RAY WALKER 1:05

I enlisted in 1948 on my seventeenth birthday and on my nineteenth birthday I was in Sewell. 1948 at 17, you can figure out that I grew up during World War Two as a young teenager and saw, as most kids at that time, and followed the war, especially in the Pacific, and the Marine Corps were my heroes. I think we called it patriotism. I don’t know that in a war we think much of that. It’s mostly about your buddies and the honor of the Corps which they instill in you in boot camp, that the sense of honor and duty in the Marine Corps is just this side of God.

Back in Korea, when we were surrounded by the Chinese, it never occurred to me that we had a problem. Everybody has their own spirit, I guess, that center thing that makes you think, “I’m going to be a doctor” or “I’m going to be a lawyer” or whatever it is that you just have this passion to do. I think a lot of young fellows are looking for a challenge.