Joining the Marines at 17
Chipman talks about when he first heard about Pearl Harbor and joining the Marines at age 17. He speaks at length about different motivations for young people joining the war before being drafted. He also addresses the importance of sharing his war experiences, even when others who haven't been in battle will never fully comprehend the traumas of war.
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (10:50)

Hardening into Marines
Chipman describes the profound effects of boot camp in shaping self-discipline, teamwork and pride. Chipman's childhood in a physically active and very disciplined household ease the transition to the rigors of boot camp.
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (16:05)

Bonding and growing
After boot camp, Chipman's division was assigned to Camp Pendleton for four weeks of infantry training school. They were then transported to Hawaii and assigned as replacements for the 4th Marine Division.

The following excerpt recounts the last period of training when the young Marines met and bonded with the veteran Marines, fresh from battle in the Marianas. The respect and affection between Marines was immediate. After months of training with battle-hardened veterans, the young Marines became veterans, "emotionally and mentally."
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (7:36)

A deafening, deadly battle
In this excerpt, Clayton Chipman discusses his psychological preparation before battle on Iwo Jima and reflects on the difference between being scared and being afraid. He describes the 4th Marine Division's brutal landing on Iwo Jima — a day filled with relentless, deafening artillery.
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (14:52)

Slow, bloody going on Iwo
As the days and nights pass on Iwo Jima, Clayton Chipman and his fellow Marines measured their progress by yards as they crawled across the island's airfields under fire.
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (13:07)

The million-dollar wound
In this excerpt, Clayton Chipman continues to describe the hours leading up to the ninth day on Iwo Jima, the day of his "million-dollar wound." Marines were decimated as they fought to take the "Meat Grinder, " "Turkey Knob, " the "Amphitheater" and "Hill 382."
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (9:49)

Nightmares, gratefulness and guilt
Clayton Chipman was evacuated from Iwo Jima to an Army hospital in Pearl Harbor. In this excerpt, Chipman notes that he and other fellow Marines suffered recurring battle nightmares. He also recalls his painful emotions of gratefulness and guilt. He asks, "How can you be thankful and feel guilty at the same time?"
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (2:48)

Bonds for a lifetime
After his recovery, Clayton Chipman joined a baseball team in Oahu, a team that was actually a ploy to build an MP Company to be sent back to Saipan. Chipman was stationed at Saipan to flush out any enemy remaining on six islands.

In this excerpt, Chipman describes his psychological stages in the battle of Iwo Jima. Chipman describes the elation of returning home and recounts some of the challenges of returning to civilian life. This excerpt concludes with thoughts on his religious faith and the enduring bonds amongst Marines who have fought together.
read transcript  | listen to RealAudio clip (5:16)

Hardening into Marines
Chipman describes the profound effects of boot camp in shaping self-discipline, teamwork and pride. Chipman's childhood in a physically active and very disciplined household ease the transition to the rigors of boot camp.
audio clip (16:05)

Chipman: When we got to boot camp, and in retrospect thinking back, and all of these things were really lodged in your mind. I mean, maybe as a 30- or 40-year-old they wouldn't have stuck, but as a 17- and 18-year-old they did. And the psychological aspects of boot camp were, they were just diverse, they were all-consuming, and they set in deep and they lasted to this day.

Most people think of boot camp, right away discipline enters their mind. My dad was so strict at home that when I went in the Marine Corps there was very little adjustment to what the DI's [Drill Instructors] were doing. I just accepted it because my dad had instilled that into us. Thank heavens he did, because a lot of fellas got into a lot of trouble because they resisted, you know, different discipline situations. Physically, in boot camp, I'd come out of high school and summer recreation and so forth playing football, basketball, running track and baseball — physically, there wasn't much of a challenge.

Van Ells: For you personally?

Chipman: For me personally. Other fellows had some trouble. As I recall, all of a sudden or maybe slowly, you become very hardened. Some of the things that they challenged us with was, of course, the obstacle course — and that was always a challenge and fun to beat your time and so forth and not have the DI's curse at you.

Before breakfast they'd get us up, and we'd run three miles in the sand, feed us breakfast, and as I said before, I'm a finicky eater, but I never went hungry in the Marine Corps. There was always enough of things to eat. After breakfast, of course, you did calisthenics with the rifles. Those were the easy adjustments. One of the hard adjustments for me was that overcoming the fear of hand grenades, compound C and the infiltration course, where they fire live rounds over your head.

Van Ells: What is compound C? I'm not familiar with it.

Chipman: Compound C is a plastic dynamite. We had to learn how to form it, stick a match head in, light the end of the match and let it explode, and things like that. And I had never held a rifle before I went and I had never fired a firecracker, so you know what kind of an adjustment that was. We managed after a while to overcome some of those apprehensions.

Van Ells: You had to.

Chipman: There was always doubt in your mind whether you could succeed in the things they were giving you. As you succeeded, your confidence built up. It emerged. I found satisfaction in being able to do the things that were requested, and some of the uncertainty left. At this point, to talk about fear of battle or death or anything would be presumptuous because you're so busy with what you're doing, you never even think of that at that particular stage. I can't really tell you when it set in, at a certain day or a certain part of boot camp; it just, all of a sudden that confidence built up.

As far as the educational part was concerned, everything was so new and different and our DI was a Tarawa veteran that was wounded. We had respect for him, you know, immediately. You know, a combat veteran wounded, you know, you just kind of look up to him. The hardest part of boot camp for me was staying awake in the sun. We'd sit down for lessons in the sun, and it was hard to stay awake. The swimming with your shoes and all your clothing on and so forth, there was no problem there.

Van Ells: The basic lasted how long? How many weeks?

Chipman: It was eight weeks of boot camp. Two of those weeks were on the rifle range and, of course, we had to, when they gave us a rifle — first of all after the first day you had to know your serial number — 558657. When old Marines meet each other, the first thing they ask is, What's your serial number? The second thing was your rifle number. And then you had to be able to take your rifle apart, clean it, put it together, and after a week or so you had to do it blindfolded. Those things were all fairly easy. You were always apprehensive that you were going to make a mistake with someone looking down your back.

Van Ells: If you did make a mistake, what were the consequences?

Chipman: Well, cleaning out the head with a toothbrush or walking around the compound with a bucket picking up litter that was forbidden, running around the parade ground with your rifle over your head. Of course, that, along with close-order drill every day for long periods, they developed a — well, I think it was the attitude of response to directions and orders. And I think they were just like Pavlov's dog; you adjusted and you reacted, you know, without thinking. And that's what they were looking for. They didn't want you to think much — at that particular point.

Van Ells: I've got a couple more things about Marine basic training I'm interested in. First of all, you mentioned your father was pretty strict, so the discipline wasn't that much of an adjustment. I remember basic training, and I've spoken with other veterans who have said the same thing, and that is the language. I assume that your father didn't use some of the four-letter expletives and things like that?

Chipman: No. My father never swore.

Van Ells: Was there much of that in your training?

Chipman: Not in the training, but away from the DI's and later on in the service the language was sizzling foul. Of course, coming out of service, going to college and becoming an educator, you had to flip over, you know; you had to do just the opposite. There's another thing that came out of boot camp, and that was if one person made a mistake, everybody was punished for it. Out of that developed a confidence in each other. Nobody was going to make a mistake. The confidence was so great that before I ever even thought about the Marine next to me in battle bolting and running was 40 years later after the battle. I never thought a Marine would run. I saw Marines goof off that would leave the front line and go take a smoke someplace, but I never saw anybody so afraid that they ran.

Van Ells: And you think the training and the teamwork particularly helped you prepare?

Chipman: Oh, yeah. Well, I think it was not only a reliance on everybody doing their own job, but I think that you had pride that you didn't leave your friends down or your buddies down. That was part of it, I'm sure. As much as — and I still hear today comments at reunions and so forth, "Oh, those so-and-so drill instructors," you know; they hate them. I didn't find it that way.

In fact, I indicated this DI we had was a combat veteran from Tarawa, and you could see the progression through, even as a youngster, I could see the progression. I didn't recognize what it was and I didn't recognize it was being done on purpose, but I saw the progression. And from being tough and strict and hard and demanding after, oh, say, when we're two-thirds through or so, that he became human. He would, when the lesson was done, he would sit and shoot the breeze with us about his battle experience at Tarawa. He would tell us about his girlfriends and all kinds of stuff like that. I think it was on purpose. I think that was a sequence in there.

Van Ells: But this was after you'd been through training for awhile?

Chipman: Yeah, we were probably there six weeks or so. We were ingrained with what he wanted us to do. I think pride had an awful lot to do with your achievements because, for instance, on the rifle range you became attached to your instructor. You not only did it for yourself, but you didn't want to let him down. It may seem strange, but on graduation day from boot camp, my greatest fear was I'd make a mistake and embarrass the drill instructor. There's so much that I suppose a guy should sit down for two or three years and just really nit-pick this down, and he could come out with a pretty good psychological study. I never had the time to do that.

Van Ells: It would be very time-consuming.

Chipman: Of course, parade day, or graduation day, just everybody was so enthralled and we did a good job, of course. We, they never call you a Marine until that day, and that's when they first call you a Marine. Otherwise you're a boot or any other names that they can think of.

Van Ells: After you pass the test, so to speak, you have the right to be called a Marine.

Chipman: That's right. You have to earn that right. Some youngsters did disappear. One fellow, who in the first couple of days — from northern Wisconsin, and I won't use his name — they called us out, the first night they didn't leave us sleep. They kept us up all night. Finally, about three in the morning, they took us up in the attic of a barracks and let us sleep for a couple of hours and then they — the first day, they issued all the clothes and gave you all the instructions and so forth. Well, after supper everybody went to bed. You know, they were really tired. Well, at 9:00 the DI came in and he called roll call — called you out, fall out for roll call.

This one kid wouldn't get out, so he took a bucket of, the fire bucket on the tent — you know there's a bucket of water in every tent — and he dumped it on this kid. This kid said: "No more of this for me. I'll get out of here." He lasted a week. He urinated in bed every night, and they sent him home. There's a lot of stories you could tell that you'd rather forget, you know. It gives you some inkling of how people respond, the range of response to what …

Van Ells: But that was fairly unusual.

Chipman: I would say that it probably —

Van Ells: Like in pilot training, for example, you'd have 30 or 40 percent washout rate. That didn't happen that frequently.

Chipman: No. We saw two —

We saw two people that disappeared. And they never told you why or anything. And the scuttlebutt was that — well, this one fellow, we all felt that he was just totally sent home, discharged or whatever. And the other fellow went over the hill; he skipped out. And that became sort of common knowledge. But whether it was accurate knowledge or not, we just don't know. But, of course, once that parade was over on D-Day, everybody rushed to the telephones to call "wire me money to come home." We got a 10-day leave if you wanted it.

Van Ells: And did you?

Chipman: Yes, I did. I found that after boot camp kind of faded in your memory, another thing started to happen, leave and so forth. I started to have many unanswered questions. I wondered how could they in eight weeks build up so much pride that you're a Marine. The other thing was you learn to face whatever it was, whatever you feared, like hand grenades or whatever, and you learned to operate within that fear spectrum. The other question I have is how can they instill a relationship, a deep relationship between buddies? And I still go to see and have friends — and this is 42 years later. I just haven't found the key to any of those things yet.

Of course, the unknown always challenges you and we learned — how did we learn it? We learned to kind of adjust to the unknown, and you had to. The other thing is, there were a lot of civilian priorities, as we had priorities in civilian life. They kind of became less important; they went to the background. There were other things that — and why, why could you do that? And I'm sure many other people had many other unanswered questions.

But as we called home and, you know, they — I can't recall whether they paid us or not; they must have paid us something. But at $21 a month, how much did you get? So we had to call home for plane fare, and I never realized until after the war that my mother borrowed the money to wire me to come home. There was another lesson: as we went on leave it was a revelation that servicemen were respected. I mean, they weren't spit at or cussed at like the Vietnam vets were.

Van Ells: As you're traveling around.

Chipman: As we're traveling or when we got home. I also realized that people forget in one hell of a hurry about a lot of things. When I left home, of course, I think most guys had a girlfriend. Well, she [Chipman's girlfriend] lasted until the first weekend; then she was out with a good friend of mine. We kind of learned that lesson in a hurry. But people were, they were kind, they were helpful and they expressed their appreciation. I think it was a totally different situation than the Vietnam or even the Korean War situation. I think one of the main things that I think I began to learn there was how quickly friendships can bond into lasting and deep friendships — not only in boot camp, but on leave and so forth.