Customer Reviews

Court-Martial at Parris Island: The Ribbon Creek Incident

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I want to begin my comments by saying this is an excellent balanced book and that Stevens deserves a lot of credit. I would further recommend it to any Marine or others interested in Marine Corps history.

I will also state it is my opinion that S.Sgt. Matthew McKeon was a good man who made a tragic mistake. The factors leading up to the events of the evening of April 8, 1956 are manifold and can only be fully understood by reading Stevens' book.

My personal perspective comes from having served in the USMCR and the USMC from October 1956 until August 1962 when I was Honorably discharged as a Corporal E-4. I went to Parris Island in early February of 1957 and my recruit training virtually overlaps the events of a year earlier, putting me at the rifle range at about the same time of year.

Like all of us who went though boot training, I too pulled butts at the range. The discipline and control there was far different than back at main side so on several days I took the opportunity to spend my entire lunch break walking all over the Ribbon Creek area. I wanted to understand this incident.

Definitions from Webster...

Marine: Of or relating to the sea.

Amphibious: Able to live on both land and in water.

Swim: To propel oneself in water...To float on a liquid...

DI Motto: Let's be damn sure that no man's ghost will ever say "If your training program had only done its job."

And from Chesty Puller we learn the mission of Marine Corps training! "...success in battle..."

When I got to Parris Island, I was shocked to see recruits who could not swim had joined a service called the Marine Corps. I also thought it strange the USMC would accept anyone who could not swim, but I guess the Navy does too. How much W.W.II footage have you seen with Marines wading ashore under heavy fire when the Peter and Mike boats could not make it to the beach? Or, in jungles up to their chests and necks in water at Guadalcanal and then all over the south Pacific and Vietnam as well.

HELLO! This is the mission!

In training "...the nonswimmers had been taught how to float, tread water, and dog paddle. All recruits in the platoon had received ten hours of swimming instruction before April 8."

Platoon 71 got themselves into trouble by not following McKeon and by "joking, kidding, and slapping others with twigs while yelling "Snake" or "Shark! Suddenly there was a cry for help and panic broke out..."

I had looked closely at Ribbon Creek while at the rifle range and my "vivid" reaction then was someone would need to be retarded or radically incompetent to drown in that area! Several in platoon 71 fit this description.

"About three-fourths of the platoon was squared away. But the remainder were foul balls." "For example, eight of the men in Platoon 71 were either illiterate or had General Classification Test scores - approximately equivalent to an IQ test - below 70."

McKeon's colorful assessment that 25 percent of the platoon were "foul balls", may not have been far off the mark based on the testimony of several members of the platoon at the trial and in later interviews"

"The quality of some of the men under McKeon's tutelage may also be measured by their behavior after completing boot camp. At the time of the court-martial, two men were AWOL from Parris Island, one was AWOL from Camp Lejeune, one had deserted, one was in the brig, and one was awaiting punishment by his commanding officer." Remember these men did not complete their recruit training under McKeon, so other DI's also had a chance to make these guys good Marines.

SDI Staff Sergeant Huff had basically washed his hands of the young men under him...Stevens states "McKeon was failing, and he knew it." I think it was SDI Huff who was failing.

As far as the charges of being drunk the testimony is flawed and inconclusive. "Not until the court-martial nearly four months later would Dr. Atcheson admit that there was no clinical evidence of intoxication."

His own recruits "...testified that there was no evidence that Mckeon was drunk or impaired by drinking". Of all the recruits in the platoon who had made statements "...not one...had anything negative or critical to say about Sergeant McKeon".

McKeon was victim of being a nice guy by helping Scarborough with his bottle, allowing him to leave it in the barracks, driving Scarborough to the NCO club and accepting congratulattory drinks he never finished. Granted, McKeon used bad judgement but he was certainly not a bad guy.

S.Sgt. McKeon was the first person in the water and he was the last one out. He was leading, not just ordering recruits into an unknown situation. It is empirically obvious that if they had just followed him, as instructed, they all would have gotten back safely. Basic for military training!

Bottom line, McKeon was a new junior DI carrying virtually the whole burden of squaring away this platoon. When I got there a year later there was a "Motivation Platoon". I don't know if this approach existed in 1956 but what I saw of the "Motivation Platoon" regimen would have straightened out these "foul balls".

Although busted to Private, McKeon was allowed to stay in the Marine Corps. He attempted to rebuild his career, capitalizing on his W.W.II carrier experience. He worked with an all-weather fighter squadron and supplemented his private's pay by working nights in the kitchen of the EM club. Remember he had a wife and kids!

Earlier that year he had earned his squadrons "Marine of the Month" award.

"With one exception, all of the men interviewed forty years later spoke as highly of their former drill instructor as they had at the trial."

Enough said!

An extremely informative & detailed read! Stevens iterates a tragic event in Marine Corps history with a direct, thought provoking style. As the current Commanding Officer of the Recruit Training Regiment at Parris Island, I am encouraging my officers & drill instructors to read this book in order to better understand how close we, the Marine Corps, as an organization, came to being disestablished because of the actions of just one man. Another book of interest on the same subject matter is Keith Fleming's, "The U.S. Marine Corps in Crisis: Ribbon Creek & Recruit Training." Another important book in helping to understand how the recruit training process has evolved.

I am so glad to have found this book. I am the illegitimate daughter of Charles Reilly whom I knew nothing about since he died one month before I was born. This book not only took me through the trial but also gave me incite to the person he was. Through the years I have only had a home town newspaper article of the incident and was never recognized by his family.
I am sure McKeon did not march the whole platoon into the marsh with the intent that some would surely die and do feel that he has been justly punished for his bad judgement on that fateful night. I could almost feel like I was at the trial by the way Stevens writes. As a former wife of a Marine who spent four years living the "life", I, too, would like to see this depicted on film. I would also like to locate some of the surviving members of Platoon 71 who might have more information of any kind about my father.

I have not yet read this book, but after reading the reviews, I thought a further recommendation might be helpful. My grandfather, Colonel William B. McKean, was in command of the weapons training battalion at Parris Island when the Ribbon Creek incident took place. He wrote a book about his experiences and impressions called Ribbon Creek. It is out of print but still possible to find through used and rare book stores.

I was the Platoon right guide and assisted Langone in hurding the guys into the swamp. I was thinking that they were fooling around with the "Help me! " routine. But it was for real, Guys were going down. Mr. Stevens did his homework and produced and admirable piece of work. I look foward to some sort of follow-up on what the rest of the guys are doing. Some say it was our platoon that slightly changed the way the Corps operates at that entry level, but I would like to believe that nothing changed because that is the way it worked before we came along. Mac was just unfortunate that this happened and got out to the press of the 1950's south. Not a very nice place at the time, as I can recall.

This is a lawyer's book -- a good one.

In April 1956, a Marine drill instructor led a platoon of recruits on a night march into the tidal waters of Ribbon Creek in the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina. Some of the recruits strayed into deep water; six of them drowned. The public news media cried out for punishment of the responsible party. The public furor also was a threat to the continued funding of the Marine Corps. The most obvious target of this wrath was the drill instructor, Sgt. Matthew McKeon, who was all but abandoned by his commanding officers in a rush to judgment.

The book follows the ordeal of Matthew McKeon from his immediate arrest and public condemnation by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, through a court of inquiry and then a general court-martial. The author is a retired judge of the family and probate court in Essex, Massachusetts, and also a former Marine who went through boot camp in Parris Island in 1957. In preparation for this book, Judge Stevens reviewed the official records of the government and also conducted interviews of many of the persons involved.

Interestingly, the main character in the book is not Sgt. McKeon. The main character is Emile Zola Berman, an experienced New York civil trial lawyer who represented McKeon in the general court-martial without charging a fee. In contrast, General Randolph McCall Pate, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, is portrayed in a negative light and General Wallace Greene, who led the court of inquiry, is more or less given a free pass.

The court-martial lasted more than three weeks; forty-eight witnesses testified. There were many rulings on the admissibility of evidence and on strategic and tactical matters. The author does an outstanding job of condensing the testimony and explaining the significant legal issues and trial tactics, even though he sometimes overuses adjectives in that effort. For example, the word "clever" is frequently used to signal that an important concept is about to be discussed. Nonetheless, trials are complex things and there is bound to be some repetition in the telling, particularly where there are two separate but similar proceedings, the inquiry and the court-martial.

On the other hand, there is a tendency for the author to make his own determinations in ex cathedra fashion. For example, he flatly states that the law officer erred in allowing testimony of the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Corps' most colorful general officer "Chesty" Puller because the subjects of their testimony were not properly subjects of opinion evidence. While that is sometimes a valid objection to expert testimony, courts across the country allow such testimony every day. Besides, this was not a trial with a judge and jury; it was a court-martial with a board and a law officer. Suffice it to say that this question - and others - are arguable and it is for appellate authority to say whether or not the ruling was wrong.

The court-martial board consisted of seven officers, including six Marines and one member of the Navy Medical Corps. We are told little of the background of the board members except that three of the Marines were initially trained at Parris Island and one of the others had been assigned to the construction of the rifle range near Ribbon Creek. The first thing that a trial lawyer wants to know is about the members of the jury, their experience, knowledge and general background. More information about these men would have been helpful.

Finally, one wonders whether the average reader understood the distinction between negligent homicide and involuntary manslaughter, which was a critical distinction in Berman's "clever" defense argument. Absent evidence of gross negligence, civilian jurisprudence would have treated this incident much like a fatal automobile accident. It is hard to understand why McKeon was confined to the brig through this entire ordeal.

Good background about the infamous bootcamp incident, but left me wondering about what else happened to Platoon 71. Did they stay together and graduate as a platoon? What kind of service did the members have later in the Corps? How were they treated by other Marines when it became known that they were part of the McKeon incident? On our graduation day (7 yrs later) our Senior DI called the 10 or so members of our Platoon who hadn't been thumped upfront in the squad bay, and worked them all over. "Now you can call yourselves Marines!" he told them, to the rest of our satisfaction and enjoyment. A belated thanks to S.Sgt Wells, Cpl Wolliever, S.Sgt Bergeron for making a Marine of me. I was fortunate to never see combat, but the lessons you taught me at PI have stayed with me and have helped me on a number of occasions. Semper Fi

I haven't read the book yet but I was in the Marine Corp during Vietnam and I can tell you first hand that DIs, even when not drinking can make serious errors. I saw first hand injuries that could have been fatal if it weren't for luck. When you've been through Marine boot camp you can understand how a drill instructor, in that environment can make a serious error in judgement thinking that what he's doing is for the recruits good to toughen them up if he ever goes into combat or get's captured by the enemy. Some DIs it may just be a power trip.

I felt I was shivering cold and covered with swamp mud the way Stevens painted a word picture of this tragic event. The trial kept me turning pages into the wee hours of the morning. I expect a screen play will be written real soon from this book. A major motion picture will soon follow. With real events like this waiting to be put on film who needs fiction. If someone like Ron Howard picks up this book. I'm sure it would be his next project

This book went in depth, and sorted through the fiction to bring out the real story. I, being very interested in naval and marine affairs have personally researched the event, and this book, more than any other that I have read provided the most information, keeping me hanging on each page with interest. I would recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in the world, history, or who needs a good book that they can be enticed and enthralled in.