| P-MAN XII Progress
Report #12 - Departures; arrivals; Semper Fi. Lessons Learned:
Today was a great day. Today, Captain Warren Bruce, USMC became Major Warren Bruce, USMC. Warren wanted to be promoted on Peleliu and The BentProp Project did its part to make it happen. And then some. But I think I need to take you back a few months to tell the whole story. When Warren said he wanted to be promoted, he just needed someone of equivalent rank or greater to do the honors (That would be me since I am a retired Lieutenant Commander.). Without doing a thing, we had all the pieces in place. However, I thought it would be better to have an active duty Marine do the honors. Since I know a few folks still on active duty, I scoured the world looking for a senior Marine who could officiate. I did find an old friend, but he was not able to get away from the call of duty. In a nutshell, the duty would fall on my shoulders. And Derek Abbey, Warren’s best friend and fellow Marine, said it would be better to have us do it than a Marine who was a stranger. Aside from being tourists on Peleliu, we did not have a reason to go there other than to promote Warren. So preparations were made. We loaded the boat with all of BentProp, except for one person, and headed to Peleliu. We had one hitchhiker on board, Tangie Hesus, Peleliu’s resident historical expert, needed a ride from Koror to Peleliu. He made arrangements for a bus to pick us up and take us to the ceremony site. (I hadn’t seen Tangie in a year and the first words out of his mouth were “You’ve gained too much weight.” Now I’m seriously dieting. But it was last night that Tangie said this. Hmmmm, where is he going with this story. Everyone but one BentPropper on the boat. Saw Tangie the night before. And how did Tangie know we could take him to Peleliu?) Tangie drove us to the Governor’s Office to meet up with the CAT guys. An inspection team from Hawaii was in town so they could not play as they were on a tight time schedule. Tangie also wanted us to meet the new Governor so we drove to where he was. The Governor expressed great pleasure and satisfaction that Warren wanted to be promoted on Peleliu.
Then the Governor said he wanted to join us so we all headed to Orange Beach. Orange Beach is one of the prettiest locations on the planet, and the scene of a fierce battle during World War Two. As I said in my intro to the assembled guests, “If you can’t be at The Halls of Montezuma, or on the shores of Tripoli, there is no more fitting place than this for a Marine to be promoted.”
Warren gave us a few words from the heart about Peleliu, The Marines and BentProp. And off we went to tour Peleliu. Steve Ballinger of Cleared Ground Demining gave us a tour of their operations. He took us to places we’d never been before, but only places after he did his clearing process.
We had lunch at Dolphin Bay Resort, took in a few more tourist sites and then boarded the boat a tad early in order to get a swim call en route back to Koror. We had to get back as Rick and Nicole were going to be the first to leave our ranks this year. Joe stopped part way back in a protected area of a Rock Island. Nice coral and fish to look at for a short swim call. Then back to Koror. A quick pack out and we were driving to the airport. A few days ago, Rick could not locate his passports so he did not leave. His passports surfaced and he got on the first outbound flight he could. In between was the tsunami scare. When we got to the airport, there was no listing for Rick and Nicole, no seat assignments nor any hint that they might actually leave.
A few minutes in the back room with the manager and a computer and all was worked out. As I write this, we already know that Rick made it back in record time and is home in Seattle. Back to town and the Wetting Down for Warren. A Navy and Marine tradition is for the newly promoted to spend their hard earned promotion money on their friends. So, it was out to Kraemer's and the All You Can Eat Spaghetti Night. Mike decided to challenge the house. Before I had taken my second bite of pasta, Mike was on to his second plate.
But it was not to be. Whether he peaked too early, expended too much gusto, or just bit off more than he could chew, Mike could not best Mark Swank’s record, or earn a free meal from the house. We suspect the house was stacking the deck as the second plate had lots more meat sauce on it than the first plate. But no matter. Then Jack (our Marine Sonic adult supervision) said he wanted to go to the airport early for his 0125 departure. If you leave on Continental Airlines, you leave either at 0125, or 0235 in the morning. Why anyone would want to go to the airport early is beyond comprehension. Unless you are part of a conspiracy. What I’ve left out of the story is Major Derek Abbey, USMC, a BentProp alumnus and Warren’s best friend, was supposed to officiate Warren’s promotion ceremony. We had been working on this surprise for a couple of months. There were a lot of moving parts that had to fall into place, but it looked like it was going to happen: a hotel room in another hotel, a helicopter ride to Peleliu, etc, etc. Until his airline flight out of LAX got delayed. The connecting flight in Honolulu held for him but the Guam flight to Palau left without him. We waited for him at the Palau airport last night until the immigration officers went home. That’s where we ran into Tangie. Tangie also can keep a secret. We decided too many people were involved here to delay the ceremony another day, So we would just surprise Warren with Derek whenever we could. We let Warren go to bed and then after we brought Derek to the hotel, woke him up with this non-sequitur: “Warren, wake up. We have a problem. We have to go to Bem Ermii for a milkshake.”
There are two Bem Ermiis here and we had to go to both to find enough ice cream for three milkshakes.
Now I’m only a day behind on my storytelling. I’ll get to our water day when I get back from my land day, today. - Flip |
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