Gardella 3

3   I was born in NYC on November 22, 1934.  My father, Edmund Gardella, worked as a laborer & a hospital guard; my mother, Muriel, was a nurse's aide.  They named me Lawrence Frederick Gardella, but my grandmother, who thought that was too long a name for a little baby, started calling me Rick & the nickname stuck.   About the first important thing--important to me & to a lot of other people--that I can remember is the start of WW II.  At the time we lived at 170th St & Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, & after the US got into the war, there was a military camp--tents, soldiers, all--in a park right near us.   I couldn't stay away from that place; I spent so much time hanging around that the soldiers got to know me & treated me like a mascot.  It got so that when my mother wanted me, she always knew she could find me hanging around the camp.  I remember one year bringing eight or ten soldiers home for Christmas dinner.  In those days we didn't have all that much for dinner ourselves.  But my mother & father, God bless them, managed to feed everybody.   That was my first encounter with the army, with men in uniform, & from then on I was hooked.  I knew what I wanted to be:  a soldier, a fighting man.  That feeling never changed.  It hasn't to this day.  that I couldn't stay in the Marine Corps after 1952 is one of the few major regrets in my life.   During the war, we moved to Englewood, New Jersey.  Our old neighborhood was getting bad, gangs were starting up, & my parents wanted to get out.  But often on a Sunday my mother would bring my brother Michael & me into New York.  Those were the days when big movie houses like the Paramount & the Strand had stage shows along with the movies, & we loved to go to those.   One Sunday, while we were walking in times Square, I spooted a group of marines in dress uniform.  I was so hypnotized that I kept following them, & got separated from my mother & brother.  My poor mother finally went to the police; & three or four hours later they found me with the marines in a bar.  I was maybe nine at the time.  My mother was furious, but I wasn't really bothered.  I knew then that being a soldier wasn't enough.  I was going to be a marine.   In 1947, after the war, we moved to Allston, a suburb of Boston, where my grandparents lived.  My grandfather had spent nineteen years in the army & was now the chief armorer at the Commonwealth Armory in boston, which was the headquarters for the Massachusetts National Guard.  he used to take me there all the time, & naturally I loved it.  I got to know the men, I read all the manuals, I got to know weapons.  Some guard officers who were close friends of my grandfather would let me field-strip the weapons at the firing range after the men were finished, & my grandfather would let me fire.  Before I was sixteen I knew how to handle the M-1, the Springfield bolt action, the carbine, the four-point-one rocket launcer, the flamethrower.  & I don't mean just take them apart & put them together.  I mean fire them, hit targets with them--hit bull's eyes with them.  I took to those weapons, my hands seemed made for them--even as a kid I had big hands.  When I joined the Corps at seventeen, i was six feet & weighed 190.  I am not boastful by nature & don't pretend to be anything I'm not.  Ask me now how many books I've read in the past ten years, & I'll tell you:  I've read two.  Ask me how I handle an M-1 or a machine gun, I'll tell you.  I'm the best.   In 1951, when I was sixteen, I decided I couldn't wait any longer, & I got my grandfather to talk my parents into letting me join the National Guard.  Of course I was underage, so I did something I'm not exactly proud of.  I fexed up my birth certificate so it would make me old enough.  I was a big kid, & had no trouble joining the Guard.  By this time, I had finished two years of high school.  I was no student.  Now I was at the armory every day.  I never missed a practice at the firing range.  Some days I'd be the only one there, but that just gave me more firing time.   In the summer of '51, our unit went to Camp Drum in upstate New York, where I got some field experience.  I was a private, E-2, serial number 21261628, with Battery C, 180th Field Artillery Battalion of the Massachusetts National Guard.  I loved it.   But I was still not a marine, & I became one by getting myself into trouble.  In December, someone in the Guard asked me if I could drive a truck.  I had no license, & I had never driven any vehicle, let alone a truck, but I didn't want to admit that I couldn't.   I drove that truck right through a garage wall--& was brought up on charges.  The brass found out I'd falsified my birth certificate & was underage when I enlisted, even though by that time I was of age.  My grandfather did what he could to help me.  Finally I was told the charges against me would be dropped if I joined the regular army.  "How about the Marine Corps?" I asked, & they said okay.   All of this may sound as though I had only one thing on my mind as a kid.  But before then I had been a normal enough teenager.  I played sandlot football--I was a tackle--& baseball, where I was a catcher.  I got into my share of fights, won a lot but lost some, too.  I did about everything the average kid does.  But ever since that sunday in Times Square, when I followed those marines, my one overwhelming ambition had been to be a marine.   When I filled out my medical form I did not mention that I had a history of asthma because I was afraid they might not take me, even though I'd been practically cured by treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital.  I hadn't had an attack in a long time, & I wasn't allergic to grasses, trees, dust or pollen anymore--just animals.  My father had to sign for me because I was under eighteen, & it may be that he hoped that the Corps wouldn't accept me because of the asthma--not knowing that I wasn't telling them about it.   Anyhow, January 31, 1952, I was honorably discharged from the Massachusetts National guard, & on February 1, 1952, I was inducted into the USMC.  I remember asking the recruiting officer if I could get into a paratroop unit--I didn't even know whether the marines had one--& hearing him say he'd put it down on my papers.  & I remember boarding a train at South Station along with a bunch of other guys for the long ride, twelve or fifteen hours, down to South Carolina.  Then came the bus to Parris Island.  As we got near the gate, & I saw the statue of Iron Mike, I felt like shouting, I was so proud & happy just to be there.   My fellings today are the same as they were then.  I'm honored to have been a marine.  the story of what happened to me I do not blame on the Marine Corps.   Saying it felt great to be there is not to say boot camp was easy.  Its whole purpose was to ge the civilian cockiness out of you.  The DIs, the drill instructors, knew how to do that.  You could get thumped for blinking an eye or for scratching a flea you thought had landed on your nose.  You were kept from going to the head for hours at a time.  & there were other punishments, too, such as having to stand with your arms straight out in front of you, supporting your M-1 on the backs of your hands.  But the favorite of the DIs was a fist to the stomach, which knocked the wind right out of you & left no marks.  I wasn't a troublemaker- -never have been--but I got my share of all those punishments.   Also, there were pushups, chins, & other calisthenics, & there was the time on the firing ranges.  There, for the reasons I've already mentioned, I had a head start on the others.  I fired sharpshooter on the M-1, qualified with the carbine & the .45 caliber pistol.  I was proud to be a marine, & proud of what I could do.   When boot camp was over, I requested combat duty overseas, which in the spring of 1952 meant Korea.  I had been told then that I was too young.  But now here I was, somewhere over Asia...