The Missing Pieces

No sooner had the court of inquiry opened its sessions at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., than it realized that it was missing some pretty important pieces of a tragic puzzle. Devotion to discipline alone did not adequately explain why Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon had led his recruit platoon on a night march into Ribbon Creek last April 8. Mere stupidity did not adequately explain why he had blundered his way into water so deep that six of his men were drowned (TIME, April 23). Last week, reporting on the court's findings, Marine Commandant Randolph Pate supplied the missing pieces.

Not only was Sergeant McKeon without authority to order such a march, said the report, but he had failed to provide the flashlights (or lanterns) and white towels (to be used as neck scarves) required by regulations for night hikes. He knew some of his men could not swim, and told nonswimmers in the platoon: "You will drown. The others will be eaten by sharks."

Basic reason for such incomprehensible behavior on the part of a normally conscientious junior drill instructor: McKeon had been hitting a bottle of vodka on and off all day, and "at the time he marched his platoon into Ribbon Creek was under the influence of alcohol to an unknown degree." The inquiry court's recommendation: McKeon should be court-martialed on four counts ranging from drinking in barracks to manslaughter.

After receiving the findings, General Pate took steps to prevent another such black night in Marine training camps. In a series of directives he:

P: Transferred "without prejudice" his old friend, Major General Joseph Burger, who as Parris Island commander bore a com mand responsibility for the Ribbon Creek tragedy, to command at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where there is no recruit training.

P:Set up separate recruit training commands at Parris Island and San Diego in which commissioned officers will more closely supervise the noncom drill instructors who do the actual training and who will remain the backbone of the training system.

P:Ordered that "any and every practice" that involves "hazing, punishment or any other form of treatment incompatible with accepted American standards of human dignity be absolutely eliminated."

V.M.I.-trained Randolph Pate, with 35 years' service in the Corps, took his share of the blame for Ribbon Creek without publicly showing a tremor of personal feeling. (Says a subordinate: "I have never seen anything hit him harder than this.") "In a very real sense," said General Pate, "the Marine Corps is on trial for the tragedy of Ribbon Creek just as surely as is Sergeant McKeon. I will not blind myself to this fact, nor will I seek to disown the responsibility which is mine as commandant of the Marine Corps."

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