Semper Fi Marines (Page 2/2) maryjane NOV 18, 01:05 PM I have read that poem a dozen times and can never read this part without thinking of a friend of my father's, Mr. Cecil Singleton. "In Fifty at the Chosin When the big guns couldn't talk And the First Marine Division Took a fighting, freezing walk, When all the world, except the Corps Had counted us as gone It was Rifles, always Rifles That let us carry on." A fighting freezing walk........ Doesn't get any more graphic than that, and always makes me stop to think of Mr Singleton. I've probably told this before but will again just because I can.. As a 12 or 13 year old, I and my twin brother worked in our off time from school in Dad's auto shop. This would have been around 1962-'63. In summer Dad had a big home built floor fan he sometimes ran when his friends came around to visit Saturday mornings but in winter, he had a big nat gas heater he lit. His friends would sit around that heater and as old guys do, tell stories. Now, this was less than 20 years after WW2 ended and just 10 years after the Korean War cease fire went into effect. Most there were older and had been in ww2 but Mr Singleton was the youngest and said very little, tho I knew from what my father had told me that Cecil was a marine, or as my former US Army soldier father put it, "He used to be a Marine". Cecil never sat down in the winter, but stood right by that heater every minute. He limped badly on his left leg, but didn't use or need a cane. I got to know Cecil pretty good a very few few years later as I, my brother and a couple of friends from school worked for him loading/hauling hay at his ranch about 20 miles away, and helping him gather and brand calves in the fall. He had a LOT of hay field and baled his own in what we called square bales but they were really rectangle. It didn't matter summer or winter, Cecil always wore the same thing. Work boots, wrangler jeans and a heavy LONG sleeve jean shirt and gloves. He usually ran the baler ahead of us, but sometimes, he'd walk along loading hay on that big long flatbed, setting the pace for us boys. His daughter or wife drove the truck. (this was before big 1100lb round bales came to be popular. ) A square bale was always about the same size but could be made heavier (more hay in density) by adjusting the baler to make the bale tighter. They might be 40 lbs each if it was hay he was going to sell but hay he kept for his own cattle, would weigh 10-15lbs heavier. It also varied with the type grass he was baling. Native grass hay was lighter than the fertilized costal bermuda hay he baled. Didn't matter, it all hadto be picked up out of the field and Cecil, soaked to the skin and pouring sweat threw those bales up onto that truck like they were cotton balls while us scrawny boys struggled along. We were burning up but he never seemed to mind the heat. Ceil Singleton, was a man, like no other I ever met. At branding one year, it was still hot in October and Cecil was still dressed 'in summer attire'. His father was still alive then, didn't do any work but sat by and wathed and hoorawed and laughed at us boys as we drug and held them big Hereford/Brahma cross calves near the where the irons lay red hot in the big pine knot fire. We took a break every now and then, and all sat down over near Cecils dad but Cecil just stood by that fire, looking out over the pasture like he was somewhere else. I asked his dad why Cecil stood there by that fire all the time and he said "You'll have to ask him that sometime, maybe he'll tell you". I did the next day and he just looked down and told me "I never want to be cold again" and walked away. A few years later, when I announced to my father that I wanted to enlist in the Marines (I was 17 at the time) he was dead set against it. I forged his name on the underage permission slip the recruiter gave me, and gave it to the recruiter but my brother ratted me out and Dad and the recruiter had a little talk and worked out that I would finish high school before enlisting anywhere. I'd still be just shy of my 18th birthday. One Saturday morning, the old folks were coming to gather at the shop and Cecil drove up in his old farm truck as usual, ut Dad went out and met him before he got down and came to the heater , then Dad came in and told me "Boy, Go take a ride with Cecil". We rode around town at first, I didn't know what to make of it till Cecil started telling me about being a Marine, and his months in Korea. He was with the 1st Marine Division when the Chinese threw 10 divisions at them above the 38th parallel in what is now North korea , told me of the cold, and the frozen stiff Chinese bodies they would pile up at night to stand behind and fire from while trying to get back to the sea. Standing in a hole with ice and snow in the bottom and walking miles on cold frozen ground, with all their wounded and dead riding in trucks or on tanks. Told me of his frost bitten toes and why he limped and why he was always always cold, to the bone. But he also told me about being a US Marine. Just before we got back to the shop, he said "I'll tell you one thing Donnie, when you come back here to Highlands after boot camp, main street won't be wide enough for you and anyone else to walk down". Cecil came down with heart problems years later, sold the cattle and his ranch, moved into town an he and his wife just traveld the US in a motorhome, bbut he passed away while I was stationed at Guantanamo. A gate guard in a better place now but still Marine , and a man like I never met again in all my travels. One of the Chosin Few.