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date. The rest of the Seventh Marines’ Regimental Landing Team’ ( RLT) was going through the loading process in Long Beach, Cal.
For most of the Marines this was their first trip at sea. Life aboard a troop ship is not luxurious. Space is at a premium as over a thousand Marines are billeted below decks for the journey across the Pacific—much like their predecessors from WWII. The ships used in the RLT ( Regimental Landing Team )—USS Picaway, USS Alamos, USS Okanogan , USS Alamo, USS Iwo Jima, USS Tallega and the USS Point Defiance were all of WWII vintage—so not only were we making the same journey —we were making it under the same conditions as our WWII brothers. Our ships would be exchanged along the way as we stopped in Okinawa to regroup, board different ships and head for Viet Nam. The troops’ quarters were cramped and, although, the veterans in each Company had briefed the platoons re. the conditions before loading—there was still a little shock at seeing the actual quarters they would be living in for the next couple of weeks. We took our platoons below decks to the troops quarters and introduced them to the squad bay—in the squad bay were their bunks or berths or hammocks, depending on what you wanted to call them and were stacked six high, row after row. A Marine who drew the top berth had to crawl over five other berths to get to his ‘rack’—the Marine and all of his gear had to fit on that rack. The ship had several of these squad bays—all pretty much the same with toilet facilities and showers to support the berthing facilities—the berths were adjoining aisle ways so that the troops could move back and forth albeit tight passage.
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