I hesitate to tell this story because it is so un Marine like but it is interesting. Current Marines won't believe it and neither did a lot of Marines back in the day. All Marines get a nice haircut on their first day in boot camp. This is me at Parris Island in March 1967. The Marine Corps is a very disciplined outfit and demands and enforces tight grooming standards. Short hair is required.
In 1972 the Marine Reserve was filled by very smart individuals who joined the Reserves to stay out of Vietnam. Some of the smart guys included lawyers who filed suit in Federal Court seeking permission to wear long hair under short haired wigs.
Judge Bill Lynch, formerly Mayor Daley's law partner and formerly a Naval Officer, and a family friend, felt that this request was reasonable. He issued a court order which said that any Marine in the Ninth Naval District could wear a wig that met Marine standards.
It was of course not possible to meet Marine grooming standards with the wigs. Most of the troops bought cheap wigs. If you had them cut down to be evenly graduated the cords of the wigs would show and look terrible.
When we took our wig wearing Marine Reservists to our two week training exercises at regular bases the active duty NCO's went ballistic, threatening the wig wearers and us. The wig wearers got the Judge to threaten that he would jail anyone who disciplined the wig wearers.
Bob Dart and Dennis Herring have a funny story about this. A Regular Staff NCO was ballistic about this (They all did). He fired up Dennis who was new to the Reserve - what had he gotten into? He told CWO Bob Dart about the problem. Bob informed the SNCO of the Judge's order and that the SNCO would go to jail if he interfered with the wig wearing.
The SNCO demanded that Bob put this order in writing. Bob did so. Bob later became friends with the SNCO who had the order framed behind his desk.
We were none too fond of the wig wearers. We were trying to fit in with the active duty folks who hated the wig wearing. So we were pretty tough on the wig wearers. We would not let them take the wigs off and required them to shower with their wigs on, and to sleep with them. Not the most comfortable situation in hot bases in the field in the summer.
I knew Judge Lynch, who was a family friend of my in-laws. I told him about the anger in the Marine Corps, but he simply thought the Marine Corps was unreasonable. Needless to say I did not tell my Marine superiors about my connection to the Judge.
We were in New River, North Carolina on an exercise. We were visited by General White. We hid our wig wearer, LCpl Havrilla, in the TSC-15 Van where he would not be seen.
Everything was going well and the General was leaving. Then we received a call from Glenview on the TSC-15 radio. One of our SNCO's (What was he thinking?) shouted to the General, asking him if he would like to talk to Glenview. "I believe I would" he said, and started walking to the Van.
I quickly got in the van and placed myself between the wig wearing Havrilla and the General. And I got on the radio and said, "We have an O-7 who wants to talk to you on the radio, Get somebody on the horn who can talk to him." Silence.
I am dead, I thought, The young radio operator at Glenview will freeze up when the General gets on the net, and he will not be used to the fast way that pilots speak on the radio.
So the General gets on the mike, and speaking very rapidly, says " we are having a great time down here, everything is going well, and the weather is great. How is everything at Glenview?"
"Everything is fine, here, Sir. Weather is great. Glad you are enjoying yourself" replied Lt McClure, an experienced Air Controller who was used to talking to pilots on the radio. He had just happened to be walking by when he heard my call, and took over the response. SAVED!
The General never saw Havrilla. And he did not know that we could not talk to nearby Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune, which was what we were trying to do. The signal skipped right over those close bases to Glenview. He thought we were hot stuff.
A friend of mine had just graduated from college and was going to enlist. "Go as an officer and go as a Reservist. If you like it stay in, if not stay in the Reserves." I told him.
He did as I suggested. He was and is a big strong guy and I was proud of having recruited him. He was a member of the infantry battalion at Foster Avenue on the west side of Chicago.
Then he joined a band and started wearing a short haired wig. I quit bragging about how I recruited him. Needless to say he was not popular in the Battalion.
Eventually the guys who joined to avoid Vietnam left and the new guys joined who were willing to follow Marine requirements. After a while the wigs went away, and we breathed a sigh of relief. We even had some of our wig wearers stay in the Squadron for a career, notably GySgt Storbeck, our admin chief, who of course quit wearing the rug. It is still fun to tease him about his wig wearing days.
The link below is from 1975 when the courts decided that male Marines could not wear wigs. Glad that that is over.
https://books.google.com/books?id=9CZL_dnagLkC&pg=RA11-PA29&lpg=RA11-PA29&dq=marine+corps+wigs&source=bl&ots=QacWYUvoFu&sig=ACfU3U2hEXv8AUG9XAH_ak-e7SAtLLIV0Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjzqr2k4LLmAhWMxVkKHXxFAXMQ6AEwHHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=marine%20corps%20wigs&f=false
Semper Fi
Craig Hullinger
"Everything id fine at Glenview, Sir. Weather is great"
Head or facial hair cannot be grown or cut in a way that yields eccentricities in appearance. Hair coloring must be a natural color and complement a person's ...
