Worth More Dead

romance was a game of conquest to him; he wasn’t looking for any serious relationship.
    When they graduated from ALQ-76, the Cherry Point school, Roland and his closest friends became lance corporals, and they celebrated at a bar in Morehead City. They were next transferred to Headquarters and Maintenance Squadron 14 in El Toro, California.
    Seven of the highly trained Marines from Marine Corps Avionic School (MCAS) were soon notified that they had less than twenty-four hours to pack up and head overseas; they were ordered to travel in civilian clothing and board civilian airlines to Hiroshima, Japan. Once there, they changed into fatigue uniforms and flew in military aircraft to Cubi Point in the Philippines.
    While the Marines were stationed in the Philippines, Pitre—who ignored the venereal disease warnings in the movies they were required to watch—contracted a painful dose of gonorrhea. Because he’d bragged so much about his success with women, his buddies were merciless as they tormented him. “We’d follow him to the latrine when he’d go to relieve himself, and we’d wait outside so we could listen to him whimpering in pain. Naturally, we’d either imitate him or just laugh our butts off.”
    Eventually the penicillin shots he received kicked in, and Pitre recovered. He’d pulled so many practical jokes on the other guys in his unit that nobody really felt sorry for him.
    After that, Pitre slowed down on his dating by the numbers and became semimonogamous when he moved in with a Filipina whose nickname was “Baby.”
    “I particularly remember this,” his buddy says, “because when we finally got back to the States, Pete tried to get off-base housing by telling the Marines that he had gotten married to Baby while we were in the Philippines. When he told me he had gotten married, I wrote to her to find out if that was in fact the case. I remembered her address because I had visited the house on occasion while I was there: 550 Santa Rita. By this time, I knew not to take Pete at his word on anything.”
    Baby wrote back, telling him that she had never married Roland Pitre, had never even considered it. “When I showed her letter to Pete, he was the typical kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Silly grin. No explanation.”
    The two Marines stayed in the same unit, waiting in El Toro for their next assignment. After a few months, they were transferred to Iwakuni, Japan. “We both found places to live off base,” his long-ago friend says, noting that the base housing had two dozen men to a room “unless you were a sergeant. Pete was a regular at my house for parties or just to hang out. I don’t recall any serious scams or activities that Pete was involved in at this time, but he did get involved in the streaking craze. People said he streaked the BX [Base Exchange] as well as an on-base softball game.”
    Pete Pitre may have run naked around the Japanese base to show off; anyone who ever knew him really well commented that he was exceptionally well-endowed.
    The Marines were young men in their prime, all interested in having fun and partying. Although his buddy didn’t trust the man he called Pete to tell him the truth or to be there for anything that counted, he liked him well enough.
    In their off-duty hours, the young Marines threw parties. “We had a lot of parties at my place, so Pete spent a lot of time there, drinking, talking, just passing the time. Somewhere, I still have a tape of a time when Pete and I conspired to get another buddy of ours to sing a particularly risqué song. Of course, he didn’t know he was being recorded!”
    Roland Pitre had always had a short fuse, and he got in a little trouble when he punched a gunnery sergeant, but as always he talked his way out of big trouble. He did his job well in the Marines, and so he remained in the service even after some of his friends opted for civilian life. His best friend in the Corps was back at Cherry Point, awaiting his discharge, when Pitre came to see him.
    “Pete’s story was that he had been ordered back to the States to appear as a witness in a trial against some of his doper buddies. And, of course, he had to make it more interesting by telling me that someone had taken a shot at him—on base!”
    That was not even vaguely believable, but that was Roland Pitre, and all his friends knew it. He was a compulsive liar, but they were on to him. He wasn’t a bad guy; you just couldn’t believe what he