Reminiscences of Reckless,
by a Marine who cared for her.
My first mistake was to stick my hand up when the first Sgt. asked if anyone knew anything about horses. I think this was in 1959 and if I remember she retired in November 1960 and went to live her life on a farm. She had two colts, Dauntless & Fearless.
Well, I was assigned the duties of taking care of feeding, exercising and in general looking after her needs, including taking care of cleaning the stall etc. This was done before and after my regular work day and lasted about a year until she retired from the Corps. A short time later I found myself in the far east with the 9th Marines.
Because she was a war horse from Korea, and carried ammo across no mans land to the troops on the front line, when she returned to the States there were written orders that nothing would ever be placed on her back other than her blankets, I remember asking how I was to exercise her if I could not get on her; that's when I learned that I was to run along side until she got tired and wanted to go back to the stall. Lucky for me she knew the word oats and I could usually get her to cut her runs short.
I remember that when she retired as a S/Sgt, I was not permitted to lead her in the parade because she out-ranked me and I could not give her orders, so they found a ranking NCO for that duty.
There were times that some of the Marines after a night on the town would turn her out to run free, or a number of times take her into a barrack and tie her up to someone's bunk or the First Sgt's door knob. As you may expect I got little sleep those nights.
On one occasion while she was out running free after the troops turned her out she found her way to the flower garden of the wife of the base commander. I'm sure there were a lot of snickers about that, but let me tell you I was one PFC sweating bullets getting her out of there with the General standing in front of his house. I remember he was saying something ~ I don't think it was good. I do remember throwing him a salute as we took off at a trot up the trail.
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.
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