I went down a few years ago.
I had not gone back to Paris Island for a long time, but my wife and I were down in that area visiting friends at Hilton Head. And so I said well that’s close let’s drive over to Parris Island.
I’d never been back on the island. And we went in and I pretty much was allowed to roam around a little bit.
Parris Island Museum
There were only two buildings on the whole island that had been there when I was there. All my barracks, I had been in the old wood barracks, the First Battalion. Those barracks were all torn down. I did see a building that had been kind of a Red Cross and other buildings, one had been turned into a museum. We walked over toward it.
Parris Island Museum
I saw a platoon of trainees had just gone in and we followed them into the museum and I’m going through and I’m looking around…suddenly I say “My God! That’s my picture!”
The the museum had taken one particular image representing a time period from each war that the Marine Corps had been in to focus on. And so when they focused on the summer of 1967 for the Vietnam conflict, I saw at least two pictures of my platoon and myself in the museum.
I thought to myself, “Boy you’ve really gotten old when you’re a museum piece.”
