busy my name is joseph and a very what is your connection to belmont as a young lad came here when i was two years old and have been here ever since except for my four years in the bean twenty one and most of my peers were sixteen or seventeen and country boys it didn't go that well my  day when you go to paris silent it is an island with a long causeway and they bring you in there at two o'clock to three o'clock in the morning and we and then we get on the school bus and we drive up to the main gate and as we're going through the main gate the bus driver says you'll be sorry and then the next words out of his  when we pull up in front of receiving barracks make sure you get off this bus quickly and as we pull up in front of receiving barracks the bus stops and this huge black drill instructor who filled the front of the bus said welcome to paris silane get off the spice and he used some colorful language so i opened the window hopped out the window because he was drawing people off out the front door and boot camp always a challenge because i was an athlete nice school but since i had already and so she is to green they made me the school teacher so what did that mean that meant the week that you're supposed to do mass  divvy what i did was i would to my fellow marines on marine corps history so they could pass so basically my whole four years in the marine corps i never did mess duty and when i graduated i was very fortunate ten percent of all recruits made p f seas out of boot camp people us to camp pendleton california where i stuck out stuck out like a sore thumb because of my complection and my size i'm not very large and  and were standing in formation that margarita in camp pendleton and this gunnery sergeant looking up and down the line and he comes to me and he said he says hellboy a small i said i know that you don't have to remind me of that but what's that got to do with a thing here when you open up everybody's going trying to kill you and you'll make a small target he was correct and i'm three hundred rounds more weight yeah yes yeah that's why i'm small ressam brains are your size lots more places they hit right  violating one of the basic marine corps rules was my proudest moment in the corps coming home on a weekend before seventeen just about ray turned eighteen as i said i was twenty one i was an old man i was that we're going to fly home for the weekend and he said but we can get in trouble i said how much more trouble can we get in they're going to send this to we're country we don't know anything about the people are going to try and kill us and i guarantee you they're emptying out the brakes oh i said we're flying home this weekend that's it we did didn't get in trouble as a matter of fact captain rushing our company commander were information before loading on to the six spies to go down to san diego and get on board ship we went over on board ship said to me he said a number i was boston i said fine series i'm glad you went and i'm glad because joe drew was killed over there and when i came back almost two years later his family thanked me for brain home so that's my proudest accomplishment they have a scholarship  the woman boys club for him last person killed in vietnam was a marine from war but the main man i think yes like it another another marine the last two people killed were or orients we made in the name the brick at camp pendleton and brought them there you know why marines is such good fighters why they can't swim when we hit the beach we were all happy to get off that ship it was twenty two days tough going ok and surround six o'clock in the morning and you're standing there on solid ground all right the opposing team opens up on us and if you had a video camera you would have seen two hundred dollars men go how the hell can i get out a little landing craft are gone so you better fight because you can't swim that far of flashforward our company executive officer we connected with him just by accident down in d c our original mission was to get off the ship and get in these small mike boats and go up i think it was a high following the river anyhow up to way so we didn't go on that mission because if we did i wouldn't be here today we would all wiped out we were denying what and basically clearing out t cong taking casualties inflicting casualties and then well at the time being oh no man ok i kind of pushed against authority and the weapons but to inside in his name was sergeant dow he and i it was only about two years older than i was he was a career marine he had me doing punishment duty in of sixty five i'm told i'm being transferred to l thirty three and i thought he was getting rid of me ok because again we challenge to each other well again history is a little different when you talk to the person like that twenty five years later i reconnected with them and i was having dinner at his house had taken a lot of casualties so he said you were next port with a forty five m fourteen m sixty and you're great with a knife and not a fork so that's why i sent you down  patch me up and shipped me back with two of my fellow marines from l thirty three and we reported back into vietnam the st one was bob nina p s e bob nina he went to the corporal didn't have computers and this is sixty six january sixty six and he writes instead of  three he writes on bob's service record jacket i think i have twenty nine but a different you know and same on paul mayor's and so they start moaning and groaning so i said get outside and shot up i was a corporal at the time it's so mine he wrote the same thing on my i said corporal field phone he said over there so we ended up back at all thirty three we want to go back to our unit so i continued to when i came back from being  wounded many of the men that i served with had been wounded and had been shipped home so i had a whole new group but we work together well  i finished up my time in vietnam and i was very fortunate i got orders to m b b and s marine barracks boston  i finished my last tour of duty in the marine corps right here in boston and a double wow a buddy of mine that i had known in boot camp i was checking the gates because now i was up for a five and i see this civilian and navy government car so i pull it off  so we takes me to the three room apartment on base that he had was why this is pretty good duty he said yeah i've got my orders to go to vietnam he said would you like to apply boston university went through in three years and the same time i started working up at the metropolitan state hospital as an attendant nine nine and again as i told you i joined the marine corps to avoid the draft and i realized that there were other alternatives i'm up there working and so i was sitting there talking it was a good group young man and i said joe are you doing alternative service i said alternative service what's that well we all are i said what does that mean well if you work at a state hospital for two years ok you won't be drafted i said all right that's interesting one of them said what  you going to do about the draft i said oh i took care of it how did you do that i said oh i spent four years in the wrinkle well i worked there full time at a small rubbish move a business i graduated before i graduated i was thinking about making a career out of the marine corps but in boot camp they'd tell you if we wanted you to have a wife and family we would have issued you one and they proved it believe me and so i got engaged got married and so no career in the marine corps but happy to be married and i started working for the federal government at the c b center down in davis full rhode island continued working at the mat to pay off my student loans is a matter of fact this labor day it will be forty eight years that i've been working in the business i worked at the met for five years and will be forty three years up at mclean i'll be working there this evening i was fortunate ok  my federal job the good part and the bad part was business travel ok so i traveled all over the country so instead of partying in the evening i would get the phone book and start calling around to reconnect now with my buddies so i did throughout the country so we have biannual reunions now right so i'm i been very fortunate you were doing that long before facebook was doing it well absolutely absolutely and i connect one thing my koreas and my buddies it was about twenty eight years ago now we had a reunion here in boston each one of us hosts the reunion and so we hadn't talked about work or anything and so one of my buddies said to me joe what do you do for a living i said well since i'm good in small doses i  in parallel i said i'm a scientist and a manager for the federal government i'm a college professor and i work as a consular in a hospital for the mentally ill i never thought of it and please support the belmont morrill for veterans is as they say these days i say it's a silly thank you for your service my friend ok yes ok