Friday, August 28, 2009
Ninety years of life include wartime Marine service
Edwin Paderick
Priscilla Richardson is columnist The Botetourt View. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.
Priscilla Richardson
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Troutville's Edwin Paderick enlisted in the Marines in 1937. That's way before most of us were born. Seventeen at the time, he had to have his parents' permission. His parents grew tobacco in eastern North Carolina, where "everybody was poor but they didn't know it," he said. "When everybody's in the same situation you're in, it doesn't bother you."
Why enlist in the Marines? "I don't know. I wanted to get off of the farm. A whole lot of work and no money." However, he had to wait for an opening. "Back then they weren't chasing you. There were only fifteen thousand Marines total around the world when I went in. So many went into the service because of the Depression."
So this teenager made all of $21 a month after he went to Savannah, Ga., to enlist. He and about 15 others then got into a bus there and rode to Parris Island, where they "tried to turn me into a Marine." Back then, drill instructors had a "whole lot of authority. So we didn't have any trouble, everybody did what they were told to do.
"I was about as country as they had. I watched others. And what they did, I did. I got along fine in boot camp. Back then it only took two months." From boot camp he went to Quantico and stayed there for four years, keeping in readiness for war.
Paderick's next step in his Marine career took him to recruiting duty in Charleston, W.Va. "I reported on 3 or 4 December, and the war started on 7 December [with the bombing of Pearl Harbor]. I started writing letters to headquarters to try to get transferred to a fighting unit. I was worried it would be over before I got a chance to participate.
"I had it made on recruiting duty and here I'm trying to get assigned to a combat unit. Finally it came about and then I wondered why. I never did feel I was too smart to start with."
Now a married man, he shipped out to California and eventually his unit landed on Bouganville in the Solomon Islands. "I didn't do much fighting, no hand to hand. I was in the light artillery, the 75 millimeter battalion. We weren't next door to them [the enemy]." His next step was Guam, and finally Iwo Jima. Then back to the States.
"My next assignment was more recruiting duty. It was easy to get recruits, everybody was gung ho. When I was interviewing potential recruits you almost got into a fight when you'd tell a guy he's not qualified. If his teeth were all missing or in bad shape, they would say that they didn't want to bite 'em, they wanted to fight 'em. They would get upset if you turned a man down."
Then more duty took him to China for 13 months. "The Chinese were starving. When the mess hall would put out their garbage, the Chinese would fight over it. I never forgot that." A tour to Korea during the fighting there ended his foreign service. He had been made a sergeant in 1940 and then master sergeant, "my rank most of the time. I got in a little trouble and got busted a couple of times, and then worked my way back up again."
He went back to recruiting until his retirement from the Marines. He then worked as a Botetourt deputy sheriff, followed by prison work, ending as a warden. Today he enjoys raising his cattle and being near his children and grandchildren. Happy 90th birthday, Edwin Paderick. And thanks for all your service.
