General Tom, 1944, 3 years old

Enlisted in the Marines in September 1958, sent to MCRD, San Diego and ITR at Camp San Onofre, (Pendleton) in December of 1958.  Assigned to HQ BN, 1st Marine Division in January 1959 as Basic Radio Operator.  In summer of 1959, sent to Imperial Beach for training in code school, graduated in December of 1959. 

Sent to Kaneohe, Oahu, arrived in 1960 early January or February, assigned to D/F Platoon, finally getting Lcpl stripes while there.  Traveled to Formosa or Taiwan and trained with the Chinese for a couple of months and the company gave us leave in Japan for couple of weeks.  Back to Oahu and bounced back and forth between California and Oahu for various training. 

While in Hawaii we packed up to go to Vietnam 3 times.  Sat at the dock, sat on the ship, (still at port) and took off and went 20 miles out and sat and waited...another false alarm.  But we loaded ammo on board.....I was shipped back to California (Camp Pendleton) for discharge in late May of 1961 and out on June 5th or so.

Since then, I worked and retired from International Harvester, now Navistar, building trucks here in Fort Wayne and Springfield, Ohio.  Retired in 1998.  I've worked some dead end jobs for beer money, etc. since then,...but nothing like before. 

Married Christine Hendrickson, June 1962.  We have 5 children and 9 grandchildren.                                                                                                     

Tom and Christine

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