When I was to NMSU there was this guy in my dorm whose father was an Air Force general. His idea of rebelling against parental authority was to join the Marines and try to do everything in a super gung-ho fashion. A suitemate of mine was a Lieutenent who had recently quit the Army at Ft. Bliss. We called him Lt Tom. Lt Tom called him Frank, the Boy Marine.
Frank dyed all his underwear Marine green (or was it khaki?) in the dorm landromat. The next person who used the machine was a behive-headed blonde Anglo chick from Amarillo we called La Papagaya, because her highly colorful clothes made her resemble a Scarlet Macaw. They were not Scarlet or green or yellow or blue, purple, teal, orange or blue when she took them out of that machine. They were a vile olive drab. She screamed loud anbd shrill and soon Frank had to write General Dad a long begging letter for money to replace the clothes that La Papagaya had lost to his gung-ho spirit.
Another time, he decided that the Army ROTC drill team, called the Pershing Rifles were far too uppity, and had no reason to strut about so proudly, since all were candy-ass infantry and none of them was a real Marine. So he wedged a pebble in the door of each and every Pershing Rifle, which locked them in, and only a few showed up at 6:00 to be reviewed by visiting Army Brass. No one ever told the Rifles who was responsible. Lt. Tom advised against it. Lt. Tom had seen far too much of military life and despised it deeply.
Lieutenant Tom used to sing this song, to the tune of "The Worms Crawl in, the worms crawl out"
"Oh, have you seen,
The Boy Marine?
His feet are tender,
His horn is green."
Frank did not like this at all, but Lt Tom was 6'3' and about 300 lbs., and Frank was only about 5'5" and 130.
The worst time was when I went to Juarez to buy some guitars and Frank rode along and he and Buie Reyes vanished into a club and had a gimlet drinking contest. In Juarez gin is really cheap, so these were really, really super-especial ay, mamá potent gimlets, not some wimpy Quantico gimlets, and after a number of these, Frank was seeing double and worse, was mistaking a very tall Juarez policeman for two sailors in dress blues who were badly in need of Marine discipline. Lamentably this was not only a very large Juarez cop, but one that knew English, and the next think Frank knew there he was in La Chirona, the Juarez special drunk tank for overlubed turistas. Buie Reyes, who was a short Mexican dude buzzed around begging the cop to leave Frank alone, but Frank mistook him for another couple of sailors, and punched him (both of him, as it were) in the mouth. It took a couple of days to bail Frank out. I recall he was wearing his khaki underwear and socks and one shoe as he rode home in silence. His watch was gone, as were his special dog tags.
I often wonder what happened to Frank Blair. I sort of imagine that he was probably fragged by his own men somewhere around Danang about 12 afterwards, but who knows?
