It's not a book I would actually recommend to anyone.  It's the true story of the most screwed up father of the most screwed family that spawned the most screwed up children you have ever met.  And yes, by his own admission one of my favorite authors, Pat Conroy, is just as screwed up as the rest of them.

But the just past the final chapter, the funeral of The Great Santini, is the eulogy to his father that Pat Conroy wrote.  To me that alone is worth the price of the book.  Not only a tribute to his father, but a tribute to the Marine Corps and Marine Corps Aviation as well.  

But you don't have to buy the book.  I pulled it off the internet:

"The children of attack/fighter pilots tell different stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flue shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft carriers in pitch-black nights with the wind howling out of the China Sea. Our fathers wiped out anti-aircraft batteries in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the ground. Your Dads ran the barber shops and worked at the post office and delivered the packages on time and sold the cars, while our Dads were blowing up fuel depots near Seoul, were providing extraordinarily courageous close air support to the beleaguered Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and who once turned the Naktong River red with blood of a retreating North Korean battalion. We tell of men who made widows of the wives of our nations' enemies and who made orphans out of all their children. You don't like war or violence? Or napalm? Or rockets? Or cannons or death rained down from the sky? Then let's talk about your fathers, not ours.

When we talk about the Aviators who raised us and the Marines who loved us, we can look you in the eye and say "you would not like to have been America's enemies when our fathers passed overhead". We were raised by the men who made the United States of America the safest country on earth in the bloodiest century in all recorded history. Our fathers made sacred those strange, singing names of battlefields across the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand more. We grew up attending the funerals of Marines slain in these battles. Your fathers made communities like Beaufort decent and prosperous and functional; our fathers made the world safe for democracy.

We have gathered here today to celebrate the amazing and storied life of Col. Donald Conroy, who modestly called himself by his nomdeguerre, The Great Santini. There should be no sorrow at this funeral because The Great Santini lived life at full throttle, moved always in the fast lanes, gunned every engine, teetered on every edge, seized every moment and shook it like a terrier shaking a rat. He did not know what moderation was or where you'd go to look for it.

Donald Conroy is the only person I have ever known whose self-esteem was absolutely unassailable. There was not one thing about himself that my father did not like, nor was there one thing about himself that he would change. He simply adored the man he was and walked with perfect confidence through every encounter in his life. Dad wished everyone could be just like him. His stubbornness was an art form. The Great Santini did what he did, when he wanted to do it, and woe to the man who got in his way.

Once I introduced my father before he gave a speech to an Atlanta audience. I said at the end of the introduction, "My father decided to go into the Marine Corps on the day he discovered his IQ was the temperature of this room". My father rose to the podium, stared down at the audience, and said without skipping a beat, "My God, it's hot in here! It must be at least 180 degrees".

Here is how my father appeared to me as a boy. He came from a race of giants and demi-gods from a mythical land known as Chicago. He married the most beautiful girl ever to come out of the poor and lowborn south, and there were times when I thought we were being raised by Zeus and Athena. After Happy Hour my father would drive his car home at a hundred miles an hour to see his wife and seven children. He would get out of his car, a strapping flight jacketed matinee idol, and walk toward his house, his knuckles dragging along the ground, his shoes stepping on and killing small animals in his slouching amble toward the home place. My sister, Carol, stationed at the door, would call out, "Godzilla's home!" and we seven children would scamper toward the door to watch his entry. The door would be flung open and the strongest Marine aviator on earth would shout, "Stand by for a fighter pilot!" He would then line his seven kids up against the wall and say, "Who's the greatest of them all?" "You are, O Great Santini, you are." "Who knows all, sees all, and hears all?" "You do, O Great Santini, you do." We were not in the middle of a normal childhood, yet none of us were sure since it was the only childhood we would ever have. For all we knew other men were coming home and shouting to their families, "Stand by for a pharmacist," or "Stand by for a chiropractor".

In the bewildered world of children we knew we were in the presence of a fabulous, overwhelming personality; but had no idea we were being raised by a genius of his own myth-making. My mother always told me that my father had reminded her of Rhett Butler on the day they met, and everyone who ever knew our mother conjured up the lovely, coquettish image of Scarlet O'Hara.

Let me give you my father the warrior in full battle array. The Great Santini is catapulted off the deck of the aircraft carrier, Sicily. His Black Sheep squadron is the first to reach the Korean Theater and American ground troops had been getting torn up by North Korean regulars. Let me do it in his voice: "We didn't even have a map of Korea. Not zip. We just headed toward the sound of artillery firing along the Naktong River. They told us to keep the North Koreans on their side of the Naktong. Air power hadn't been a factor until we got there that day. I radioed to Bill Lundin, I was his wingman. 'There they are. Let's go get'em.' So we did."

I was interviewing Dad so I asked, "how do you know you got them?" "Easy," The Great Santini said. "They were running - it's a good sign when you see the enemy running. There was another good sign." "What was that, Dad?" "They were on fire." This is the world in which my father lived deeply. I had no knowledge of it as a child. When I was writing the book The Great Santini, they told me at Marine Headquarters that Don Conroy was at one time one of the most decorated Aviators in the Marine Corps. I did not know he had won a single medal. When his children gathered together to write his obituary, not one of us knew of any medal he had won, but he had won a slew of them. When he flew back toward the carrier that day, he received a call from an Army Colonel on the ground who had witnessed the route of the North Koreans across the river. "Could you go pass over the troops fifty miles south of here? They've been catching hell for a week or more. It'd do them good to know you flyboys are around."

He flew those fifty miles and came over a mountain and saw a thousand troops lumbered down in foxholes. He and Bill Lundin went in low so these troops could read the insignias and know the American aviators had entered the fray.

My father said, "Thousands of guys came screaming out of their foxholes, son. It sounded like a world series game. I got goose pimples in the cockpit. Get goose pimples telling it forty-eight years later. I dipped my wings, waved to the guys. The roar they let out. I hear it now. I hear it now."

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, my mother took me out to the air station where we watched Dad's squadron scramble on the runway on their bases at Roosevelt Road and Guantanamo. In the car as we watched the A-4's take off, my mother began to say the rosary. "You praying for Dad and his men, Mom?" I asked her.

"No, son. I'm praying for the repose of the souls of the Cuban pilots they're going to kill." Later I would ask my father what his squadron's mission was during the Missile Crisis. "To clear the air of MIGS over Cuba," he said. "You think you could've done it?" The Great Santini answered, "There wouldn't have been a bluebird flying over that island, son."

Now let us turn to the literary of The Great Santini. Some of you may have heard that I had some serious reservations about my father's child-rearing practices. When The Great Santini came out, the book roared through my family like a nuclear device. My father hated it; my grandparents hated it; my aunts and uncles hated it; my cousins who adore my father thought I was a psychopath for writing it; and rumor has it that my mother gave it to the judge in her divorce case and said, "It's all there. Everything you need to know." What changed my father's mind was when Hollywood entered the picture and wanted to make a movie of it. This is when my father said, "What a shame John Wayne is dead. Now there was a man. Only he could've gotten my incredible virility across to the American people." Orion Pictures did me a favor and sent my father a telegram; "Dear Col. Conroy: We have selected the actor to play you in the coming film. He wants to come to Atlanta to interview you. His name is Truman Capote."

But my father took well to Hollywood and its Byzantine, unspeakable ways. When his movie came out, he began reading Variety on a daily basis. He called the movie a classic the first month of its existence. He claimed that he had a place in the history of film. In February of the following year, he burst into my apartment in Atlanta, as excited as I have ever seen him, and screamed, "Son, you and I were nominated for Academy Awards last night. Your mother didn't get squat".

Ladies and gentlemen - You are attending the funeral of the most famous Marine that ever lived. Dad's life had grandeur, majesty and sweep. We were all caught in the middle of living lives much paler and less daring than The Great Santini's. His was a high stepping, word not allowed-the torpedoes kind of life, and the stick was always set at high throttle. There is not another Marine alive who has not heard of The Great Santini. There's not a fighter pilot alive who does not lift his glass whenever Don Conroy's name is mentioned and give the fighter pilot toast: "Hurrah for the next man to die".

One day last summer, my father asked me to drive him over to Beaufort National Cemetery. He wanted to make sure there were no administrative foul-ups about his plot. I could think of more pleasurable ways to spend the afternoon, but Dad brought new eloquence to the word stubborn. We went into the office and a pretty black woman said that everything was squared away. My father said, "It'll be the second time I've been buried in this cemetery." The woman and I both looked strangely at Dad. Then he explained, "You ever catch the flick "The Great Santini? That was me they planted at the end of the movie."

All of you will be part of a very special event today. You will be witnessing the actual burial that has already been filmed in fictional setting. This has never happened in world history. You will be present in a scene that was acted out in film in 1979. You will be in the same town and the same cemetery. Only The Great Santini himself will be different. In his last weeks my father told me, "I was always your best subject, son. Your career took a nose dive after The Great Santini came out". He had become so media savvy that during his last illness he told me not to schedule his funeral on the same day as the Seinfeld Farewell. The Colonel thought it would hold down the crowd. The Colonel's death was front-page news across the country. CNN announced his passing on the evening news all around the world.

Don Conroy was a simple man and an American hero. His wit was remarkable; his intelligence frightening; and his sophistication next to none. He was a man's man and I would bet he hadn't spend a thousand dollars in his whole life on his wardrobe. He lived out his whole retirement in a two-room efficiency in the Darlington Apartment in Atlanta. He claimed he never spent over a dollar on any piece of furniture he owned. You would believe him if you saw the furniture. Dad bought a season ticket for himself to Six Flags Over Georgia and would often go there alone to enjoy the rides and hear the children squeal with pleasure. He was a beer drinker who thought wine was for Frenchmen or effete social climbers like his children.

Ah! His children. Here is how God gets a Marine Corps fighter pilot. He sends him seven squirrelly, mealy-mouth children who march in peace demonstrations, wear Birkenstocks, flirt with vegetarianism, invite cross-dressers to dinner and vote for candidates that Dad would line up and shoot. If my father knew how many tears his children had shed since his death, he would be mortally ashamed of us all and begin yelling that he should've been tougher on us all, knocked us into better shape - that he certainly didn't mean to raise a passel of kids so weak and tacky they would cry at his death. Don Conroy was the best uncle I ever saw, the best brother, the best grandfather, the best friend - and my God, what a father. After my mother divorced him and The Great Santini was published, Don Conroy had the best second act I ever saw. He never was simply a father. This was The Great Santini.

It is time to leave you, Dad. From Carol and Mike and Kathy and Jim and Tim and especially from Tom. Your kids wanted to especially thank Katy and Bobby and Willie Harvey who cared for you heroically. Let us leave you and say goodbye, Dad, with the passwords that bind all Marines and their wives and their children forever. The Corps was always the most important thing.

Semper Fi, Dad
Semper Fi, O Great Santini
 

Noel

 

Edited February 9, 20215 yr by birdguy
Added the eulogy...

I don't know how I feel about the term, "Semper Fi."  I know what it means and I'm one of the fraternity of Marines who lives by the motto.  But "semper fi" is sometimes a jab used in the context of "pull up the gang plank, I'm on board", or "semper fi, mac, I've got mine.  In fact, there is a great book of that same title, Semper Fi, Mac that's worth reading if anyone is interested in how the brain housing group of a Marine works.  Having spent time around MCAS, Beaufort and Beaufort, SC where the "Great Santini" was filmed, I did appreciate Pat Conroy's book and the movie of the same name.  My thoughts on "semper fi" boil down to its full motto, "semper fidelis."  That's the way I like to remember the Corps.

 

James M Driskell

James, Semper Fi is the secret code word, the secret handshake that binds Marines around the world.  It's the fraternity handshake.  No other service has it.

I wrote here someplace a few days ago that you see something on a person that identifies them as a Marine, no matter what his age or how long he served or where he is you just say Semper Fi and an instant connection is made.

I was flying to Charleston two years ago and had to change planes in Dallas.  I was going up the escalator and saw a Marine.  I said Semper Fi.  We shook hands.  I asked him where concourse whatever was and he took me.  And we sat there at the gate until his plane had to leave and he left.  We had a lot to talk about even though I was 85 years old and he was 30 something.

If I am standing in a checkout line and someone ahead of me or behind me is wearing a Cap that has a globe and anchor on it or just says Marine something I say Semper I and we have a boatload of thinks to talk about.

No other service has this.  Perhaps special forces or Seals

Semper Fi Mac has and extra word and a totally different meaning. 

I spent 26 years in military service.  Only 4 were in the Marine Corps.  But when I spotted someone wearing an Air Force uniform or a Navy uniform or an Army uniform with a Marine Corps good conduct ribbon just the words Semper Fi make a connection.

When I was in the Colorado Air National Guard my unit supported an Army Armored Cavalry Regiment in Montana.  OI ran across a Army Captain who was wearing a Third Marine Division patch on his right shoulder.  I had a First Marine Division patch on my right shoulder.  He noticed it and said Semper Fi.  We were no longer an Army captain and an Air Force master sergeant...we were two Marines.

It's hard to put into exact words.

Noel 

Hi Noel,

I never really wanted to cast any doubt on the term, "Semper Fi", as I always translate in in my mind as "Semper Fidelis".  That's what I think, based on my 21 years in the Corps.

I also remark to the wearer when I see a cover with the Marine Corps emblem, but I usually say, "Nice hat"!  They generally gat the message and we usually have an interesting conversation.  So "Semper Fi" to you Noel,

Jim

Semper Fi Jim.

Noel

Non sibi sed patriae!  Technically the Navy motto. 

 

Jim, I tried to find the book 'Semper Fi Mac' for my Nook but could only find the bound books.  Not good for me because of my eyes and age I can no longer easily read from the printed page.  I need to put it on my Nook so I can set a large font.

Reading the reviews on it I see it was written from interviews with several Marines who served during WW2.  That brought back a memory for me.

I read the book Guadalcanal Diary and there is an episode where a group of Marines are trapped on a beach by Japanese soldiers.  One of them swims a couple of miles back to the main base to get help.  A boat full of Marines is launched and lands on the beach and reinforces the trapped Marine who are rescued.

My first assignment after going to EOD school was at the 3rd Marine Division Ammunition Company at Camp Pendleton.  In our unit was a gunny who's chest was all scarred up.  I learned he was the character in the book who swam for help and got his chest cut up from the coral.  He also held the Medal of Honor.

Shortly after I arrived we had a change of command ceremony.

When the current and new majors reviewed the troops the gunny was standing in front of our company.  When the majors got to him he just stood there.  The new major said, "Don't you recognize an officer when you see one gunny?"  To which the gunny replied, "Don't you recognize the Medal of Honor when you see one major?"

The major snapped to attention and saluted the gunny and said, "You got me gunny!"  And the gunny returned a smart salute back to the major.

He was the only one I ever served with who had been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Noel

Noel,

Geez, EOD!  I once thought about applying for EOD school, but when I talked to a couple of the NCO's who were assigned to EOD at 29 Palms in the early 1960s, I noticed that they only had 15 fingers between the two of them so I quickly forgot about the idea!

I have a copy of Semper Fi, Mac by Henry Berry and yes, the print is small.  Too bad you can't find it in a suitable format.

I've always heard that one could tell if a Norwegian was on the level when the snoose ran out of both sides of his mouth!  🐵

Jim

 

I've still got all ten of my fingers Jim.

I've written a number of short stories and essays about my Marine Corps experiences.  Some of them I published here.  Here is one of my EOD stories.

Ramirez Blows His word not allowed Off:

Camp Fuji Japan was a complex of Marne Corp bases set around the base of Mount Fuji, or as the Japanese call it, Fujiyama (yama being the Japanese word for mountain).

I was stationed at South Camp.  I had mentioned Middle Camp in the story of my stint in the brig.  Additionally North Camp and Camp McNair rounded off the list.

A few months after I became our company clerk a call went out for qualified EOD personnel to help sweep the artillery range at North Camp.  I asked the captain if I could go and he gave me the OK.

We assembled in our temporary quarters and were divided into three man teams.  My buddy Frenchie and I and an EOD tech named Ramirez from Camp McNair made up our team.  I was told to watch out for Ramirez because he was kind of sloppy.  You don’t want sloppiness when working with explosives.

Each team went out with a Jeep and trailer loaded with packs of C-3, blasting caps, and a blasting machine and galvanometer.

The operation was quite simple.  We would drive across our sector of the range searching for unexploded artillery rounds.  When we found we would drive safe distance away.  Frenchie stayed with the blasting machine and I would run the wire down to the unexploded round.  I would hook up the galvanometer to ends of the wires and with hand signals tell Frenchie to twist the handle of the blasting machine.  The galvanometer would measure the current from the blasting machine, Then I would hand signal Frenchie to place the place a short between the terminals on the blasting machine and twist the handle again.  If the galvanometer showed no response we were safe.

I would set a block of C-3 next to the round and Ramirez would take a blasting cap out of his pocket and hand it to me.  I would untwist the leads and then twist them to the blasting machine wires.  The blasting caps came out of the box with the leads shorted.  But  Ramirez had this nasty habit of carrying blasting caps in his back pocket.  And despite the many warnings we gave him he would untwist and twist the leads of the blasting cap while waiting for me to place the C-3 next to the unexploded artillery shell.  Sometimes the blasting cap leads he handed me were already untwisted.

I would insert the blasting cap into the C-3 and Ramirez and I would move up to where to Frenchie and the blasting machine were located, remove the short from the blasting machine terminals and Frenchie would twist the handle.

The artillery round would go BOOM!

Then we would wind up the blasting machine wire, pack up and search for the next unexploded round.

About the third day out our Jeep broke down and they gave us a pickup truck to drive around in.

Ramirez and I had set up to blow up an artillery shell and moved back to where Frenchie and the blasting machine were.  

He twisted the handle but nothing happened.  We waited 5 minutes, twisted it again and still nothing happened.  So we unhooked the wires from the blasting machine terminals and using short wires tested the blasting machine with galvanometer.  It wasn’t working.

I shorted the blasting wire and Ramirez and I walked back to the unexploded round the unexploded round where I removed the blasting cap and handed it to Ramirez.  Then I picked up the C-3 and we walked back to the pickup.

Frenchie got in the driver’s seat and I slid into the front seat beside him.  As Ramirez slid into the back seat we heard the blasting cap he had put in his back pocket pop like an M-80.  Ramirez let out scream.

We pulled him out of the truck.  His back pocket was gone and his butt was bleeding profusely. There was a hole in the rear seat where he had tried to sit.  Ramirez has not shorted the blasting cap wires when he put it in his pocket after I removed it from the C-3 and handed it to him.

I got the first aid packet out of the pickup and opened the battle dressing.  Frenchie and I pulled Ramirez’s dungarees off and I applied the dressing and tied it around his waste.  We laid him out in the bed of the pickup and while Frenchie drove back to the base I applied pressure to the battle dressing to stem the bleeding.  When we got the clap shack (dispensary) we turned Ramirez over to the chancre mechanic (corpsman) and returned to the base EOD office to make our report.

I heard they helicoptered Ramirez to the Navy base at Yokosuka.

The accident report blamed Ramirez for carrying blasting caps in his pocket, not making sure the leads were shorted, and said that sliding across the plastic seat of the truck created enough static charge to make the blasting cap explode.

And I doubt Ramirez ever returned to EOD.

 Noel 

Noel,

 

Well, that's one way to loose weight but I don't recommend it.

So I guess I might have been partially responsible for some of the dud artillery rounds that you found at Fuji.  When I was the CommO of the 4th Battalion, 12th Marines, the battalion went to Camp Fuji from Okinawa in 1963 to fire our 155 towed Howitzers.  I don't remember many duds be I'm sure that there were some.

After my Okinawa tour, I returned to 29 Palms were I was the CommO of the 4th Battalion, 11th Marines, equipped with the same artillery weapons.  We were involved in an non-firing operation in 1964 called Winter Night, where major elements of the 1st Marine Division were maneuvering all over the 950 sq miles of the reservation.   Our battalion had displaced from one location to another as the operation progressed.  When I arrived at the new location, I could see lots of dud aerial ordnance laying around.  Apparently we had entered one of the more heavily bombed locations on the base.   Everybody was warned to stay away from the duds and we started to setup communications between the battalion FDC and the firing batteries. Sometime in the late afternoon as the cooks were setting up for evening chow, I heard a "POP".  I first thought at an immersion burned used to head a garbage can of hot water had backfired.  Then I heard the cry, "Corpsman!" coming from one the firing batteries.   Apparently one of knuckleheads from a gun crew had found a dud 500 lb bomb nearby and had unscrewed the noise fuse.  He brought it back to the gun pit where he tried to cut it open with an entrenching tool.  It went "BOOM" and severely scrambled the gun crew.  We spend the next several hours getting medical help flown in, notifying higher headquarters and, unfortunately, arranging for notification of next of kin for a couple of the casualties.  I don't know why there was so much dud ordnance laying around, why it hadn't been swept or we choose that particular spot  but the operation for us was terminated the next morning.   Not much fun.

Jim

Speaking from knowledge of the ordnance as it was 60 years ago I can only think of two reasons those bombs didn't explode. 

If the aircraft released their ordnance too low then the fuse doesn't have enough time to arm itself.  That vane on the fuse has to turn a certain amount of revolutions before it arms.  If it doesn't turn enough revolutions the fuse isn't armed and charge won't fire. 

Or if the aircraft dropped them safe.  That's where the arming wires in the nose (and sometimes rear) are released with the bombs.  The safety wires are inserted into a hole in the vane or propeller to prevent it from spinning in flight.  If the bomb is dropped armed the safety wires remain attached to the aircraft and are pulled out as the bomb is released.

Of course there could be other reasons, but those are the ones that comes mind now.

We never attempted to defuse unexploded ordnance.  We just blew them in place.  In EOD school we learn how to disarm ordnance incase they are found somewhere where blowing them in place would cause a lot of damage.  I never had to do that.

I spent almost a year at Palms before I got out.  I hated it when I first got there but I became a desert rat and loved the desert.  That's why I retire in the desert.

I was quite a bit before your time.  I got out in 1955.

Noel

 

 

" "Dear Col. Conroy: We have selected the actor to play you in the coming film. He wants to come to Atlanta to interview you. His name is Truman Capote."

But my father took well to Hollywood and its Byzantine, unspeakable ways. When his movie came out, he began reading Variety on a daily basis. He called the movie a classic the first month of its existence. He claimed that he had a place in the history of film. In February of the following year, he burst into my apartment in Atlanta, as excited as I have ever seen him, and screamed, "Son, you and I were nominated for Academy Awards last night. Your mother didn't get squat".

 

Yes, you were before my time at 29 Palms.  However, time didn't seem to matter there.  I arrived at night.  When I went outside that first morning, I wasn't sure I could breath for I thought I might be on the other side of the moon.  I also thought that 29 Palms might be a suitable place to insert the tube if one need to give the world an enema, but it didn't take long for the high desert to grow on me.  The whole desert bloomed in the spring of 1961 as a result of a heavy snow fall the previous winter.  The scent of the wide flowers covered the whole area.

I had two tours there and one at Barstow so I spent lots of time in the desert.

If I remember correctly, Robert Duvall played Santini.  I need to watch the movie again because I also spent time at Parris Island in Beaufort, SC.  The movie had lots of scenes of the old part of Beaufort which is still very memorable to me and my wife as we enjoyed our time there.

 

Jim