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The Home Depot Orléans On
Tomorrow is the acknowledgment of Veterans Day. On Saturday — the absolute date — there’ll be a array on Campbell Avenue and Jefferson Street. It begins at 11 a.m. A meet-and-greet with bounded veterans at the City Market Building bliss off at 9:30 a.m. They deserve our account and thanks.
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Today’s adventure doesn’t absorb action veterans. But it’s about two guys who nonetheless served their country aboveboard and patriotically in the military. Bob Price and Bobby Ragland anniversary spent years in the Marine Corps Reserves. They’re both now 82.
Neither saw armed battle overseas. But locally, their engineering assemblage fought fires, congenital a Boy Scout affected and performed added accessible services. And attributable to an odd set of circumstances, Price and Ragland absolutely actually became affiche boys for Marine Corps Affluence recruiting in the aboriginal 1960s. Elements of Roanoke’s mural served as the backdrop.
Sportscaster and radio allocution appearance host Greg Roberts put me assimilate this adventure awhile back. Respectfully (but additionally impishly), Roberts pitched it as “The Battle of Mill Mountain.” Price and Ragland don’t necessarily anticipate of it in those terms. But afterwards affair them, attractive at the posters and audition their tales, I could see what Roberts was talking about.
Price is the retired buyer of R.L. Price Construction Inc. in Salem. He lives in the Bradshaw Road breadth of western Roanoke County. At the advancement of a Marine-reservist neighbor, he abutting as a 17-year-old aerial academy inferior in June 1952, during the Korean War. He ashore with the affluence aback he went on to Virginia Tech.
“The assemblage was rebuilding because they had been mobilized” for Korea, Price recalled. Because of his adolescent age, “I had to get my astronomic and dad to sign.”
Ragland, who lives in arctic Roanoke County abreast Brookside Golf Course, is retired from Appalachian Power. Over 38 years there, he rose to a position as the utility’s authoritative draftsman. He additionally spent 40 years apprenticeship amusement alliance football, basketball and baseball. The football acreage at Walrond Park is alleged in his honor.
He abutting the affluence in 1957 afterwards a brace years at Roanoke College and Virginia Tech. He spent his aboriginal six months on alive duty.
“I waited until I was earlier to join. I was 22. My aboriginal administrator [at ApCo] was a captain in the Marine Reserves. He talked me into it,” Ragland said. “It was a absolutely acceptable move, joining, because I got my abstract affidavit aback I was at [Marine Corps Recruit Depot] Parris Island, [South Carolina].”
Because Ragland was already in the reserves, he abhorred a best assignment on alive assignment afterwards the draft.
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Price served until June 1963 and larboard the affluence as an E-5 sergeant; Ragland served a absolute of six years, ascent to carve corporal. He larboard the affluence in 1963, too.
Apart from the six months Ragland spent on alive duty, his and Price’s training captivated a brace weeks anniversary summer abroad from home and two canicule a ages at the above arsenal on Assets Avenue. Some years ago, that was broken down. Now it’s acclimated as an able-bodied acreage and concert and anniversary venue.
Although the brace never saw combat, that didn’t beggarly their account was danger-free.
“We got acquaintance with aloof about every weapon they acclimated aback then,” Ragland recalled. That included live-round training with mortars and anti-tank guns. The closing were a two-person operation.
Ragland anecdotal one adventure afterwards a spell of infantry training, during which recruits accursed M-1 rifles loaded with blanks. Those still can backpack a bite abutting up.
“The [maneuver] was over. They got us all aback in formation. We had our rifles — they were declared to be austere [of armament in the chamber],” Ragland said. But the recruit continuing abutting to him still had a bare annular in the chamber. Aback the recruit approved to authenticate the burglarize was empty, it fired.
“It blew the helmet off my head,” Ragland recalled. “My aerial were campanology for a continued time afterwards that. We didn’t abrasion ear plugs or annihilation like that.”
When Price was injured, it was beneath dramatic. It happened during amphibian beforehand training. Afterwards landing, the reservists had to bright an obstacle fabricated of amateur concertina [barbed] wire. They were declared to lay a absolute on top of it and clutter over.
“My time came to jump and I didn’t bright it,” Price told me. Instead, he added or beneath face-planted into the wire. He didn’t anon butt he was all cut up, though.
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“One of the sergeants came up and said, ‘You’re activity to ailing bay,’ ” Price recounted. “I didn’t apprehend I had claret advancing bottomward off my face.”
There were 100 to 120 reservists in the Marine Corps Affluence 5th Engineer Company, Price and Ragland said. The part-time warriors came from all over western Virginia. Admitting they spent a lot of time in close-order boot at the old Roanoke armory, not all of their assignment was drills. For example, one time the aggregation congenital a Boy Scouts affected at Bennett Springs. On addition occasion, Price — but not Ragland — helped douse a ample brushfire.
“Fort Lewis Mountain bent blaze one year,” Price said. “They were attractive for volunteers. We fought blaze all night long.”
Then there was the time Ragland and Price got drafted as models. That was one of the duo’s odder weekends of assets duty. From their description, it sounds like absolutely an operation.
A aggregation of two or three Marine photographers catholic from Washington, D.C., to Roanoke, best acceptable during the abatement of 1960, they said. Price and Ragland begin out about this aback they showed up for approved account duty.
“They took 25 or 30 of us out. It was a two-day shoot,” Ragland recalled. “They got what I anticipate at the time were some of the adolescent [reservists]. I don’t bethink any of the ones from World War II, or any of the earlier ones. ... I apprehend they took 150 pictures.”
Some of the shots were forth the banks of the Roanoke River, adjoining to the old armory. One of the pictures depicted troops in the water.
The Marine Corps assumption afterwards nixed that photo for recruiting purposes because of apropos it evoked an abominable training tragedy. That happened in 1956 at Parris Island aback six Marine recruits drowned afterwards an adviser led them into addled flat amnion during caliginosity maneuvers. It became accepted as the Ribbon Creek incident.
A additional area for the photo shoot weekend was off Yellow Mountain Road, on Mill Mountain.
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Heading up Yellow Mountain from Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, the dupe were on the right, afore you get to the atom area the Fishburn Parkway bypass stands today, Price said. It ability be abreast what is currently the Mill Mountain campground.
That’s area one of the Marine photographers staged and attempt the iconic account that concluded up on the Marine Corps Affluence recruiting poster. It appearance Ragland on the ground, analysis a 30-caliber apparatus gun at a absent enemy. Price looms over him in a semi-crouch, appropriate duke in the air, as if he’s adorable troops abaft him to advance.
“We were advancing bottomward the hill,” Ragland recalled. “[The photographer] told us how he capital us to pose. He told me to appear bottomward the hill, dive and put the [bipod] down. And Bob was declared to be appropriate behind.”
“How they chose us I accept no idea,” Price said.
I accept an abstraction about that.
Though he’s a lot earlier and slower these days, Price is a big guy. It wouldn’t accept been an exaggeration to say he had the adamant acceptable looks of amateur John Wayne. Ragland is beneath and slighter. As a 20-something, he could accept anesthetized for a adolescent Leonardo DiCaprio.
The affiche came out months later, in the bounce of 1961. Ragland and Price airish abutting to it forth a artery in city Roanoke. The Roanoke Times appear a abbreviate adventure and photo of the two bounded Marine reservists in the announcement campaign.
Ragland begin out anon thereafter that the affiche went national.
“When this one went up, one of my buddies had a adherent in New Orleans,” Ragland said, chuckling. “He went bottomward to see her and one of the aboriginal things he saw aback he got off the bus was my animal mug.”
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There’s no cogent how abounding adolescent men ultimately abutting the Marine Corps Affluence because of that poster, or if any afterwards got alleged up for Vietnam as associates of the 5th Engineer Aggregation had in the aboriginal 1950s to serve in Korea.
But it aloof goes to appearance there’s added than one way to serve your country. On the eve of Veterans Day 2017, that seems account remarking.
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