Bayonets and Bougainvilleas
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1. FOUR BOYS IN SEATTLE 1894-1907 Re-building after the fire. Straw hats and bib overalls. T.T. Minor Elementary and Seattle High. Telegrams in the red light district. 2. FOUR GIRLS IN BERKELEY 1907-1917 Re-building after the fire. Berkeley High and the Wallace girls. Telegraph poles and the High Sierras. History, jurisprudence and The Daily Californian. 3. THE WAR IN FRANCE 1917-1919 Mare Island. Quantico. Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne. Henry Larson and General Lejeune. Army of Occupation of Germany. 4. HOME AND QUANTICO 1919-1922 Wedding in Berkeley, quarters in Quantico. A son is born. Marine Corp Schools. Provost Marshal for Smedley Butler. 5. FOLLOWING THE FLEET 1922-1925 The Orient with Secretary Denby. Mare Island. USS Pennsylvania. San Pedro, the Berkeley Fire, Bremerton, Seattle. 6. BERKELEY 1925-1928 Mare Island. Commander John Rodgers. Home to Berkeley. Commuting to Goat Island. Brookdale and the High Sierras. 7. NICARAGUA 1928-1932 Chasing Sandino with Biff Pierce and Pete Geyer. Coco River rescue. Election duty 1928, 1930, 1932. 8. QUANTICO 1929-1935 USS Henderson through the Canal. Field Officers’ School: student under Charles F. B. Price, instructor under General Holcomb. General Lee and General Russell. Majors Charles Barrett and Clifton B. Cates. Home life on a military post. 9. FOUR CAPTAINS IN CASTILE 1931-1932 Madrid and Salamanca in the first year of the Spanish Republic. Zenobia CamprUBí Aymar de Jimenez and Juan Ramón. Miguel de Unamuno. 10. CHAMPAGNING AROUND THE CARIBBEAN 1935-1937 Showing the flag with the Special Service Squadron under Admiral Meyers and Admiral Williams. Home life in Panama and the Canal Zone. Ocean voyages to California. 11. THE CADET RETURNS 1937-1941 Family visits in California. Washington, D.C.: ONI under Admiral Russell Willson. The FDR White House. Arlington Cemetery. De-lousing SCADTA. South American good-will tour with Admiral Kimmel. Newport: Navy War College under Admiral Kalbfus. Colonel Geiger, Captain Hustvedt. 12. WAR IN THE PACIFIC 1941-1946 Latin American Naval Chiefs of Staff. C.O. Fifth Regiment: Quantico, New River. 7 Dec 1941. Fired by General Vandergrift. 10th Defense Battalion: San Diego, Hawaii, Russell Islands. Third Division with General Turnage: Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Guam. Death of Rosselet Blake. Promotion to Brigadier General. V-mail. Okinawa with General Stilwell. V-J Day. Truk. Admiral Nimitz. 13. INSPECTOR GENERAL 1946-1949 Washington, D.C. via Corpus Christi. Inspector General under Commandant Cates. The Truman White House. The General takes a wife. 14. THE GOLDEN WEST 1949-1983 Retirement in Santa Barbara. The Hispanic Society. Guanajuato. Spain revisited. San Francisco: UROC, The Commonwealth Club, EL BUEN VECINO. Lake Park. Visits to Seattle. Death of Elynor Blake. France revisited. Travels in Mexico and Guatemala. Visits to New York and Ontario. Citizens Against Crime. The Longstreth Foundation. A mugging. Seattle revisited. Taps at Treasure Island.
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About the Book
This book is the life story of a career Marine officer decorated for valor in three wars. But it is only in part a story of war and battles. Mainly it is a narrative of family life in the first half of the twentieth century, an era of history now rapidly fading from memory. It is to preserve some of those memories that I have chosen to write. My father, Robert Blake, was not brought up to be a soldier. In 1917 he was a college senior headed for a degree in History. He was going to be a lawyer. But in April 1917 the United States declared war on Germany, so Robert Blake volunteered to serve his country. When the war ended he accepted a regular commission leading to thirty more years of military service. Bayonets and Bouganvilleas is a record of those years and all that followed. In today’s world of "smart" bombs and long range missiles we tend to avoid thinking of hand-to-hand combat as an element of warfare. Yet in both World Wars I and II the bayonet was an essential tool of the infantry soldier. In Fix Bayonets, John W. Thomson wrote a classic story of the American Marines at Belleau Wood. My father was there. The Bougainvilleas plant is a showy tropical vine ubiquitous in Central America and the Caribbean, the historic peacetime preserve of the U.S. Marine Corps. So it was for my father, with four tours of tropics duty in the 1920s and 1930s. In Panama in 1935 the Blake family garden was fenced with flowering Bougainvilleas vines. The plant was named for the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, discoverer of the Pacific island of the same name. I do not know if that vine grows on that island, but the Marine Third Division made a landing there in 1943 in the Solomons campaign of World War II. My father was there also. Thus, the title of my memoir of war and peace in the U.S. Marine Corps. Robert Wallace Blake Seattle 2001
About the Author
Robert Wallace Blake was born in Quantico, Virginia, and grew up as Marine Corps dependent on and off posts, in the U.S.A., Spain and Panama. He graduated from the M.I.T. and was a Naval Aviator during World War II. Mr. Blake had a forty-year career with Pan American Airways based in New York and Seattle, plus overseas assignments in Afghanistan, Africa and France. He has written a number of articles in technical, military and historical journals, book reviews and Op Ed pieces for Seattle newspapers.