By BGen Edwin H. Simmons, USMC(Ret)
Gen James L. Jones will be the third Commandant to continue serving in another capacity following his Commandancy. Gen Cates was the second to do so.
I first met Gen Clifton Bledsoe Cates, our 19th Commandant, at a reception marking his promotion to brigadier general held in the ballroom of Harry Lee Hall at Quantico in the spring of 1943. After the receiving line broke up, Been Cates stood by the fireplace mantel, uniformed in summer service with the red and green fouragerre of the Gth Marines on his shoulder and a long cigarette holder in his hand. He had arrived at Quantico in March, coming from Guadalcanal where he had commanded the Ist Marines. Now he was the Commandant of Marine Corps Schools. I was teaching map reading at the Officers Candidates Course, which occupied the redbrick barracks along Barnett Avenue. My lieutenant's bars had just changed from gold to silver. Standing there he was in my mind the picture of exactly what a Marine Corps general should be. I mustered up my courage and went over and spoke to him. He was pleasantly polite. Perhaps he was a little amused by the awed lieutenant.
Until the reception I had had only fleeting glimpses of Cates and his beautiful wife, Jane, sometimes to be seen in their black Ford convertible coupe with the red leather seats. I remember he wore a nonregulation trenchcoat. Maybe it was a Burberry and a souvenir from France. And there was always the cigarette holder. Later I would suppose that he used that filter-type holder out of deference to his gas-damaged lungs.
Cates was born on 31 August 1893 at Cates Landing, the family farm on the Mississippi River where his father grew cotton, near the little town of Tiptonville in the northwestern corner of Tennessee. Growing up, he lived a farm boy's life with plenty of time spent on the river and in the fields and woods. He attended country schools until old enough to go away to Missouri Military Academy, a preparatory school across the river in Mexico, MO. There he was an honor student and a four-letter man in sports. Next he attended the University of Tennessee where he made his letter in baseball and football (he played guard) and graduated with a bachelor of laws degree in 1916. He was back at the university in the spring of 1917, preparing himself for the state bar examination, when war was declared against Germany. The Marine Corps was offering reserve second lieutenant commissions to university graduates with a minimum military qualification. ("The Marine Corps, what's that?" Cates asked the recruiter.) He accepted one of the commissions and went on active service on 13 June, reporting first to Parris Island-still, officially, Port Royal-- South Carolina for 2 weeks of basic training. Years later he said, "Outside the rifle range part of it, there wasn't any of it any good."
In July 1917 he was moved to Quantico where, after 2 months of officer training-- also, he thought, not very useful-he was assigned to the 96th Company, 2d Battalion, 6th Marines, then being formed. The battalion commander was Maj Thomas Holcomb, a future Commandant. Holcomb's battalion sailed for France in the Navy's new transport, USS Henderson, in January 1918. Winter was not the time for a pleasant North Atlantic crossing, and the Henderson was not known for its smooth riding qualities. "It was an exceedingly rough trip," remembered Cates.
He would stay with the 96th Company in all of the battles fought by the 4th Brigade of Marines, which was one of two infantry brigades in the U.S. 2d Infantry Division. First taste of trench warfare was with the French in the Toulons-Troyons sector near Verdun. "That was good training... we got in patrolling and we had our baptism of artillery fire ... plenty of it."
Then in June came Belleau Wood where Cates attracted favorable attention in the fight for the village of Bouresches. As he said later, "There was very little teamwork. You usually just got up, rushed in, fired, and there wasn't any covering fire, any maneuvering. You just got up and went forward." The company commander was killed, and for a time Lt Cates held the village with something like 20 men. After Bouresches, the 96th Company went into Belleau Wood itself. Cates was both gassed ("I was pretty badly burned around my legs and underneath my arms and forehead . . .") and wounded (a shell fragment dented his helmet and nearly did him in) during the nearly month- long battle. There was not yet a Purple Heart Medal, but there was a wound stripe to be worn on his uniform sleeve. Later, there would be a Navy Cross and an Army Distinguished Service Cross for Bouresches with an Oak Leaf Cluster, signifying a second award, for Belleau. On the 4th of July the French held a big parade in Paris to honor the Americans. Cates was given the distinction of leading the platoon sent by the 2d Battalion, 6th Marines.
In mid July the 4th Brigade fought a 2-day battle at Soissons. In the second day of the attack, the 6th Marines attacked from the town of Vierzy across a wheat field toward Tigny. As they stood on the line of departure, Cates took a spent bullet in the shoulder. The Marines advanced across a wheat field behind a flimsy line of French light Renault tanks, waves and waves of men extending across the front for 2 miles. ("It was the most beautiful attack that I have ever seen," remembered Cates.) The company commander was killed, and Cates again took over temporary command of the 96th Company. Cates himself was wounded a third time, a shell fragment that cut his leg. Holding a captured bit of trench, he sent back a scribbled message to his battalion commander, Maj Holcomb:
I have only 2 men left out of my company and 20 out of other companies. We need support but it is almost suicidal to try to get here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant artillery barrage is upon us. I have no one on my left, and only a few on my right. I will hold.
His performance got him a citation for gallantry in action that became a Silver Star when that medal was established in 1932.
After a rest period near Nancy, the Marines moved into the Marbache sector, an agreeably quiet sector with the Germans on one side of the Moselle and the Americans on the other. Marbache was followed by St. Mihiel, the first battle fought by GEN John J. Pershing's First American Army. It was a well-planned battle designed to pinch out a salient south of Verdun that the Germans had held since 1915-helped considerably by a German decision, previously made, to withdraw. Cates had no active part in it. When the 96th Company went into the attack, he was left behind with a cadre upon which to rebuild the company if casualties were heavy.
Next came the fight for Blanc Mont, a fortified ridge line long held by the Germans. The French found it too tough a nut to crack. Marine MajGen John A. Lejeune, then commanding the U.S. 2d Infantry Division that included the 4th Brigade of Marines, promised French Gen Henri Gouraud that the Americans would take the ridge, and they did. lstLt Cates led an overstrength 96th Company-9 lieutenants and more than 250 men-into the attack. For the jumpoff they moved into a trench fought over by the French: "It was dark as pitch and the ditches were full of dead boche and Frenchmen." His company went "over the top" yelling a "regular Indian war whoop," he wrote to his mother after the battle. He was sure it "put the fear of God into the boche." Cates' performance at Blanc Mont brought him another citation for gallantry that became an Oak Leaf Cluster for his eventual Silver Star.
Finally there was the Meuse-Argonne, arguably the largest battle ever fought by the American Army. By then Cates had been wounded six times and several times gassed and had picked up the nickname "Lucky." The Meuse-Argonne was not a hard fight for the Marines of the 96th Company. Cates wrote home to his mother:
It was not the fighting, but it was the cold, rainy, muddy weather. It rained everyday and was bitter cold. We were drenched to the skin and our blankets were soaked .... I went in with a company of 250 and I came out with less than 50. Only I was killed and 28 wounded; the others were sent back sick.
The fighting ended on 11 November 1918, and the foot march into Germany began. The war had cost the 96th Company 131 Marines killed and 491 wounded and gassed.
These war years saw the cementing of Cates' lifelong friendship with John W. Thomason, Jr., a fellow junior officer in the 6th Marines. Thomason's stories-which he both wrote and illustrated-in the Saturday Evening Post of Marines in France, the Caribbean, and China would bring many of us into the Corps. Cates was right out of the pages of Thomason.
After a wonderful leave in London and victory parades in Paris and London, in which Cates, now a captain, commanded a composite company drawn from the 4th Brigade, he came home from Germany in September 1919. With the war over, Cates reverted to first lieutenant. MajGen Commandant George Barnett, impressed by his record, made him his aide-de-camp with collateral duties as White House aide-duties that are now performed by officers assigned to Marine Barracks, Washington, DC.
Barnett fell into disfavor with Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. MajGen Lejeune, who had commanded the Marines in France, became Commandant, and in Octoher 1920 Barnett was relegated to command of the newly formed Department of the Pacific in San Francisco. Cates, recently married to the former Jane McIlhenny of Washington-the wedding held in St. Thomas Church-continued as his aide. A year later son Clifton, Jr. was born.
Cates was promoted once more to captain and would remain one for 13 years. He stayed in San Francisco with Barnett until June 1923. ("It was 3 years wasted," said Cates, "because we didn't have a thing to do.") He then went to sea as Marine detachment commander on the battleship California.
In May 1925 he began a year as a company commander with the 4th Marine Regiment at San Diego. Then came recruiting duty in Spokane with eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana as his territory. "I loved it and my wife hated it," he said. Each month he quickly filled his quota-about 10 recruits-and spent most of his time hunting and fishing. Later he was assigned to Omaha, NE and then to a desk job with the American Battle Monuments Commission in Washington, DC. GEN Pershing headed the commission and Cates got to see him up close. ("I wouldn't say coldblooded, but I mean he was all business.") MAJ Dwight D. Eisenhower was also with the commission. He and Cates did not always agree. Cates thought that Eisenhower slighted the Marine brigade in some of the particulars in the guidebook to American battlefields in France that was being prepared.
In June 1929 Cates rejoined the 4th Marines, now stationed in Shanghai. For the next 3 years he served as a company commander and the regiment's athletic officer. He developed a championship rugby team. ("The British brought teams from New Zealand, Australia, and every other place to play us. And, of course, in the other sports we were just as good.") His wife and son, Clifton, Jr., had accompanied him to Shanghai, and his daughter Ann was born there. The mission of the 4th Marines was to protect American interests in the International Settlement. When hostilities broke out between the Japanese and the Chinese, the 4th Marines, in Cates' words, "had a grandstand seat." ("We watched the battles going on across the [Woosung] creek, in fact, right across the creek.")
On his return from China in 1932, Cates was detailed to the Army Industrial College in Washington, DC for a yearlong course. Completing the course and now a major, he was transferred to Quantico to attend the Senior Course at the Marine Corps Schools. After a day or so of classes he was abruptly moved.
The 7th Marines was being reactivated for service in the Caribbean. ("That was a time when Cuba was kicking out one president after another.") Cates was assigned to the 2d Battalion, which in July boarded the old battleship Wyoming. For the next year the Wyoming with its afloat battalion cruised around Cuba with about half the year spent in Havana harbor awaiting orders to evacuate American citizenry-orders that never came. The battalion eventually offloaded at Port Everglades, FL and built a tent camp. Cates came back to Quantico to complete the Senior Course.
In September 1935 he was transferred to Washington, DC and assigned to the War Plans Section of the Division of Operations and Training ("Pots and Pans") at Headquarters Marine Corps on Constitution Avenue. ("We had plans to take certain islands in the Pacific in the event we had war with Japan.")
In 1937 when full-fledged warfare between the Chinese and Japanese caused the Shanghai garrison to be reinforced, Cates, now a lieutenant colonel, returned to China, this time with the 6th Marines from San Diego. The 6th Marines joined the 4th Marines in Shanghai to form the 2d Brigade of Marines under Been John C. "Johnny Beau" Beaumont. The Japanese took over Shanghai after a 3-month battle, and the crisis subsided.
When the 6th Marines came home, Cates stayed on in China and was given command of the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines. "It was easy living and cheap," remembered Cates. "We were able to train well, practice street riots, and even get down to little things like building bunkers and things like that." One of his company commanders was then-Capt Wallace M. Greene, a future Commandant, who showed a special interest in riot control. In one particular incident, Cates deployed his battalion to block the passage of a Japanese truck convoy through the International Settlement. He was prepared to open fire. The Japanese major blinked first.
Relations with the Japanese, always strained, worsened after the sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay in the Yangtze River. Still, Cates saw no immediate prospect of war with Japan when he left China in June 1939 to attend the Army War College (not yet the National War College) at what is now Fort McNair in Washington, DC. He was promoted to colonel while he was there. Completing the course in June 1940 he was next assigned as director of the Marine Officer's Basic School, then located in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. In the spring of 1942 MajGen Commandant Thomas Holcomb, who had been Cates' battalion commander in France, visited the class at Indiantown Gap, an old Pennsylvania National Guard camp where much of the field training was done. With the war against Japan underway, Cates asked to be given a regiment. Holcomb answered, "Well, I'll see what I can do for you."
So it was in May 1942 that Cates received command of the Ist Marines, Ist Marine Division, at New River, NC (later to become Camp Lejeune) just in time to take the newly reactivated regiment to Guadalcanal by way of New Zealand. "I was fortunate enough to have three good battalion commanders," Cates said. Lenard B. Cresswell had the 1st Battalion, Edwin A. Pollock had the 2d, and William N. "Wild Bill" McKelvy had the 3d. All were lieutenant colonels. Ninety percent of the red invent had less than a year's service. Fifty percent of his officers, Cates found, were lieutenants he had trained at The Basic School.
The 1st Marines had an easy landing at Guadalcanal, coming ashore behind the more experienced 5th Marines on 7 August. The 1st Battalion, 1st Marines was sent off to the airfield, replacing the 5th Marines that was moving out to cross the Lunga River. The 2d Battalion plunged into the jungle to take "Grassy Knoll," which turned out to be Mount Austin some 5 miles inland. The 3d Battalion stayed behind to hold the left flank of the beachhead. Luckily, there was no opposition. The separated battalions were then brought together into a more or less continuous perimeter enclosing the beachhead. The regiment's first battle came on 20 August when the Ichiki Detachment (actually the reinforced 2d Battalion, 28th Infantry) crossed the Ilu River (the Marines, lacking maps, thought it was the Tenaru) in a night attack and hit Pollock's 2d Battalion. Cresswell's Ist Battalion crossed the Ilu and came down on the Japanese flank and rear. In a letter to artistwriter Thomason, who by then was also a colonel, Cates wrote:
They [the Japanese] were walking right in the edge of the surf and got tangled up in some barb wire that we had salvaged from fences. They started jabbering so our bunch let go with everything they had .... It was a grand mess for a few minutes .... I maneuvered a battalion around their rear and cut them off.
The Ichiki Detachment-caught between the two battalions and the sea-was literally destroyed. Col Kiyono Ichiki burned his colors and shot himself. The 12-hour battle cost the 1st Marines 100 casualties.
The 1st Marines departed Guadalcanal on 22 December. Cates did not consider the fighting to have been heavy. His regiment was not involved in the battles for Bloody Ridge and the Matanikau. For the 1st Marines the worst enemy had been not Japanese bullets but malaria. The regiment went to Brisbane, Australia, which was bad for malaria, and then to Melbourne where life was good. After a few weeks in Melbourne, Cates said goodbye to his regiment and flew home in an old B-24 bomber ("And I might say, of all the trips I have taken, it was the worst . . .") and, with promotion to brigadier general, became Commandant of Marine Corps Schools.
He and Jane enjoyed Quantico. A fine set of quarters went with the job. Ann was a schoolgirl. Clifton, Jr. was at sea in the Pacific as an ensign on the battleship Pennsylvania. His Class of 1943 at the Naval Academy had graduated a year early because of the war.
Cates stayed on at Quantico until June 1944 when, now a major general, he was given command of the 4th Marine Division, then mopping up on Saipan. He arrived there on the 4th of July, in time for the shore-to-shore landing 2 weeks later against neighboring Tinian. He reconnoitered possible landing sites from a light observation aircraft, causing considerable nervousness among his staff who thought he might be shot down and captured. The division landed across a very narrow beach on the north end of the island and formed up the next day with the 2d Marine Division for a weeklong shoulder-to-shoulder sweep southward that secured the island in what was a model operation. ("I think the men really enjoyed it.")
The 4th Marine Division returned to Maui in the Hawaiian Islands in August. Maui offered perfect terrain to train for the assault on Iwo Jima that was to come. ("[We] tried to make everything just as near like Iwo Jima as we possibly could.") As always, Cates considered an active athletic schedule a great booster for morale. In addition to interregimental sports, the division developed a football team that rated as best in the islands-at least in Cates' opinion. "That football team went into Iwo Jima," Cates said later, "and I would say that 80 percent became casualties-just because they were leaders."
The 4th Marine Division landed across Yellow and Blue Beaches on the right flank at Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945. Col Walter W. Wensinger's 23d and Col John R Lanigan's 25th Marines were in the assault with Col Walter I. Jordan's 24th Marines in reserve. It was D+4 before Cates could get ashore with his headquarters. He set up his command post in a captured Japanese blockhouse foul with the stench of decomposing bodies. The division fought a hard yard-by-yard fight that included taking Hill 362, the "Meatgrinder." ("That right flank was a bitch if there ever was one.") His patrols reached the northeast coast on 10 March, but it was not until 26 March that the island was declared secured. The 4th Marine Division returned to its camp on Maui. Training began once again. There were rumors that the division was going to be used to retake Wake Island. Then in August the war ended.
In comparing his own combat experiences in World Wars I and II, Cates said:
I might say there was a lot of difference fighting as a second lieutenant and as a colonel and major general. In fact, in World War II I didn't have any close calls that I remember .... Troops in the Pacific didn't get onefourth or one-fifth of the artillery fire that the Germans have us in World War I.
In December 1945 Cates came back from the Pacific and was made president of the Marine Corps Equipment Board at Quantico. This was sort of a holding job until 6 months later he could become the Commanding General, Marine Barracks, Quantico, with Col Ed Pollock as his chief of staff. This put me under Cates' command once again, as a captain well down in the pecking order. In January 1946 I had come back from North China and was assigned as managing editor of the Marine Corps Gazette. It was a halcyon time to be at Quantico. As the Marine Corps shrank in size with postwar demobilization, there was an increasing concentration of talent at the Marine Corps Schools. Lessons of World War II were being digested. How would the Marines get across the beach the next time? How would we adapt to the atomic age? The possibilities of helicopters were being examined. Igor Sikorsky was a frequent visitor. "There is no question about it," said Cates later. "The Marines were responsible for the development of the helicopter."
My chief recollection of Cates was of him at the night baseball games played on the diamond that was close to where the Gen Alfred M. Gray Marine Corps Research Center stands now. He had a handson approach to the management and coaching of the team. We always cheered when he left the stands or players' bench and went out on the diamond to give a little advice to the pitcher or remonstrate with the umpire.
The football team also came in for some serious command attention. In August 1946 Cates picked LtCol Austin "Shifty" Shofner to be head coach and gave him orders that he would have a winning team. Shofner, like Cates, had been a letter man at Tennessee. Taken prisoner by the Japanese when the 4th Marines was surrendered at Corregidor, he had escaped prison camp and spent most of the rest of the war with the Filipino guerrillas. Shofner had no All-Americans on his squad and only a few players listed college experience. With the team playing a mixed schedule of both college teams and other Service teams, 1946 with three wins and eight losses was not a great year. The following year, the Quantico team lost the first game to Washington and Lee, but then ran up 12 straight victories and took the All-Navy title.
Gen Alexander A. Vandegrift's 4-year term ended on 31 December 1947, and President Truman had to choose a successor. The two leading contenders were Cates and Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. They had remarkably similar careers, from command of platoons during World War I through command of divisions during World War II. Truman called them to the White House and told them that as a military man he had always believed in seniority. He said to Shepherd:
General Cates is senior to you, and he is older than you are. I'm going to make him Commandant this year, and I trust that I'll be able to have you follow him 4 years from now.
So it was that on 1 January 1948, with a promotion to four stars, Cates became the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
When the North Koreans invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950, Cates had no voice in the deliberations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) (of whom the Commandant was still not one), but he buttonholed the Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Forrest Sherman, and offered a brigade for immediate deployment. Sherman, no great friend of the Marines, was not much interested, but on 1 July he sent a "blue flag" (back-channel message) to VADM C. Turner Joy, Commander, Naval Forces, Far East, authorizing him to offer GEN Douglas MacArthur, the Commander in Chief, Far East, a Marine air-ground brigade. GEN MacArthur quickly sent a request for the brigade, and it appeared on the JCS agenda for 3 July. Cates was not invited to attend, but he went anyway and was allowed to sit in. The Joint Chiefs approved the deployment.
Next day, 4 July, old friend Lem Shepherd, now a lieutenant general and Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, flew to Tokyo and on 10 July met with MacArthur. MacArthur went to the wall map of Korea in his office and stabbed at Inchon with the stem of his corncob pipe: "If I only had the 1st Marine Division under my command again, I would land them here." Shepherd told MacArthur that the rest of the division could be ready by the first of September. MacArthur had Shepherd draft a message to the JCS for his signature asking for the division.
Two days later, the Ist Provisional Marine Brigade sailed for Korea, arrived at Pusan on 2 August, and was plunged into defense of the shrinking perimeter as a kind of fire brigade. Filling out the 5th Marines to go to Korea had about stripped bare the Ist Marine Division at Camp Pendleton. When the Joint Chiefs asked Cates how he planned to bring the 1st Marine Division up to war strength, Cates told them he had a two-pronged approach-half-strength battalions would be detached from Camp Lejeune's 2d Marine Division and sent to California to form a framework for the reactivation of the 1st and 7th Marine regiments, to be fleshed out by the Gallup of the Organized Reserve.
I was in the 1st Marines and we sailed from San Diego on 14 August, 10 days after our activation. Gen Cates was on the pier to see his old regiment off. He is supposed to have said something like, "If you don't get that mess over there straightened out in a hurry, I'll be out there to see why." The thrown-together Ist Marine Division landed at Inchon on 15 September.
Meanwhile, Cates was having his innings with short-tempered President Truman. A California congressman had written to the President urging that the Commandant of the Marine Corps be given a voice in the JCS. Truman responded with a tart personal note:
For your information the Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal Stalin's .... The Chief of Naval Operations is the Chief of Staff of the Navy of which the Marines are a part.
The story got into the newspapers on 5 September. Bombarded with protests from the public, Truman quickly realized he had made an enormous gaffe. Next day he sent a written apology to Cates that began, "I sincerely regret the unfortunate choice of language which I used. . . ." The Marine Corps League was in town for its annual convention. Two mornings later Truman, accompanied by Cates, went to the Statler Hotel and faced the veterans in person.
Cates shrugged it all off, at least in public. An unfounded rumor went around headquarters that he had turned the presidential portrait in his office face to the wall. We in the Ist Marines, Cates' old regiment, loading out for Inchon from Kobe, Japan, chalked messages on the tarpaulins covering our trucks, the mildest being, "Horrible Harry's Police Force."
A battle of a different sort was being fought on Washington's Capitol Hill-one for the survival of the Marine Corps. The Army, if it had had its way, would have reduced the Marine Corps to largely ceremonial status. GEN Eisenhower recommended that the Marines have no units larger than a regiment. The Navy, fighting the emerging separate Air Force to save naval aviation and its carriers, did not much care what happened to the Marines. Cates' predecessor, Gen Vandegrift, fought a defensive action, just as he had in the first stages of Guadalcanal, and the Marine Corps survived, but not by much. The National Security Act, as passed in 1947, created the Department of Defense with subordinate Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The future status of the Marine Corps was left unclear. Cates moved over into the offensive and laid the groundwork for the Douglas-Mansfield Bill. In its final legislated form, Public Law 416, 82d Congress, it provided for a floor of three active Marine divisions and aircraft wings and coequal status for the Commandant with the JCS when matters of Marine Corps interest were being considered. By no great coincidence both Senator Paul H. Douglas of Illinois and Congressman Mike Mansfield of Montana had both served in the Marines.
Shepherd became Commandant, as promised by Truman, on 1 January 1952, the first Marine Commandant to sit regularly with the JCS. As a small bit of pettiness, the Joint Chiefs did not seat him at their big table but at a small table off to the side.
A quirk in the law, written into the budget as a Korean wartime measure, required officers to serve until age 62 before retiring-although there was some provision for exceptions. Cates, perhaps reminded of Barnett's similar position in 1920, reverted to lieutenant general and began, as he asked of Shepherd, his third tour as Commandant of the Marine Corps Schools. By then I, now a major, had long since left Quantico, gone to Korea, and was back and assigned to Training and Replacement Command at Camp Pendleton. There was much speculation among my contemporaries as to why Cates would take a bust to three stars and stay on active duty. Most of us thought he could have gotten around the age 62 technicality if he had wanted to. My own guesses were that he just didn't want to leave the Marine Corps. He was comfortable with Shepherd being Commandant, and a final tour at Quantico would be enjoyable.
This last tour of Quantico duty, Cates found, "wasn't a breeze because at that time we were having a world of visitors." With its officers club, golf course, and spacious commanding general's quarters, the base became a favorite site for high-level conferences, including several attended by President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, Secretary of Defense Charles "Engine Charlie" Wilson, and all the joint Chiefs. The baseball and football teams continued to do well.
Cates retired on 30 June 1954 at which time he regained his fourth star, pinned in place by Gen Shepherd. He settled into country life at Edgewater on South River near Annapolis, MD with the intention of doing a good deal of hunting and fishing. The household included two hunting dogs and a French poodle named "Monsieur Beaucaire." Summers were spent at a cottage in Prout's Neck, ME. For 2 years he served as National Campaign Chairman for the United Service Organization, a fundraising task that kept him on the road much of the time.
I saw him once more-in the late 1960s. He had come out of the Henderson Hall post exchange and was getting into his car. It was a bright fall day, and in his Harris tweed jacket and Tyrolean hat he was the very model of a southern country gentleman. I made myself known to him. He did not pretend to remember me, but he was courteous and friendly. We talked a bit about his life in retirement and then we said goodbye.
Gen Cates, 19th Commandant, died on 4 June 1970, just short of age 77, in the naval hospital at Annapolis of emphysema. The gas and cigarettes had exacted a final toll as they did for so many veterans of World War 1. I missed the funeral as I was back in Vietnam for my second tour. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington after Episcopal services in the Old Chapel. One thing was missing-the horse with the empty saddle and the reversed boots in the stirrups. The general said he didn't want that, and if it happened, he would be back to haunt the perpetrator.
At the Gazette
When I joined the Marine Corps Gazette as managing editor in January 1946, the magazine was in the act of moving from 1326 New York Avenue in Washington, DC to offices in Breckinridge Hall in Quantico. This put me in a catbird seat to watch what was happening at Quantico. I am quite proud of what we published in the Gazette during the Cates years, 1946-48.
The names of the officers then stationed at Quantico and writing for the Gazette read like a Marine Corps Who's Who and include Alpha L. Bowser, Jr.; Robert E. Cushman, Jr.; James A. Donovan, Jr.; Gordon D. Gayle; Carl W. Hoffman; Robert D. Heinl, Jr.; Frederick P. "Toots" Henderson; James D. "Don" Hittie; William K. "Willy K" Jones; Keith B. McCutcheon; F. Brooke Nihart; Edward W. Snedeker; Lewis W. Walt; Robert C. "English Bob" Williams; and Rathvon M. Tompkins. Most of these men were then serving in the grade of lieutenant colonel, most were future generals, and one, Cushman, became Commandant.
We revamped the makeup of the Gazette in those years and some vestiges of the innovations made still survive, most notably the end mark us mc still used at the close of articles.
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