THE MANEUVER GROUNDS
The Maneuver Grounds are some four or five miles south of the
Quarantine Station. Five hundred tents are pitched here, on a
broad plateau, aligned with military precision, and laid-out
to form com-pany streets. This is the only tented encampment
on the island~the others are built on the cantonment plan.
Recruits who passed through during the summer took particular
pains to improve the camp. At the end of each street, there
are clever imitations of landscape gardening, wrought with
colored shells on a banked-up terrace. Captions, such as Boys
from Chicago, The Fighting 29th, and others help identify
former units now serving elsewhere, while Semper Fidelis,
the motto of the Corps, US Marines, Soldiers of the Sea,
and Welcome, are more permanent, and are tended daily by
the boys who are proud of their handiwork. Shells, by the
way, are spread round about and over the grounds. They
glisten in the sunlight, and add to the im-maculate
appearance of the camp. At this camp recruits are
furnished with rifles and additional equipment. There are
hours devoted to the handling of the rifle and its various
movements, known as the "manual of arms". The recruit
speedily learns the difference between a "floorplate"
and a "stacking swivel" and that it is important to
keep the bore of the rifle clean. To accomplish this,
Marines use a "pull-through"~a stout cord & piece of
cloth that is drawn through the barrel from breech to
muzzle. Some recruits, in their enthusiasm to brighten
the rifle-bore, attempt to pull through too much rag.
The results are a "jam," the requi-sitioning of a
ramrod & other dif-ficulties. Another unpleasant
feature of this predicament is the sarcastic
advice of the sergeant: "Next time you try to pull
your overcoat through, take off the buttons." At
this camp the recruit learns, through practice marches into
the surrounding country, how to pitch & strike sheltertents,
roll & unroll equipment, build fires, cook, & the graceful
stunt of balancing a baked potato, onion, slice of meat, &
several slices of bread on the cover of his messkit without
dropping a thing... a necessary part of the sea-soldier's
training.
Recruiters' Bulletin, October 1917
MAJOR COYLE DESCRIBES WHAT TAKES PLACE ON THE MANEUVER GROUNDS
On the second day...[each recruit] was ready to start for my
camp. His clothes marked with name and company, and packed in
his canvas sea bag, went ahead by motor truck, and about seven
o'clock every evening, six miles over the road, they marched to
the lower end of the island... At the entrance to the Manoeuvre
Grounds, the officer commanding the battalion received his
billeting schedule, his assignment to mess hall, and drill
schedule for the following day, and the evening gave them
an opportunity to get settled in tents and dispose their
new-found possessions, in general, according to rule, but in
particular according to the definite requirements of each
battalion commander. Two days later an inspection of two
hundred tents in the battalion streets would fail to disclose
any lack of uniformity or precision. Of course, this depended
on the officer in charge of the battalion... That evening, for
five minutes, their battalion commander or camp commander
addressed them for a few moments, generally on the necessity
of writing a letter home... On the morning of the fourth day
started the daily routine of instruction. At seven-thirty
in the morning, breakfast and camp police being over,
they began the facings, marchings, and school of the
soldier. Physical exercise, swimming, and personal
combat, scrubbing clothes, and kitchen police. We had them at
this camp for three weeks.
From "Parris Island in the War", a speech delivered in April 1919 by Congressman WR Coyle, reprinted in the Marine Corps Gazette, Dec. 1925.
PARIS ISLAND PLUMBING
Levi Hemrick recorded that, when he arrived on the island in June 1917,
one of the "latrines" in use by all the recruits at that time was nothing
more than plank walk-way with "flimsy handrailings" extending from shore
some hundred feet or so out over the Atlantic Ocean. The recruits simply
strolled out to the end of the walkway, turned round and squatted, or stood
facing seaward (hoping it was not also windward). At low tide this arrangement
positioned the bare buttocks of the recruit in mid-air some twenty feet
above the water, while, at high tide, though the drop was less perilous,
the nearer proximity of the waves, if there was much wind and chop, practically
guaranteed a cold drenching to his most vulnerable parts.
Ben Finney, who arrived at Paris Island later in the year, found a
series of "heads" built directly over the creek that ran alongside the
Maneuver Grounds. Officially known, then and now, as Ribbon Creek, Finney
reports that, among the recruits of 1917, it was commonly called by a different
name.
According to Levi Hemrick, the only source of drinking water, for a
period of time, was a hand-pump from a coastal well, the water from which
was so muddy and foul-smelling that most recruits got by on the three cups
of coffee a day served with meals, and this during the hot,dusty days of
June and July. Hemrick finally came to believe that this arrangement was
deliberate on the part of their sergeants, as it taught many of the recruits
the art of self-imposed abstinence which would hold some of them in good
stead a year later during the parched opening days of the battle for Belleau
Wood.
The extremely hot, dry conditions on Paris Island in the summer of
1917, together with wide-spread clothing shortages, including especially,
according to Hem-rick, a shortage of underwear, (one pair only per man),
necessitated daily bathing with nothing more than a bucket of cold salt
water. An occasional sight, when fire drills occurred at inconvenient times,
was the sudden appearance of recruits dashing down company streets, garbed
only in shoes, campaign hat & bucket.
References: Levi Hemrick, Once a Marine and Ben Finney, Once a Marine,
Always a Marine.
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