We didn’t talk like that. Growing up farming, rural, unsophisticated, my world was very narrow, at least until enlistment in the Marines. That threw me in with characters like Rocky from the Bronx. He was in the Marines because he’d been given a choice “enlist or go to jail.” There was Eugene Lysakowski from Michigan, always cheerful and upbeat who’d greet with “What’s the haps, man?” Never once had anyone in Brookings County, SD., ever said that to me.
Last night in conversation with Ed, with whom I shared three years of Marine duty, Bob Merkel’s name came up. Another Marine, originally from Des Moines, IA., we wondered what happened to him after the Corps. Enter Google, which provided his obituary. Bob, discharged after 6 years of duty, got an engineering degree and died at 71, in 2013. That both satisfied our curiosity and saddened us.
With that experience, today Google found Eugene Lysakoski’s grave. He died in 1963, identified as Lance Corporal, USMC, which was his rank when we knew him in 1962. Cause of death remains a mystery His grave is in a Catholic cemetery. He could be a casualty of Vietnam, but????
61 years after my discharge it is obvious that many of those with whom I served have died. Yet, to find some of the particulars of some deaths saddens me in a way that the general knowledge does not.
Takk for alt,
Al
Perhaps I've undercounted blog readers having been reminded of readers in DC, OH, IA, MN, and SD.
One way to a get off a ship. An important trick was to drop the net immediately when a foot touched the deck of the landing craft below. The landing craft might suddenly drop away and a slow release of the net create a nasty drop.
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