Bill Pastore, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Jason Hardy, September 20th, 2006: part of the Saving the legacy project

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brigad i . A Marine orps Division i an army in its own. It got it wn air; it g tit own artillery; its self-sustaining on its own. It's just a small army. o when th y br ught that provisional brigade in the Marine Corps hadn't been gutted like the rest of th m had. We'd been gutted, but we still had Second World War leaders. We had Chesty Puller. We had Holland Mad Smith. We had Tumidge. We had all these guys that, hell they were Distinguished Service Cross wearers, Medal of Honor wearers. These guys had been through from the Banana Wars on, First World War. They knew combat. So that's the kind of leaders we had. JAS: Didn't you think it was different in the other branches in the military? BILL: Most of them had gone. Most of them were out of there. Usually combat troops, one war, they've had enough. That's it. So their combat people had been transferred and promoted into headquarter units and into non-combat units, where the Marine Corps was so small. You have two divisions: First Division, and the Second Division was partial. They had to take part of the Second Division to put it into the First Division to make a division. That's how far down they'd knocked us. The army was the same way. So when that First Division, First Provisional Brigade got to the Pusan perimeter, they said, "Hold this perimeter." Well, don't tell a marine to hold something if you don't want him to hold it, and that's when it started changing. They didn't back up. It was so bad in the army, General Dean was walking down the streets with a 3.2 bazooka hunting tanks! A Division Commander! JAS: Wow. BILL: And got captured. He was captured; spent the whole Korean War as a prisoner. 130