Oswald did get special treatment. As I say, he had brought it on himself but he made the most of it, too, as far as using it as a means of getting or attempting to get sympathy.
Mr. Jenner. Well, what was the sergeant's name?
Mr. Thornley. Sergeant Spar.
Mr. Jenner. Spar. In using his name, I don't wish to, I am not suggesting anything personal as to Sergeant Spar, but I am going to use him as a faceless Marine sergeant.
Mr. Thornley. And a very good one.
Mr. Jenner. You marines, at least some of you, I assume, as had GI's and others, you buttered up sergeants, too, didn't you, in order to avoid being assigned too often to disagreeable tasks?
Mr. Thornley. No; you didn't have to. So long as you kept in line and obeyed orders, you didn't have to—you weren't assigned any disagreeable task in the kind of outfit I was in because there weren't that many. When there was a disagreeable task to be done, it was assigned to somebody who had stepped out of line and there were always enough people who had stepped out of line and it was no problem to find them. In fact, the problem was to find enough disagreeable tasks to go around. The only exception to this would be overseas; a typhoon would hit sometimes and then everybody would have to go out and we would have to all, much to our dismay, wade around at 2 o'clock in the morning and tear down tents and so on and so forth.
Mr. Jenner. That was a thing that was common to all of you.
Mr. Thornley. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. It was not a disagreeable task in the sense we are talking about.