This is the story about me being in my one and only police lineup. A million or so years ago around 1978 I was in the Marine Corps stationed in Charleston, South Carolina. If I remember correctly I was spending a quiet evening at the barracks watching TV. In town was a different story. Two Marines from our base decided to stop in to the Village Inn Pizza place for pizza and beer. At the time they had no idea that there was a Navy retirement party going on at the same place. The Navy had reserved the back room for the party and there were between 75 and 100 sailors in attendance. One of the Marines went to the bathroom and there were 3 sailors there also. The sailors had been drinking for about 3 hours at this point and they decided that 3 on 1 in the bathroom would be a fair fight and normally it would but they were drunk. There was a lot of noise in the bathroom and the other Marine joined him in the bathroom. 2 of the sailors were unconscious and the third one got away and got back to his buddies. The sailors came swarming out like ants at a picnic and basically beat the crap out of the Marines. Feeling pretty good about themselves they tossed the Marines out into the parking lot. The Marines were feeling pretty dejected and hurt and they came back to base to lick their wounds.
When they got back to base they checked in with the Sargent of the guard when the Officer of the day saw them he came out of the office and said " What the Hell happened here"? Once the story was told to him he was livid and told the SOG to knock on every door and get as many Marines as he could find. While he was doing that he had 5 vans and 3 trucks pull up outside. This Captain probably overstepped his limits but he didn't care at that point.
About 40 Marines headed to the Village Inn Pizza. When we got there it was about 10:00 and the party was still going strong. We marched in and went straight to the back room. Our Captain went to speak to one of the Navy officers and it went downhill from there. I think it might have been okay but the Navy office pushed my Captain. My Captain punched the Navy officer and he dropped like a rock and so it began. After about 10 minutes 4 Charleston police showed up and jumped up and down and ran around in circles and did nothing. The restaurant was a mess with bleeding and unconscious sailors laying around the broken furniture and we left and went back to the barracks and thought it was over but it wasn't.
Monday morning the Charleston police and the manager of the Village Inn Pizza place showed up at the base to pick out and prosecute the Marines involved. So out CO had EVERYONE fall-out on the parade deck. There were about 250 of us in formation for the police lineup. The police and the restaurant manager walked up and down looking at everyone. After about 10 minutes the manager pulled the police aside and told him "Damn it they all look alike".
That was the end of it but we were restricted from going back to the Village Inn Pizza place. How did I ever live this long?
