Faithful to the Corps

s Les Eagle sits at a small table in the living room of his house, a dim overhead light warmly reveals the many character lines on his face, the result of 83 years of a good, hard-working life.

Life is slowing down for Eagle. He sold his business, Eagle Oil Co., and retired. The widower appears to be in good health for a man his age, but he rarely uses his fishing boat anymore. It's harder to get out than it used to be.

Zach Roberts, on the other hand, has life in his cross hairs. Living with his parents while attending Southeast Missouri State University in the evenings, the 22-year-old former high school swimmer has a fit physique, a tattoo on his arm and a bright future ahead of him, probably in sports medicine.

Based on age and a first impression of their outward appearance, these men have nothing in common. But there is a look in their eyes that is familiar.

It's not a smirk, not exactly a grin. It's like they want to smile, but don't feel like they should.

Roberts' and Eagle's faces express honorable pride when they're asked about their days in the Marines. For Eagle, that was in the early 1940s during World War II. He was in charge of supplies for his unit in the Pacific.

For Roberts, his gleam comes from the previous four years of his life when he inspected bombs and missiles to make sure they were in working order. Some were destined for Iraq.

Perhaps it is their look, their expression of pride that best exemplifies the Marine fraternity. Ask any Marine and he'll say the bond between Marines is stronger than any other military branch.

And every year, the Marines, young and old, celebrate that bond with a big birthday bash. Saturday night at the Holiday Inn Convention Center, the local Marine Corps League will put on a ball, celebrating the 228th birthday of the Marines Corps. The local detachment, whose members are from all over the Southeast Missouri region, expects about 170 to attend the gala.

During that celebration, Roberts, the youngest Marine in attendance, will respectfully serve Mr. Eagle, the oldest, with the first piece of birthday cake.

Getting homesick

Eagle was 19 years old when he started getting homesick in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era government program designed to restore and develop the country's natural resources. Like most in those Corps, Eagle sent most of his earnings home. The money helped his parents in Cape Girardeau.

After two years of work, Eagle missed his family.

"The truth of it was I wanted to come home," Eagle said.

He took a circuitous route. Eagle said by joining the military, he would at least be able to go back home for a short time instead of being stuck in Iowa.

Eagle said he narrowed his choices to the Navy or the Marines because they tended to travel more. He chose the Marines because it required a four-year commitment. The Navy wanted six.

Eagle signed his Marine papers 15 months before Japanese bombers pummeled Pearl Harbor.

In boot camp, he achieved expert status in machine gunning, but he later found himself in an organizational role.

Eagle says he wasn't involved in combat. He was the person who made sure the soldiers in his unit had the supplies -- including ammunition -- that they needed.

Eagle wound up in Guadalcanal in the middle of World War II when his four years ended. He added two more years of service. He wanted to go home, but felt obligated to stay.

He had one close call just before he was to be sent home for good, just after the battle of Okinawa, one of the last big battles of World War II. On the night before he was to be sent home, he decided to spend the night on land instead of the ship he was to be sent home in.

The next day, the ship wasn't there. It had been hit by the enemy.

"Then, we were delayed some more when we went through a typhoon for the next four days," Eagle recalled.

Young patriot

Zach Roberts had to put up with some storms during his service too. Only it was sand, not water, that whipped through his camp.

Roberts, who always viewed himself as patriotic when growing up, was looking for a challenge in life so he enrolled in the Marines just out of Central High School in 1999 and returned home in August.

He endured the culture shock of boot camp in San Diego, which was more mentally exhausting than physically demanding.

"It's just having someone 24 hours a day telling you what to do every second," he said.

Roberts' military specialty became aviation ordnance -- he checked and prepared bombs and missiles that attach to airplanes.

Most of Roberts' time in the Marines was spent refining this skill. He traveled to 28 different states and a handful of foreign locales -- including Okinawa. At each destination, he would learn a little more.

Last winter, Roberts was shipped to Kuwait. The time for practice was over.

"In Kuwait, there's no fake stuff over there," he said.

Roberts calls Kuwait the "final piece" to his active Marine duty. It justified boot camp and all the practice.

Roberts was in Kuwait about a month before the United States dropped its first bombs.

"The weapons were already there when we got there," he said. "Somebody knew better than us and started stockpiling weapons, waiting for us to show up."

And so Roberts did what he was trained to do.

The bombs came in on trucks. Roberts would check to make sure the weapons were functional. He'd fuse them, take the arming wire and wire the missiles and bombs to the F-18s.

"Almost everything we loaded ruined someone's day," Roberts said, holding back that proud grin. "We loaded 800,000 pounds of ordnance in my unit alone."

But now, Roberts is back home, safe where he can relax, go to school and serve cake to a man he respects.

"There's definitely some kind of bond that I don't think other branches have," Roberts said. "And I don't know why to be honest. It doesn't matter how long you serve or when you were in, but you could meet a complete stranger who is a Marine and sit down and have a conversation like you were old buddies."

bmiller@semissourian.com

243-6635