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Gl Gabriels Learn Their Noisy Trade at Pl's Field Music School
WHEN Marine Corps field musics go into battle they lay aside their bugles and drums. Guns make the music while they run messages for the command post, fill gaps in rifle squads, patrols and tank crews, man machine guns or help care for the wounded. Those with seagoing detachments serve wherever the commanding officer needs them most, and often are members of an ack-ack gun crew.
Military tradition has it that the bugler starts every day as the most unpopular guy in his outfit. Nobody loves his Reveiloo, and everybody forgets he also blows Chow Bumps and Liberty Call. He has to stand for a lot of ribbing and such pleasant little pranks as having his G-horn filled with sand or "accidentally" dropped overside when the transport shoves off for a combat zone. But there's more than that to the story of the Leatherneck drum and bugle boys, who have been in the forefront of every scrap and whose casualties have been extremely heavy in this war.
Field musics are trained at Parris Island and San Diego. Typical in many respects of field music students who have gone through the school at P. I. is James J. (Pete) Peterson. Pete is 18, which is about average for most of the Corps' 1400 buglers and drummers, and he hails from New York City.
Fifer and Drummer of Old Began the Tradition of Field Musics
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