John Plonski lived his life as many in his generation did, in service.  He would put his head down and get the job done.  But there is one thing that John can list under job experience in a way that not many others can.  A job that was handed to him, one he had no choice but to accept.  In a phone interview on Sept. 14^th, John laid out the story of his life following the day he received a letter that would change everything.

            John and his wife Catherine were married on a Saturday in February 1951.  The following day, Mr. Plonski’s brother-in-law handed him a letter that read, “Your friends and neighbors have volunteered you.” It was his draft notice.  The letter had come the day before in the mail, but his brother-in-law decided to hold onto it and let John and Cathy enjoy their special day. Although it couldn’t be avoided forever, so, the day after making a promise to his wife, John had to prepare to make a promise to his country.  However, as luck would have it, they were not taking married men at the time, so he got a year with his wife.  But then the time came and before he knew it John was on a train in Port Jefferson, New York to set off on his new journey.

            On Whitehall street in New York City, Plonski and others he knew from his town received their last physicals to, as he put it, “make sure we were good material for the armed services.”  The men received their orders and John noticed his, but they were different from all the others.  “There was only one order that said USMC on it in about half inch block letters.  I said to the sergeant that was sitting behind the desk, ‘Sarge, what does this mean?’ and he says, ‘Son, you’re a marine.” John was the only one out of his group that went into the Marine Corps.  

        John mentioned quietly that the Korean War was the only time the marines drafted; this caught my attention. Upon further investigation, I came upon a book by Gordon L. Rottman, who, according to his bio listed by Osprey Publishing’s website, served in the “5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam in 1969–70 and subsequently in airborne infantry, long-range patrol and intelligence assignments until retiring after 26 years.” Rottman wrote in his book, Korean War Order of Battle, “The Marine Corps was an all-volunteer force requiring three years of service, but conscripts began to be accepted in 1951.” Many people don’t know this fact, as it is very uncommon for the Marines to conscript or draft recruits. It was just John Plonski’s luck that one of the few times they did draft, was the year he got married and had his first child.

John’s orders brought him down to the infamous Parris Island marine boot camp in South Carolina.  John explained that he was nervous about going down there as he had read an article in Life Magazine about how tough the drill sergeants were.  I was able to find the magazine, published in 1951 that included an article quoted again in a 1972 issue with a piece titled, 21 Years Ago in Life. The article revisited a picture taken by Mark Kauffman for a photo essay about S/Sgt. William Trope at Parris Island.The 1972 article stated, “with merciless discipline and withering scorn, Trope transformed raw recruits into tough marines in eight weeks.” The picture accompanying the story is unsettling as Trope is shown putting himself in a recruit’s face, while the young marine takes the verbal beating. This was not as bad as 1956 when a drill sergeant marched his platoon into a tidal marsh causing six of them to drown. This event was widely reported, including in the New York Times and came to be known as the “Ribbon Creek Incident.” The 1972 Life Magazine article touched on this, stating that following this incident, the drill sergeants had to pull back on their harsh training tactics.

            The infamy of Parris Island has been documented on many occasions. Christopher M. Davis and Douglas H. Derring Jr., both USMC write, “While there is something to be said for the crisply aligned parade formations, it is the reputation of Marines on the battlefield, the result of lessons forged at the rifle range… which has made Parris Island Iconic.” The image of Parris Island is as rough, tough, and tumble as John Plonski once knew it in 1952. Their primary goal, at all costs, was to create good marines.

            John didn’t have much to say about his time spent at Parris Island. Being eighty-six, he admits that his memory eludes him from time to time. In talking with John’s daughter, Barbara Plonski, it was revealed that during his time in South Carolina, John hitchhiked all the way back up to Long Island to see his first child, John Jr. born. The timing of his service continued to interfere with his monumental life moments very closely.

            The Korean War is one that many Americans fail to remember or talk about, commonly referred to as the “Forgotten War.” Allan R. Millett wrote in his Introduction to the Korean War published in The Journal of Military History, “For American historians, the war of 1950-53 could be either forgotten or misunderstood. Even within the context of World War II and the Cold War era, the Korean War was usually just ignored.” With an estimated three million-plus deaths of all nationalities, the Korean War still ranks behind only the two World Wars as the costliest war of the twentieth century in terms of human lives lost. It is very intriguing that this war is one that many seem to forget, considering the casualties it caused for soldiers of many origins.

Ski, as John’s comrades nicknamed him, described his time as a marine to be “nothing too exciting.” He wasn’t deployed to Korea, avoiding much of the danger. He ended up working as a mechanic on the planes at Cherry Point North Carolina Air Base. John was placed in the Air Wing of the Marines due to his time spent working at the local airfield on Long Island. When recalling the moment he read his job orders, John explained, “I told the sergeant, ‘Look, I don’t know anything about planes.’ and he said to me, ‘You know what they look like, that’s good enough.’”  John worked with the electrical and hydraulics on the planes. “It was like a job,” he said.  His sergeants would send him out into the field to work on the planes because he could do two jobs, that way they only needed one guy; this made him valuable.

John’s time on Cherry Point Air Base wasn’t always mundane.  He recalled one night when he was down at the line where they kept the planes.  “There was a pilot and a radar observer flying in a storm. They were flying upside down, but they didn’t know it. And they went to pull up and they went right into a swamp.” He recalled another time when he was testing the landing gear on a plane and made an important discovery. “We would check out the planes every so often and we were testing everything.  We had it up on jacks and when he retracted the landing gear, the wheel was vibrating.” After getting his sergeant in charge to check out the wheel, John and his colleagues realized that the metal plates in the wheel’s brake had fused together due to poor construction. “The sergeant told me, ‘Look, Ski, you did a good thing. You saved the pilot’s life. Because one more landing with that break and that plane would crash.’” John told this story in such a casual manner; it was hard to believe I had just heard a story about a man saving a marine’s life. For John, it was just another day on the job.

            Plonski had some lighter stories as well, for example he went to Puerto Rico and even Havana, Cuba while Fidel Castro was up in the hills—which John admits was one of his most memorable moments—as well as a more nerve wracking one. They went out with the fleet doing their maneuvers and as a show of force went to Havana for a few days. “They let us off the ship, but they told us ‘Don’t go by yourself! Stay in a group.’ You could see in the cement buildings the bullet holes.” When John left the Marine Corps he got $300 for having gone “overseas” to Cuba.  He chuckles about this as he mostly considered it an easy time aside from the prevalence of bullet holes.  

            When asked what the hardest part of serving was, John said it was being away from his wife, Catherine. John’s decision to leave the Marines after his time was up wasn’t a very hard one. He had a baby and lovely wife at home to go take care of and he “just wanted to get out.” His sergeant, Sgt. Stoup, approached him about staying on for another six months, telling him that he could get a lot of medals for reenlisting. John replied, “Sir, with all due respect, I could also get my ass shot off.” John was the only one in his squadron to pass the Sergeant’s Exam, but even with the promise of medals he knew it was time to go. Barbara Plonski said he would always tell his family he was meant to be a civilian. So, when his job was done, John went back to Long Island with Cathy and they had two more kids, Barbara and then Charlie. Those kids later had their own, all of whom can recite every one of John’s stories by heart.