Steve Spund

​​        I told my family I was on 30-day leave.  But after 30 days were up, my father became suspicious and knew something was wrong.  A short time after the 30-day period I was awakened by the police.  My father had called the police and reported me.

​        They took me to this compound at the Brooklyn Navy Yard with barbed wire fence, jagged glass on top of the high walls and one main door in the front with Marine guards at the door.  They asked me if I would consent to going back.  I said sure. I probably would have said anything to get out of the Marine barracks at that point.  So, remarkably enough, they gave me a bus ticket and told me to go back to North Carolina.  I didn’t go back, I went home to my parents’ house, hoping for more time to think of something.  It wasn’t too long later before my father turned me in again.  This time the MPs came. 

​​        They took me to the Naval Brig and I started to get worked over by the Marine guards.  You’d be stripped of all your clothing, they take your unmentionables and put them through the bars and hit them or stretch them or choke you until you’re white, or out of air.  They usually tried to do things that would not leave bruises or blood.  They called you the lowest thing on earth, but not just terms that they might use in boot camp to break you down.  This was of a personal nature to them, ’cause usually these Marine guards had done at least one tour of duty in Vietnam and they’d seen a lot of their buddies die.  To them you were the worst thing on earth.   

​​        Two of these guards told me this was my last weekend, that they were going to kill me.  I checked around with other prisoners and quite a few of them told me that the guards had hung a few marines and made it look like suicide.  I couldn’t believe at first that anyone would do that to another American, or another Marine.  But they assured me it was so, and at that point, I wasn’t going to take any chances.  I started to believe that they’d sooner see me dead at their hands than free at mine.

​        I was faced with another tough choice.  One was going back to North Carolina and then to Vietnam, or take my own life.  I decided that was the right thing to do.   They took us to the PX to get a  shave kit and all that other kind of stuff.  They were supposed to take out the blades from the shave kits, but the guards were busy and I took the moment to put a package of blades in my pockets.  There was one Marine guard that wasn’t crazy like these other two and I told him if he could to get in touch with the chaplain or the rabbi, I wanted last rites.  He came back and said they were both unavailable and for awhile I felt that this was it, I was going to do it ’cause the next day the other guards were coming back on duty.  Unexpectedly a visiting psychiatrist heard what I was up to.  He came in and saw my condition and knew I was going to do it.  He sent me to St. Albans Hospital in Queens for observation in the psychiatric ward.

​​        I received a general discharge with honorable conditions at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  I thought it was strange, not only to be back there again, but the sergeant asked me — and he was serious — if I would like to enlist again.  I don’t remember the vulgarity I used, but I’m sure I let him know that I wasn’t interested.