After the final 4 weeks of recruit training, and after the difficult combat exercises, the recruits attend the ceremony that will make each or them a Marine. It is called the Eagle, Globe and Anchor Ceremony.
In 1942, the men who completed the training class made only brief mention of their graduation ceremony. On one page of their yearbook they wrote this: “Then comes graduation and men leave the Candidate’s Class with gold bars on their shoulders.”
In another section of the yearbook, a setion about the 11th Reserve Officers’ Class, the yearbook writers chose to include more information about their graduation from the Candidates’ Class. Here is what they wrote:
“And then one hot Saturday morning, on August 22, we marched into the beautiful auditorium of the new Recreation Bukding to shake the hand of Major General Howland Smith and receive the commission of Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps.”
That description refers to a graduation ceremony that took place at Quantico, VA in the summer of 1942. After the recruits left that ceremony, then they found that they were saluted by all the incoming recruits. According to what is in the 1942 yearbook, a few of the men found the first salute to be a “slight embarrasment.”
Back in 1942, the Marine Corps did not ask the graduates of the Candidates Class to undergo specialty training. They went on to become members of an intense Reserve Officers’ Class.
Next week I will post information on both the current programs for specialty training and the experiences of those in the 1942 Reserve Officers’ Class.
