Veteran Voices: Jerry W. Warner, First Sergeant United States Marine Corp.

It's the goods and it's the glory ariz honed stormies. It's the pledge of allegiance on the fourth of July. It's some handwritten let. Us from home. It's some sleepless nights alone. It's his newborn baby he left with his wife, mister real wide and Blue. All right, folks, welcome to air segment of Veteran Voices. First up, you're the guinea pig. But an honor to have you. Jerry Warner, first Sergeant, United States Marine Corps, welcome to the show. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here so far. So for those who don't know, we'll get that out of the way. That you are the father of Trent Warner. Yeah, my whole life. Well we're gonna make sure. That he was to Vietnam when I was born or no, right after. So you're a father of three, Trent, Brad and Jerry Lee, husband to Barbara Warner, and you reside in Vinton, Virginia, where you have lived since nineteen eighty nine or somewhere in there. All right, So let's start off with so people can get to know who you are. You were born and raised, I would say in Holland County, right correct, All right, So being a person that has been going up there now for probably twenty five years, there's not allowed to do in Highland, would you say. No, you well, my day we trapped and went raccoon hunting at night. Yeah. So when did you know? Yes, as a teenager do you start thinking about work, like what are you going to do when you graduate? Things like that? When does military service start to come into your thought process? In nineteen fifty eight, we had the only TV in Mustow. Wow, Dantanna had to go up on Gowbler's knobs three hundred and seventy five yards. I think I remember this well. Every day at one o'clock there was a movie come on and I don't know who the MC was, but I'm sure it was either CBS or NBC because we only got two channels. Wow. But Jack Webb was on there in nineteen fifty seven had a movie called The DII which he was a drill instructor. Oh wow. He was the head of dragnet. I said that that Well, there was like six of us sitting in the living room and all of said I've got to do this. Oh wow. Out of the six or seven sitting in there, all my cousins. I'm the one who went, and they all went in service, but they didn't go on. To the Marines. Oh wow, Well that's a great That brings up another good question. Why the Marines out of out of the four service places. Why the Marines? Well, according to that movie, if you made it through boot camp, you were going to be a success. And I just never forgot that. That's I don't know if you can even find. That movie on the Did you did you have a recruiter? Well, yes, back then, I didn't know when that. He drove from Stanton to Monterey and I met him at the post office and he gave me that asvab or. Yes, I missed one question out of the whole thing. Good Lord, why does. A person rolling a boat moved their hip? He remembers the question. I didn't get it. There was so he don't bumpy his hip on the side of the boat. That's the only thing I missed out all the math. And so I guess they knew you weren't ready for the Navy. You're going the Marines, all right, so you know now you're were you nervous when you first got on the bus, I guess, and got shipped off. Well, yes, we got bordered a train in Richmond, Okay, and they took us down to I think it was Columbia, South Carolina, and they set us in the hot sun all day waiting on a bus to take us over. And I thought, what's this out there? The footprints and this was our first step at becoming a marine. You turned the line up on the yellow footprints and I didn't have my thumbs along my trousers seams, so I got treated pretty rough for a little bit. No one ever did well, they do put your hands on you. Nobody got beat up, right, man. That was the first After a week, it wasn't too bad. But the first week was scary. I mean, you're away from Was this the first time you're away from home? Yes? Like, oh, so you're gone from island. You're by yourself, you don't know anybody. Eighteen years old, nineteen eighteen, eighteen years old. When I went down the street, we just called it a sea bag drag. Everything you get goes in a sea bag and it's got to go a certain way. Well, we had to go like a quarter of a mile to where the barracks was double timing. And if you dragged that sea bag, you were in a lot of trouble tearing up your government properties. That was a long night. You remember your drill instructor's name, Well, you don't ever forget them? Yeah? Do well? Do you? Yeah? J. E. Murphy got killed two years later in Vietnam. Be damn. Now that's a good question I have for you. So admittedly i'm your son. But and a lot of people don't know this about the Vietnam guys that came back. All of my friends when we were in high school, we would talk about this. None of our dads ever talked about Vietnam. They didn't really talk about what they even did. None of us knew what our dads really did when we were in school. You guys just went to work, That's all I know, and you come back. So but in nineteen sixty eight, sixty nine, Vietnam has started. Do you have an idea that you could go to war? Or is that why you signed up? I mean, is that well? I thoughts were I had wandered to set my name into head of the draft, but they said you may not get into Marines. So I went on to volunteer, knowing that you went to boot camp and you were likely to go to Vietnam. Yeah. Wow Wow. So when you're at boot camp, do you have a vision in your head of hey, I want to I want to be a sergeant, or I want to be this later on, or you just mentally focused on I don't want to get killed. Ye. No, I was focused on trying to do the right thing in boot camp. That's all I had on my mind was just get through boot camp. Get through boot camp. What did you think of boot camp? Was it hard? Well? I made a mistake. I didn't get in shaped for I went down there and we started out at a mile and a half on jogging, and you had a physical fitness test. It like to beat me to death and that heat. I thrived there on June seventeenth. Good Lord, that summer. But if I had to do it over again, I'd still go at the same time, because when the humidity and the temperature gets so much, you get black flagged and you don't have to do anything that's right. I'm not allowed to do petar in Oh really Yeah. So caught a way of getting back around at to close the windows on the old Wooden Barracks. You know when I was at the little boot camp that I did for the officers, the same thing when I was there in July, and it was they would black flag us too, as those were felt like good days because you weren't doing all the grind you knew you had to do. So after uh boot camp where you sent to at that. Point, Camp Geiger, North Carolina for six weeks of infantry training, gotcha? So you went into infantry? I mean, was there was there other opportunities or you just pretty much go where they tell you. Yeah, you go worried. They tell you. Everybody everybody from our platoon in boot camp, plus the whole series went to it t R Camp to June Camp Geiger, and we trained with the M fourteen at boot camp, qualified with them. Started out with an M fourteen at Camp Gagger infantry training. All of a sudden to come out and says, stop, you're going to clean these weapons and I want them spotless because you're getting some more here. After a while, I thought, more M fourteen, What are they talking about? It was the sixteen, no kidding, oh wow, And they had been tested somewhere and they were so filthy if our drill instructor would have seen one of them, you would have slept with it every night. Wow? Did it was? There was there a noticeable difference between the two. Oh, my goodness, easier to shoot? No? Oh, really it was too small for me. I was used to laying laying it out there, you know, and getting back from it shooting the peep suits. Man, you didn't even injustice sights on. You had to take your ink pin and turn the Oh you didn't move unless you were going to shoot more than three hundred yards. Flipped the backsite. That's the only adjustment you had. Yeah, I never knew that that you transitioned from them fourteen now vm. I. When I went there, we still carried them fourteen because I still. Think it was the best rifle ever made. That's why I had to have a three h eight per. Oh yeah, deer rifle. Oh that's cool. I didn't know that either. Man, I'm learning all kinds of stuff. That's really cool. All right. So after that, where do you head off to? I went to Cherry Point and thought I was going to get a aviation something. I went up to Highland County, didn't got my wife and him and we went to government quarters. Thirty days later, they said you're a Westpac orderser in. I said, west Pack, what's that? He said, You're going to Vietnam? Oh man, oh wow. So I had to call my dad to come and get Drinton. My Holy cow. We didn't have a car and I only got thirty two dollars pay day every two weeks because we were living in government quarters. And that's what was the distance back then to go from Cherry Point, which is near have like in the eastern shore of North Carolina. How long would it take you to go from that back up to Highland County if you have. I always HITCHI liked it about all night. Can you believe that? Yeah? He went back and forth for it was wear your uniform. Everybody picked you up. Oh yeah, I don't imagine anyone could go there now in three days? Hitch like, yeah, no, no one would pick you up. And they had a place called Swoop Circle of Camps at June and the MP's is stand out there, all right, we've got one going to Stanton, Virginia. Who wants to go to Stanton, Virginia. It'd be eight or ten of. So what rank were you when you left to go to Vietnam. Private first class too, Okay, he too? So all right, what's so? What's it like? You've got these orders? Are you and I? I've never been in the military, so I don't know. Or is this something where the group your platoon are going together, or is this where like you get this and you're like excited or upset, or you're all looking at each other and I got papers. You didn't you know? Is that? No, we actually were sitting on pins and needles flying from Okinawa or to Vietnam. That was I didn't know it was a plane. I never flew till oh wow, on there and that man knowing you're going to Vietnam, and. We get so scared. They said, there's trouble on the runway. We're going to have to do a circle. Captain of the plane said that. I thought, man, they've already shot one of them down. They had wrecked one of them trucks that had the ladders on it. They had flipped it over. So this brings me back. So when you leave, where do you are you from? Do you leave from Cherry Point or do you leave from another? Yes, we did, because what happened was we had to go through a different what to cost staging. They used to send everybody to Californian flying out of there. But they did that first cut of troops in uh I think it was during Nixon time seventy one or something. It took too many out. People were getting over run over there, so they had to hurry up and send three hundred marines. Back over there. Wow. So I didn't go to the Californian staging. I did mine at Cherry Point. Okay. So we flew out of Cherry Point too, straight to Okinawa. Uh where did I don't remember where we stopped? No? No, no, no, it was we stopped in La lax and God okay, stopped in Anchorage, Alaska, and hit it on it to okanall camp. Eg and you get there, are you with people you know? Yeah? Okay, so you at least feel a little comfortable. You're at least around. Any of them after that, except when we come back from Vietnam. I met one of them at camp. Are you. What was your did you? Did you pick up a nickname by the chance while you were in boot camp or along the way at Vietnam? I know, j W j W. That's what everybody has always called me. The serge didn't come about to start driving truck. Yeah, that's I didn't know that too, because because if one of my troops had. Called me that. All right, so you've you've when they bring you to Vietnam. I'm assuming you're landing at a base in Vietnam. And and then your your platoon you said you they went different places, so you're they just stick you with a different group of people. Said we were going to Red Beach. I thought we're going to make a landing or what gave us our war gear and everything. Red Beach was by Hivan Pass and that was our area to control. And I still believed this day they only wanted us up there because there was an Exxon and a shell station refinery. Protecting oil. I got you. So did you see much combat during this? We got shot at a lot, but I didn't get a return much fire. I'll put it, well, we returned fire, my god. We shoot thousands of rounds, but you don't know what we hit. Right, couldn't go down there because the area was all landmined and everything. So what's the what's the quarters like that you're sleeping in? I mean is it a barracks type style or or you sleeping out of the jungle. I mean sometimes night patrol that we sleep outside. Let the mosquitoes your covers off of us. Then the barracks when we was back to the Red Beach area was plywood with sandbags all around. It exposed to before's rafters all that, but it did have a tin roof, which typhoon comebine took ours off. But good lord, and. They had a boardwalk. We used to count how many rats were running down in Fort we were going. To the chowel. Did you see Vietnamese people? Oh? My, good friendlies, I guess so they're everywhere I was. I was a guard at a chew Hoy village up in the tower, you know, I saw all kinds of up fair and that's where we used to get sniped at. Oh my god, they surrendered chew Hoy and didn't they go find them a gun in chew Hoy village? Wow? So when you were there, obviously Mims back in Highland County, is is Brad born? When when? Did? Like? I really don't know this answer. So she's pregnant with Brad right, we knew that for he left Yeah, so she has him before you come back, that's right. Yeah, I just I thought I just make sure. He knew before he left. Brad. It's okay, Brad, you are really a warner. There are times he could tell you some stories. We doubted it. Oh me, he what to be desired a few times. So then you transition back and you come back from that. And I would like to have your opinion on that, because some of the story for us growing up was Vietnam veterans were not treated well coming back. Could you still hitchhiked in? Could you be picked up for a while? I mean, was her animosity? Were you surprised when you came back? I about a sixty two Chivalry supersport. I could travel back and forth. I could afford gas, yeah, and get some government quarters to move my family down there. Yeah. Yeah. We had an awful time. They told us to not wear a uniform unless you want to. Well, my clothes I had dropped thirty pounds. I didn't even have a belt tight enough, so I had to wear my uniform. But they took us around back. We couldn't go in the main entrance. There was three hundred people out there with signs talking about baby killers and all that. We didn't get a very good welcome home. And where was that landing? Where did you come back? Was lax at LX. We flew into a Norton Air Force Base and twenty minutes they had us going home. Do you encounter other types of military people while you're while you're there, like do you see air force or army? Yeah? Okay. At we always went down to Danang Air Force Base because they could buy a whiskey. If you weren't a knee six or above, you could only buy a beer and it had to be at the club. You couldn't have it in the barracks or nothing. So we'd go down there and take an old dirty bay in it or an old hoach you men hat or something and say I'll give you this. You'd buy me a bottle of bourbon. Well, that brings up a question back in Vietnam. Are you do you have days off or you just on duty? Okay? So on the day's offering. Your days off, you clean up your well, okay and all that. But yeah, we would about every three weeks we would get Saturday and a half a day's Sunday off. We could go to Freedom Hill. I was supposed to get down to see Bob Hope, but we didn't make it that day. Okay, yeah, because I mean I've often wondered that. I mean, what, yeah, we hear these tours, right, Yeah? Yeah. I was over there for eighteen months straight. It's like, God, what did you do combat for eighteen You. Know, you're always busy, but there's times I like being on patrol. There's times you go two days you don't do nothing to soak up sunshine and eat child and Marine Corps always tried to get us some one hawk meal. Today. Wasn't that bad? So when you came back, where were your I guess where? Where did you spend most of your time? Camp Lagun, Camp La Gun? And that's when you started moving up you're at even when you came back, or did you get promoted while you were there or when you come back. When I came back, I picked up corporal was waiting on me. I didn't even realize that I picked up corporal. It was already a warrant there for me. And I got to thinking Trent and Bradley boats had pneumonia. Oh wow, while I was there, it was well, I got to thinking if I had been a civilian, i'd be bankrupt right now. Yeah. Instead, I think it was three dollars and fifty cents worth of food day eight. But I had that much, so. I decided I was going to make. A career out of it. You did so that we I mean, what what made you? Just figured? You know what, I'm better off in here than I am out there. That's right, because I've never done anything. I cut a little pulpwood before I went in service. That was very fun. No, I had. I had some good tours. I spent four years there as a sergeant. Transferred, I figured I stood a chance of none to get a go on iron Eye train and reservists. So I knew there was one in Lynchburg for Marines, and I knew there was one in Roanoak. The gang Roanoak married a Navy gale and he wanted transferred back to Norfolk, and he said, man, I got to find somebody. Well, here's one that's already ready to go. So we came to roing Ok. In nineteen seventy four, WOW picked up E sixth and seventy seven got orders for the second Marine aircraft wing back at cherry point, I said, Man, I always wanted a wing tour. Didn't happen. I got the wing tour, but my orders had been modified when I got there, and I'm always getting something different. They had relieved an administrator at Force Logistics Command, and that's a cherry point. So I went to Force Troops and that was a boy. I'm telling you, what's the fact I worked day and night for three of the longest years. At that place. That was a hard duty station. So that what kind of work is that Force logistics, what kind of work. Force logistics for the wing is all those everything it doesn't deal with an aircraft that they use logistically is done by the Marines. There rt six thousand and four lifts a piece of junks. There was probably twenty of them out in at the barracks there all the time. They were broke this. Way and broke that way. So it's a lot of things that people. People always see the glory of the shooting, the front lines, the aircraft and all that, but there are so many more people that are all around that one and the logistics of that is a nightmare. I say, our motor transport section there, there's probably thirty men there working just in motor transport. Yeah. Yeah, And then they came out with the greatest truck I've ever seen in my life, a Dodge m A eighty. That was the sorriest piece of stuff that the government ever purchased. Wow. It didn't have enough power to pull the AMMO off of the you know, you have to stack the AMMO blocks underneath it so the tires don't get flat, you know, flattened out from sitting, cause got tons of AMMO. Yeah, flats. We had to go back and get the old Wheelies jeeps. To pull them off. Wow. Good lord. There was just always something like that. But then they got rid of that. He made eighty and they come out with a Chevrolet cup V with a diesel engine. Another mistake. That's what Brian drives with a diesel engine twenty five. Yeah, these were remax. They had to they never set up the rear ends right. They set them up for the highway, and when we were in the Mediterranean, they didn't have enough power to leave it in low range to get us through the six inches of sand. Oh now, but then the humvee come out. Oh boy, General Motors, that was a good vehicle. Yeah, which you couldn't see out right mirror. Nothing's changed. You weren't allowed to get out to put it in reverse to your a driver, which is your passenger in the front. He has to go back to your side of the mirror so he can guide you back because you can't see it right there there. But boy, that thing had an engine in it. What rank are you when you're at that? Are you sergeant? At that point? That was first? Okay, I picked up gunnery sergeant in Okinawa in nineteen eighty. And that that's something else to discuss. You too. You've also spent tours overseas, sometimes on a ship, right, Sometimes you go on a ship with the Navy and then you go around I guess the Mediterranean and you remember that and that was the USS Nasshaull Is that the one you want? And then you went with us out there has been decommissioned and scrapped. Kiddn't believe it. Peyton is on the same kind of one of the new lpds, a landing platform. Yeah, and so you I mean, that's something that I think most people don't know is you're doing tours, but they're not necessarily combat tours. At this point, Well you did the I'm back toward the Vietnam. Well, when I picked up first Sarden, I went to the Senior Academy at Quantico and I said, man, I'm really worried about this going back to the Second Marine Division. I haven't been back there ten years, fifteen years. They said, I don't worry. You just get a line company. You won't have to worry about being in an ancient headquarters and service company, and you definitely will not get weapons company. That's the senior first sardant. I checked in the regimental headquarters and he said, thank goodness you're here. We just relieved the first Sarden up in weapons company for a bible thumping somebody. And there I went to weapons company and I asked ops chief, I said, where are the old mules shooting one oh sixes? He said, how damn long have you been gone? You got rid of them a long time ago. They had weapons. I had no idea, but boy, they were some nice ones squad automatic weapons. So you liked that part. Okay, how long did you do that? Two years to eighty nine? Oh wow? Retire? So that that was right at the end. Yeah, But before you got to that part you did serving you went to Okinawa. You went overseas two different stints, right then you. Notice one just a long stint. Okay Okinawa. Now I went through Okanalla a couple of times. Okay, yeah, because I think I was in the third grade when you were went to Okinawa, third or fourth grade? What's that like? Because I mean the Marines have been going to Okinawa now. For Yeah, so you're in Japan for the years. Well, when we come back from Vietnam, it was US controlled and there was more non copper money, just silver quarters and dimes and fifty cent pieces. In nineteen eighty it was given back to the Japanese ah man. When you could go over with a five dollar bill, you pick up two hundred yen. This time she was on this dollar for dollars. M and they had cut down all the training we used to do fire and a lot of restriction. But did Bradcotte o Kanhol No, he did not. I think he did a tour in Hawaii. I think he went when he was doing one of his Norway summer summer things. He went to Norway. Yes, yeah, I did nice Northern I don't know why they said it was a wedding, but yeah, that was I was looking for ring deer and he said, oh, they move him out of here, this kind of weather. But you're still there. It was all right for us to be there. And when we landed we hit the beach and uh is this at Norway? Yeah? Colonel Bathhurst who had been every rank from private and he was a full bird colonel selectee. When we got there, he said, well, I'm gonna do something that they're not going to expect. I'm going in to. Whar Hitler and them caught them down in that valley, but to all of them, so we're going the same way. Do you know they were down there again, I mean just not shooting real AMMO dissimilators. We wiped out every one of those scorpion tanks that they had on. Never learn. Then you also spent some time Morocco too, right, didn't you do some trailing there? Oh? Wow? Morocco? Israel? Yeah, I remember you went to this. Oh wow, what was your Israel trip like? Didn't you go on some personal tours or yeah? Yeah, I went there. A whole bunch of my men got baptized there. Okay, they treated does like gold there yeah, man, and you never know that there's problems there. But you have to learn how to live like they do. If you go to let's see, there's nothing over. But if you go to Kroger's and you're gonna walk next door to tractor Supply, a door will fly open and they'll see what you got in that bag. You don't take anything from store to store. That's the way they lived their life over there, makes sense. So you h you wrap up everything in nineteen eighty nine, right, you retired in Roanoke, Virginia. Uh was that scary? Because yes, it's been enough. You've been in a regiment, you know, for a long time, and then all of a sudden, I. Didn't know what I was going to do, right, but I knew if we go to Ronoke, my wife could probably get back with Civil Service again. And we come up behind a Virginia Carolina tractor trailer. It said, we are hiring and we train our own drivers. And I said, that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, you drive a truck for many years and you became serge. That's that's that's when I became. That was a CB handle. Do you a lot of veterans join these different organizations. Are you a member of. I'm a life member of the let's see American Legion in VFW and Disabled American Veterans. Do you get a chance to get around the old time I call them old timers, I mean there. Yeah, I had the pleasure of pushing a World War Two I don't think he knew I was there yesterday when I went to the VA, I said it would be an honor if I could push you to a second floor. He said, I'm ready, and he said I bet. He said your size. I bet you was one hill of a sergeant. I said how long did you spend in there? He said forty to forty five? And I said, well he had a marine hat on. I said, simperfive, buddy. That's all. Now, tell if you could tell people that don't know this. One of the stories I remember you telling me, I was probably in high school or early college life, was when you were the first sergeant and you were a command of so many enlisted troops underneath you. Right, the hardest thing that you had to deal with was not fights and battles and stuff like that. The number one thing you had to deal with was troops bouncing checks in Man, they thought if they had a check, they had money. Marines go out drinking as long as they got checks, and they're going to write them. So when we were out on the ship in Israel, the word came down, all first sergeants report to Colonel Bathhurst's quarters except for Sarden Warner. I thought, man, he must be going to relieve me or something. Well, what I did was, if a man wrote a bad check, the sergeant in charge of that squad, his rear end was mine because he wasn't taking charge of. The check books. Sure, because everybody's direct deposit and service now you don't get checks. And I didn't have any bad checks. Some of them guys had stacks in their company half in job. Wow, And that's that's it's a bad look for the Marine Corps because people a writing bad checks in the town's you know, Campus Junie where it is. You got Jacksonville right outside, So you could have troops writing bad checks and it just gives a bad name for the Marine Corps. Yep. So those are just little things you don't think about that the guys have to deal with. Oh and everybody's married now and has an automobile. Yeah, more nightmares for a first sergeant. Why would that be? What's because they get driving? Well, drunk driving is worse than a court marshall for a staff six and above, that's the end of his career. It's a drunk driving, especially on base. Yeah. And uh, wives we leave out on a ship to go somewhere or something to messy just start coming in sol and so wasn't left without leaving any money, this one and that one, and boy, it just goes on and on. Wow, your mother was in charge of the wives. I remember that notization there man, she it was a new non stop problemsself there. Yeah, because that's another thing you don't think about. All the guys are in there doing the tour on the ship and the wives are back home with their kids. So they had support groups for each other. My mom was active in that too. Yes, she was like vice prisoners or something of it. So how did I'm just curious, This just popped in my head. When did you find out your little brother joined the Marine Corps? Uh? About nineteen let me think probably about nineteen seventy seven, seventy eight. Did you have anything to do with that or you were just like, oh wow, he just wanted to be like me. I figured I figured that just like Bradley. I mean, that is what happens a lot. I mean, well, yeah, I would say so. When I was about eighty five, before I picked up for Serten, I did enough to stay on recruiting duty very long. And I looked at the regulations and if you owned a home, they had to put you in that area. So I still owned a no home Francis Drive, So I used that sow come back to Rontover and that was the hardest tour duty I ever had. Which one recruiting Oh yeah, that's when I was in high school, right, you know I had sent the loved grade Patrick Henry Ye and you recruit I remember the stress you were under. Oh you got to make numbers, all right? Yeah? So I had QUOTEA plus, I had a guy I had to retrain every other morning. I remember out on there was so much math involved, and I don't think he knew what two plus two was. And the reason you make up arc on everything is at the end of the month you can find out, hey I got to start making more phone calls. Hey I got to do more you know this and that. But I picked up for Sarden. I was in Newcastle, Virginia given a band award. John Phillips susan award to a little girl and some little girl. I'll come out of the office. There's a guy named Master sardin. Mkin says you've got to speak to him right now. I said, well, you just have to take a damn number. So I went to uh, gave the award out and everything. She was so tickled over that, and I went back down there and said, I need to use your phone. Said yes, he's called here twice. I said, well, maybe I've done something to go relieve me. He said, well, you're off recruiting duty. I said, what did I do? He said, you picked up first sarden. I said, at that time, if you made master sergeant, you became a career recruiter. But if you picked up first ardant, which is the same pay grade, you couldn't stay on recruiting duty because they didn't want you to get any trouble up the recruiting and they were short on first ardens. All Lord Marne Corps. Oh wow. The only thing they're ever over on the staff is serdant Majors. You don't need but one per yeah, battalion. What's what's after that? I mean for an enlisting anything or is that about as high as you can get? Well? First and he ate a certain major and master gunry sardeen or E nine. That's the top of it, and that's it. Yeah. Did you get along with officers? I always did until I went back to the infantry, and I never Some of them lieutenants needed wise up a little bit. They were two friendly with the troops for one thing. And Colonel Bathurst took over when you were in the rear. Officers stayed away. The first sergeant promoted. Everybody read their warrants all for him. He let the enlisted people run it. Now, that was better. But the second lieutenant, you know, they're right out of oc. Yes, you jumping their ass and they will say yes for st Yes, first stant. Did anything change while you were in there the twenty years? Like you know that you recall is it was it getting softer or the rules getting so or was it the same as when you got in. I mean it was pretty much the same discipline and all that is. But yeah, I never saw a whole lot of change about it. After I left boot camp. It was run the same. Do you think it's the same today? Do you think the Marine Corps looks the same today as when you retire? They've kept it the same. That's good. Yeah, tell you. We still honor everything they did before and pride in their uniforms. Yeah. All right, we're wrapping up our segment with Jerry Warner, first sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. Thank you for coming on the show today. But before you leave, we've got the toughest question you'll ever answer. Okay, past or present, they can be dead or alive. If you had twenty four hours that you could spend with a person, who is that person and where would you go and hang out with them? Well, that's a good question. I had an awful lot of people I really admired in there. Probably Colonel Bathhurst, my last. Colonel I had. He seems like a real cool When he picked up Colonel they send him to somewhere around Chesapeake training there's poke people to stop the drugs and stuff. He was training all them and where he is now? Wow, Yeah, he was man. That guy had ever decoration. He had six inches of ribbons. I'll be there. Well, thank you again. Yeah, it was a pleasure,