot of things going on up there. I liked it. Everybody had there job to do of course. The first time --
That was in about '66 I see?
Yeah. That's when I made Second Lieutenant. I went there as a Gunnery Sergeant, and I was assigned to this assignment branch. I was picking personnel to be assigned to the State Department. That was my job was to screen the records, check and see if it was the kind of people that we were looking for to be assigned to the State Department, and I had that job for, I don't know, a month, two or three months, until I got commissioned and then I went to Hawaii, and I was a General. After that, I went in the War in Vietnam, and he was building up his headquarters.
What was his name?
Cruack (ph), General Cruack. His son eventually become Commandant of the Marine Corps. He was a Three Star General and his son became a Four Star General, and I worked for the father, of course, and he wanted some young officers out there to help him get things started.
I remember. Did you at any time in your career encounter General Foster C?
No. I know where he was at. I should have went and seen him in Korea.
Just for the record, Foster was a native of Harrison County in Indiana __+.
I think he become a Four Star General if I ain't mistaken.
Are you sure it was three? I thought it was three.
He was Assistant Commandant, and I think he was the first -- I might be wrong on this -- I think he was the first Marine to be a Four Star and the Assistant Commandant. Now, all the other Commandants now, Assistants, are Four Stars, and I think Foster C was the first guy to wear Four Stars and be the Assistant Commandant. I might be wrong with that, but I know he had three. I won a couple of free bars on that at the staff club__+. I know that I had been around when he was there. The guy said, no, he had one star and that was it. I went to headquarters of the Marine corps and got the bio, got his bio back. Put it on the wall down to the VFW for a year I guess and hung there.
Did you know him?
I knew his Father real well and I remember him very well. I met Foster, inaudible, it was an honor to know him in adult life.
Tell me about your time when you were also assigned then to Camp Pendleteon. And I guess specifically what is the climate like at that time with the Vietnam War?
When I was assigned to Pendleton, I was a Series Officer taking 165 people, young Marines, through training. The Marines from throughout the Marine Corps that had not had any combat experience lately, and they were going to Vietnam. Most of them, well, there were a few staff NCOs, but mostly corporals and PFCs, and they had a training syllabus that they had to go through. I was the officer in charge of them but I didn't actually train them, but as soon as they got trained, then I took them on an airplane and took them to Okinawa, and they didn't want to go. At that time in Vietnam it was right before Tet, the Tet of 1968, and nobody wanted to go to Vietnam, even in the services, especially the lower ranking people. I knew I was going. It didn't bother me that much. The rank and file didn't want to go to Vietnam in the early -- in '68.
It was just because of the --
It was a combination of factors.
The war over there was just so ugly?
It was ugly and people were getting killed and wounded and you know your chances wasn't that good, and it seemed like the American people were, everybody, was sick of it, you know. There was demonstrations in country.
Let's see. That was about '68?
Sixty-eight. I think we got there early, February of '68 I got there.
Let's see. The presidential election, let's see, was that just at the end of Johnson's term?
Johnson run unaccounted.
He run unaccounted, that's correct. Nixon was elected then. Did you have any sense that maybe the War was going to wind a little bit?
Was it Nixon?
Nixon was elected in --
After Johnson? Or was that -- I thought it was Eisenhower.
I don't know. I think it would have been Nixon at that time.
Okay. I thought somebody rode on the fact that they were going to get us out of there. I think that was one of campaign promises that they was going to stop the War. They kicked us out. We got a __ pardon that was one of the last people to leave Vietnam. He was in the Army, and when they flied him out, he got out 30 April I think or 29 April when we left Vietnam. In 19 -- I don't know what year it was even. He was telling me about it before. Whatever. Scary fact it was. Might not have gotten out. Said it was really -- I wasn't there, of course, but he said it was really hectic. Now, on the way over there, it seemed like the people -- when we went to Korea, the moral was high and everybody wanted to go even though they didn't know what they was going do, but there was nobody holding back __+.
There was a period of time there, too, that Korea was still a few years post World War II and patriotism was still on an incredible high point, wasn't it?
That's right.
And there was the sense that the U.S. had tremendous confidence that it could handle military things. I often wondered about Vietnam in terms of, well, there were so many factors that entered into so many things which the political aspects, the people were pretty amazing, too, but how -- what was your last assignment over there and when did you get to come home from there?
I had a pretty good job. I was a personnel officer for a combined action group they called it, and the Marine Corps set up units in all those little hamlets in our area of responsibility, which is ICOR in the DaNang area, and we had a corpsman, a sergeant and about 10 other low ranking people that was to pacify these villages, and they had them scattered throughout the area and they had headquarters set up, and I was in the headquarters. It was commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel, and I was the personnel officer for it, and it worked pretty good I believe.
What was your primary task? How would you define that?
My primary care was just an ordinary administrative tasks to make sure that the people were promoted correctly and that they needed an MOS change, anything, if they were going on leave, emergency leave or anything, that was my job, to make sure they got their promotions and got the information that they needed and different things. That was sort of a secondary job I had. I was also the casualty assistance officer. I had to make sure that those people were properly notified and everybody was accounted for. Then I was personnel officer for the Marine Corps Headquarters. It was all one job. I had little sections of a job. Casualty assistance is a lot better now, but we had people that had been dead for, especially one guy, I don't know, three or four months, and nobody knew it, and the mother's letter was coming back, you know, she was writing to him, it was coming back, we started checking the morgue and stuff, and finally, you know, it was a lot of MIAs, not MIAs, unidentified people. They had the boy. They had him and waiting for something like this to happen, and finally when they found out who they were look for, we found him, but he laid in the morgue there in DaNang for two or three months, and I don't know why, but they missed him. He fell through the cracks. There were things like that that made the job interesting, and I worked with stuff like that.
Did you have to deal with families?
Not from over there, no, it was too far away. We didn't deal with the families. I did when I came back. I come back on emergency leave. I had family problems when I was over there, and I got an emergency leave to come back to Louisville, and that's when I made casualty assistance calls. Of course, the Marine Corps requires that an officer notify any death in the family, anybody that's the next of kin that gets killed, deceased, have to be notified by at least one officer.
That's in person?
In person. Get in the car, go to the house, knock on the door, and sometimes you take the Chaplin with you, sometimes you don't, depending. That's what I did.
That had to be absolutely -- that was an important assignment, but it had to be a very difficult thing.
Yeah. Really after you get the notification, like you say, it's kind of dicey. Then you do the burial, you do the tombstone, have to make sure that the widow or the mother, whatever, gets all the ribbons that he is entitled to. The Marine Corps does all of this. You have a package. It takes you maybe two or three weeks to get one of them wrapped up. Make sure they're happy, if they got any questions, any problems, they come to the Marine Corps and we try to help them.
Roughly how many cases did you have?
Probably -- I was there about two months I think. I only had about six myself, that's in southern Indiana, most of them over in Kentucky. I went as far as Madison, Indiana, a couple of times, and this is when the War was really heating up, and they had one officer there and he was glad to see me, even though I was going to be there a couple of months.
Following Louisville, again, you stayed -- did you stay in assignments that related to personnel administration?
Yes. Yes, I did. I went to Depue, Illinois, that's an old reserve unit. It's the commanding general of the Marine Air Reserve Training Command, and instead of dealing with ground people, we dealt with aviation people, and I was assigned to the IG team, Inspector General's staff, and on certain weekends, probably, I don't know, every other, we would fly to somewhere like Los Alamitos, New Orleans, Gross Hill, Michigan; Jacksonville, Florida; and inspect those units, and I went with the administrative instructor. Had people inspecting the airplanes, had people inspected, you know, regular MRI, Marine Regimen Inspection. He did that for about two years, too. That was another interesting assignment. I liked it. I was single and they had -- it was a general's headquarters. They had probably four or five guys in my position that could have done the job that I did, and some of them did go different times, but being that I was single and most of them were married, I said if you don't want to go, I'll go, and I enjoyed it.
You had been at that time in the military for about years?
About 21 years, yeah.
Was it just time, did you feel like you were ready to do something different, or what made you decide to leave the military?
I don't know. I wished I had stayed another 20 -- eight years or so, but I guess it was -- well, I'll tell you why I got out. I was a temporary officer, and the War was winding down, and they put me back to Master Sergeant, which I could have worked as a Master Sergeant, I had been one before, but I didn't. I decided, well, I was going to have to go back from Captain to Master Sergeant. I got 22 years. I think I'll just get out. Probably a hasty decision, but --
You had been through two major conflicts.
Yes.
And then came out and a lot of people did not come out.
Yes.
And tell me, looking back, in about your time in the military and your pride in the Marines. It seems when I talk to Marines, there's a very strong bond, very strong loyalty to the Marine Corps that I know the Navy men are very close to their ships.
Yes.
There's a lot of loyalty. What is it about Marines that distinguish them a bit from other branches?
I don't know. I think maybe it goes with we've all been through the same thing, maybe. Our Boot Camp is probably a little more strict than some of the other services, and I don't know. We just rely on each other more. I'm going to a reunion here in about another month and a half, people that I was in Korea with. It was about this one unit __. I think there's 20 or 25 of us still alive that we know of, and we get together every year, at certain -- a different city. I went to Reno last year, going to Cincinnati this year. I'm suppose to. We all get together, tell the same sea stories every time. This happened about 10 years now we've been doing this.
I suppose there's been a lot of stories over the years that have been pieced together?
Yeah. And we lose a couple every year and we talk about them. I don't know why the Marine Corps has such a Corps that some of the rest of the people don't, but I think they do. I had -- when I joined the Marine Corps, I was -- I just enjoyed it. I didn't have no -- a lot of people look forward to it from the time they're 10 years old. I know people that look forward to joining the Marine Corps as soon as they got old enough. That wasn't my case, but I'm glad I did.
Looking back at your time in the military, your long and very distinguished service, how do you feel about your time in the military? How do you feel looking back?
Well, I would do it over again. I might make a few different small changes, but as far as the military life, I liked it and I just -- I guess I did what I was suppose to do. Did it quite well. I liked it. That's about the answer.
Is there anything else you'd like to say, Ed?
No. Not offhand, but I think this is a good program, and I think you'll get a lot better stories than I've told you.
This is a good story?
I think that it's good that we record this, the possibility for future generations. I don't know exactly how you're going to use it, but I think it's a good idea.
[END OF INTERVIEW]