Robert Grill

In June 1956, 18 days following graduation from Franklin, Pa. High School, eighteen-year-old Bob Grill joined the U.S. Navy. He was sent to The Great Lakes Training Center in Illinois, for boot camp. “Before I went in, his two older brothers who had served in WW II told me to never volunteer for anything. On my first day at boot camp, the instructor came in and asked if anyone could type. I raised my hand and became the Battalion Clerk. I had to attend swim class and the firing range, otherwise I spent boot camp typing and making coffee.” Following boot camp, Bob attended hospital corpsman’s school also at the Great Lakes facility.
After completing Hospital Corpman’s School, Bob was sent to the Naval Hospital at Camp Lejune, North Carolina. He was assigned to the sick officer’s ward. After three months there he was transferred to the emergency room. On several occasions Bob was asked to sew up the incision after the Physician had examined the patient and his wound, “I felt pretty good about that,” said Bob.
“I was on duty one weekend at the front desk,” Bob continued. “The Duty Officer came in and told me to grab a respirator and follow him. To my surprise, a helicopter was waiting for us. He told me to hop in the helicopter for a drowning at Cherry Point. When we got there it was too late. The man had died. Years later, after my naval service, an electoral sub-contractor who worked for me in my construction business said he was in boot camp at Lejune and remembered the Cherry Point incident. He was participating in maneuvers and remembered seeing the helicopter fly in.”
From the Naval Hospital in Camp Lejune, Bob was transferred to the Fleet Marine Forces. He attended advanced Marine boot camp in San Diego, California for nine weeks.
In 1958, Bob was sent to The Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe, Hawaii, and assigned to a Marine Corps Detachment. “I sailed to Hawaii on the USS Barrett,” Bob said. “It was a small ship, and it took five days to get there. I was seasick every day.”
Bob was assigned to F Company, 1st Marine Brigade as the company corpsman. He lived and did whatever the Marines did. The Marines often went on maneuvers for several days at a time. At 2 AM one morning, he was awakened and told that one of the marines was suffering from a laceration on his hand. Bob sewed up the wound and instructed the Marine to report to Sick Bay the next morning. Later, Bob was told to report to the officer in charge. Bob was expecting to be reprimanded for what he’d done. Instead, he was congratulated and told, “Doc, you did a fine job.” From then on, he was known as, “Doc.”