Memories of 29 Palms
It’s been one of the hottest weekends of the entire year in southern California. I can’t help but remember where I spent most of my time in the Marine Corps, at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center later Marine Corps Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Center 29 Palms. MAGTFTC/MCAGCC, Twentynine Palms for all of you acronym fans.
According to the many half-truths, legends, and out right lies, 29 Palms started off as an Army-Air Force flight training base in 1942, and later taken over in 1944 the Navy because according to the Army-Air Force 29 Palms was not suitable for human conditions. The truth is likely much less shocking and more about where it made more sense to train. The Marines didn’t get stuck there until 1952 and didn’t obtain base status until 1957.
I arrived on April 4, 1997, late that evening after graduating from Marine Combat Training (MCT). For some odd reason it seems that we were taken for a long ride from Camp Pendleton to 29 Palms along the back roads that stretched what is normally maybe a 2-hour ride into several hours. That first night when we arrived and reported in we were allowed to walk around the base which when we got there was rather futile since nearly everything was closed, and it was after dark and the wind was blowing the sand, which didn’t help us see much with the poorly lit roads.
That next morning, I remember waking up and walking outside and swearing that we were on Mars with the distant sand and short shrubs out in the distance that looked so completely foreign to me despite having been born and raised in California. After making sure none of us had escaped, we were allowed to wander around the base on liberty for the day to eat, and shop.
The next weekend we were allowed to leave the base and I took a ride to Palm Springs over 60 miles away, and then took a Greyhound to Los Angeles for the weekend and to celebrate my 21st birthday early since I’d be back at 29 Palms for my birthday but at least now I’d be able to drive back to the base.
I celebrated my birthday at Burger King Monday afternoon with one of my boot camp friends who also ended up at 29 Palms for Radio Repair School, McDougal who spent around 6 months in Boot Camp because of injuries, needing to lose weight, and then getting back into shape to resume training. Unfortunately, his injuries continued, and he was medically separated from the Marine Corps not long after our time in school (imagine going through all that only to end up leaving in the middle of school), and a female Marine who I think her name was King who befriended us.
I’ll tell you more about my time at MOS school later when something reminds of it, but we spent about a month waiting to start our first school which was the Basic Electronics Course, then we went to Ground Radio Repair School, and finally we received our orders. I had the good misfortune to move down the street (seriously, from my second barracks room at Tanks, I could see my old barracks up on top of the hill at the Marine Corps Comm/Elec School barracks). Originally, I was ordered to go to V1/7 or 1st Battalion 7th Marines, but they were in Japan so rather than fly me to join them or make me wait, they sent me to First Tank Bn on March 20, 1998.
The day I checked in I was selected to go to Kuwait in May for a few weeks, and then after returning I was ordered to spend July on guard duty. In October of 98 through June of 1999, I was sent to the Provost Marshall’s Office or the MPs to be an MP for what was supposed to be 6 months, but everyone forgot about me, so it ended up being 8 months. Then, I had to relearn my job to go to sea with a platoon from Alphatraz, where I learned how much Tankers and Comm guys hated each other. We left for 3 months of work ups in Pendleton, and then 6 months across the Pacific to the Persian Gulf to train in Kuwait, then back to Pendleton in July of 2000. When we returned to 29 Palms, I felt like the outsider of the platoon only to be one of the last competent Techs in the platoon, and then I finished off my time at 29 Palms.
The thing about 29 Palms is that the heat was unlike most other places I’ve been, and I’ve been in some hot places like the first time in Kuwait, they didn’t issue us desert boots, and the entire base was sold out of them so my feet and shins cooked in my combat boots. I still have some scars from those few weeks in what some idiot named “Camp Goodenough.”
The second time was a month earlier and much milder in April of 2000. The place that hurt us on the WestPac, was Qatar. It was hotter than hell, the ground was baked so hard that even with the pioneer gear from our Hummer we named “69 Baht” after our stop in Thailand, that we couldn’t break it with a pickaxe. The day we returned to the ship; someone told us it was a humid 130 degrees on the beach.
Now 29 Palms heat was more of a hate filled heat. When you leave your barracks room in the summer, it feels like you walked into an oven. The heat attacks your eyes and any exposed skin. Yeah, the other deserts sucked but nothing ever felt like the sun in Super Mario Brothers 3’s Angry sun as 29 Palms.
From the moment we arrived we were sent to the base theater to get a safety brief of life on 29 Palms. Most of it preached safety and reminded us that the base will kill us and the point was made clear by a detailed examination of the Rother Incident in which a poor decisions by leadership led to a Marine being left in the desert, disappearing and dying and his body not being recovered for months.
Then there’s the smell no matter what you could tell when it was evening in 29 Palms not because of the heat or the position of the sun, it was the smell well more like the stench of Lake Bandini. Lake Bandini is the descriptive name given to the water treatment ponds of 29 Palms that when the wind blew just wrong, would give every barracks the aromatic odor of shit, which would happen almost every evening, no matter the season every evening the stench would fill the air when the wind would blow Northeast towards the barracks and the shops on main side.
The oddest part of the heat of 29 Palms was that when it was 115 degrees or hotter it felt more tolerable than when it was around 95-105 degrees. It still hurt but it just didn’t feel as harsh as the lower temp days. Although it might have had to do with what my barracks roommates and I did by lowering the temp on our thermostats to their lowest setting and being so cold in our barracks that the moment we went outside to cross the street to get to work, we’d be numb/in shock enough to not really feel it until we were at work.
I haven’t been there since August of 2002 when my MSgt retired and I returned to attend the retirement ceremony but I definitely don’t miss the place just the people that were there with me.
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