In the Rough

Somewhere in the Southwest Pacific white-haired Master Gunnery Sergeant Lou Diamond read his citation: ". . . outstanding performance of duty on Tulagi and Guadalcanal ... an ideal Marine." In Washington the Marine Corps proudly released the record of its paragon, already famed (TIME, Feb. 22) for the history his mortar crew made in the Solomons.

In seven cruises (26 years in all) Lou Diamond has served all over the world. He fought at Belleau Wood, four more major battles of World War I. He knows Shanghai and Guantanamo like old homes, has enough campaign medals to pose for a liquor ad.

A run-of-the-mine rifleman, Lou developed an accuracy famed in an outfit noted for its shooting, once he took up mortars. On Guadal he boasted he could lob a shell down a chimney, and did. When a Jap cruiser closed in to shore, Lou lobbed a few shells at it (like firing bee-bees at a bomber), explained, "I wanted to check my azimuth and it's just right." Many a mortar crew in the Solomons was Diamond-polished.

"I'll beat da rap." As the Marines expanded to war strength, Lou Diamond was the ideal liaison between crusty old-timers and impressionable recruits. He taught quick action by threats of .yardbird detail and the rough side of a corrugated tongue. His men swore by Lou, remembered the time he dared a colonel to court-martial him for filching extra food for his men. "I'll beat da rap," said he, "I did it for da boys."

Built like a moving van (around 5 ft. 10 in., 200 Ibs.), Lou Diamond has one of the most notable paunches in the Marines. Beer did it. At Quantico he regularly stationed a detail to buy him a case when the PX opened at 4 o'clock, knocked it off, one gulp to the bottle.

Long ago Lou turned down the idea he'd apply for officer's training. Said he belligerently: "Nobody can make a gentle man out of me." In the Solomons he refused a commission in the field: "You just want to make me a second lieutenant so you can give me hell all the time."

Certain facts about Ideal Marine Lou Diamond the Corps admitted reluctantly: that his real first name is Leland, that he is 53 years old, got through grammar school and eight years as switchman on the Michigan Central ($62.50 a week) be fore signing up in 1917. These contradict what every Marine has long sworn is truth: that Lou Diamond is at least 200, joined the Corps in 1775, has never been anything but a Marine.