Dear Tom:

Yesterday, for the second time in a year, we surrendered the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Until 1979, I can't think of a single embassy ever surrendered except in times of war when belligerents take control of each other's embassies.

A great percentage of Americans are unaware of the fact that each American Embassy has Marine security guards assigned to it for that purpose security. Such duty is considered to be choice duty among Marines, particularly the younger and uninformed ones.

The young Marine conjures up visions of duty in Stockholm, swimming naked with buxom beauties on nude beaches. He requests embassy duty and goes through the gruelling process of qualifying, all the time in a state of tumescense, thinking of the blond, blue-eyed Swedes. Then he gets his assignment - Haiti, Liberia, Afghanistan. It comes as a shock that there are embassies other than Stockholm, London, Paris and Rome.

In my younger days I got an embassy assignment... almost. In 1952, I completed the Russian language course at the Naval Intelligence School, Navy Receiving Station, Anacostia, Washington, D.C. There was a need for more Marines at the American Embassy in Moscow, so I applied, was accepted, and reported to Company F, Henderson Hall, for processing and the long wait.

Our relationship with the Soviet Union was much more strained at that time. Any little thing the Soviets could do to irritate the Americans was relentlessly pursued. The routine relief and as-

signment of Marines to the American Embassy was one of those irritants. I met a guy at Henderson Hall who had been waiting for seven months to get his clearance to enter the Soviet Union. I started looking for ways out of that assignment, and fortunately found one. So I was never honored to serve on embassy duty, and it's just as well.

A good friend of mine was, however. Phil Smith (now a sergeant major) served in his younger days as a member of the security guard at the embassy in Baghdad. Those middle-easterners were not very friendly toward us, but tolerated our embassies. One day Smittie and another Marine were on liberty in Baghdad when a huge oil refinery exploded and burned. Smittie and his friend were arrested on the fringes of the conflagration, and accused of the capitalist plot to destroy the country. He stayed in jail quite a while before the diplomats could negotiate his release. He was returned to the United States. I asked him if he had anything to do with the fire, and he coyly denied it.

In Camp Pendleton, a gunnery sergeant came to me for counseling on a fitness report he had received upon his detachment from his last duty station, an embassy where he had served as the NCOIC of the guard detachment. His reporting senior had been the embassy security officer, a woman. Since it was a derogatory report, it had been sent to him for his review and rebuttal. I've never seen a report quite like that one. He was marked "Unsatisfactory" all the way down the line. No one is totally unsat!

I finished reading the report and said, "Sounds to me like you should have kept on fucking her."

He told me that he had, indeed, romanced the security officer to the extreme, but when he found and married the girl of his dreams, the security officer was forced to step aside. The gunny told me that all his previous reports from this broad were the other side of the spectrum - "Outstanding."

I think of that situation every time I see an ERA rally or hear a bunch of dikes screaming for "equal rights".

In Alameda, California, in 1966, I influenced a really fine, young Marine to reenlist. He wanted embassy duty and got it as his reenlistment option. He was assigned to Saigon, Viet Nam, and was one of the few Marines (in modern times, at least) to draw combat pay while wearing dress blues.

Incidentally, the embassy in Saigon was not surrendered to the zips, neither during (1) Tet of '68 when it was attached, nor (2) the commie take over in 1975... it was abandoned.

In the days of Nixon, we reopened talks with Communist China. Nixon went to Peking and was met with full honors. After his return, he was authorized by the Chinese to open an American Legation in Peking. A small detachment of five Marines was assigned to guard that agency. This detachment consisted of Marines who had all had combat experience in Viet Nam, and was headed by a Staff NCO.

Right away the Chinese started to complain about the Marines wearing their uniforms with their combat decorations in town, which was "offensive" to the "people." An order was issued that uniforms would not be worn outside the legation. The NCO in charge, however, had his Marines fall out for PT every morning, wearing their athletic clothing which advertised the Marine Corps in glowing scarlet and gold. Their runs through the People's Park generated other complaints. But the real clincher was the Red Ass Saloon.

The Marines, restricted from wearing their uniforms in public and limited on where they could perform PT and in what clothing, decided the hell with it, "We'll open our own bar." This saloon was located on the second deck of the building in which they were quartered. It was a small room, sparesely decorated, but containing the necessities of booze

and a place to sit and talk. The Chinese were unaware of this establishment and would have remained ignorant provided the Marines, on one particular night, had not been so rowdy.

The Chinese issued a strong complaint that the Marines had created this decadent, capitalist saloon, and that they were holding wild parties there every night, and that on a recent night, they had gotten deeply involved in drunken debauchery, present at which, were several young, Chinese ladies. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was the climax of the evenings festivities when the Marines became offended at a cow they had brought up to the saloon, and proceeded to throw her out the window to land on the street below. The Chinese demanded the removal of the Marines.

The NCOIC was questioned about this accusation, and his reply was an indignant, "That's a damned lie! It wasn't a cow; it was a horse!" The Marines were removed from the legation.

I've often wondered what happened to those guys, particularly the NCOIC. I would loved to have had him in a unit with me. I imagine, though, that he was disciplined in some manner. We've lost our appreciation for such colorful behavior.

Contrast his likely return to the U.S. with the return of the young sergeant from the embassy in Tehran earlier this year who surrendered the embassy (the first surrender) to the crooks of that bearded freak. After his release, he was met at Andrews Air Force Base by the Commandant himself, and the Secretary of the Navy. He was presented a Navy Commendation Medal! For what? For obeying the insane orders of a gutless ambassador to surrender to hoodlums? Maybe we should take a hard look at the calibre of diplomat we appoint to the position of ambassador to a potential hot spot.

In my earliest days as a Marine in boot camp, I learned Marine Corps history which included the "Fifty Five Days at Peking." The Boxers - gangsters much like we have today in some of the countries decided to take over the various foreign embassies in Peking. A detachment of Marines held those sons of bitches off for 55 days until a relief column could get in. If someone were to suggest that to Carter today, he'd faint.

We have truly lost our national courage, our wit, our virtue.

At about the same time the bandits were seizing our embassy in Tehran, there was another embassy flap in one of the Central American countries. I saw a newsclip on TV which still haunts me. It showed two young Marines of the security guard detachment on the balcony of the embassy. They were in their jungle utilities and armed with shotguns. One Marine, in particular, stood out. He was about 19 or 20. He had no cover on his head. His blond hair was mussed. He had a cigarette in his lips and a shotgun held at his hip. He had a determined look on his young face which seemed to say, "Come on, you bastards! Just try to get by me!" He is the kind of Marine I like to remember and the kind we should assign to such duties. He will receive no Navy Commendation Medal since the embassy did not fall. As a matter of fact, I felt sorry for that kid. He will most assuredly get his ass chewed out and probably be relieved for not having his helmet on and for smoking in range of a TV camera- and for thinking obscene thoughts.