Just after Lee left the hospital, his unit was sent off on maneuvers to the Philippines. It remained at Subic Bay, on Bataan, across Manila Bay from Manila, for three months, and it was at Subic Bay, Lee was to say later, that he learned to sympathize with local Communists and conceived a hatred for US “militarist imperialism” for exploiting the Filipino natives.[3]
While Lee was stationed in the Philippines, a second curious episode occurred. Private First Class Martin E. Schrand was found shot to death one night while on guard duty outside a hangar that could have been sheltering a U-2. Lee knew Schrand well. They had been part of a small group of men who started radar training in Jacksonville the year before and had been together most of the time since. A Marine Corps investigation in 1958 established that Schrand’s death was accidental and self-inflicted, and yet a rumor arose among the men that Lee Oswald was responsible.[4]
The rumor is notable for two reasons. Lee had considered himself a Marxist for two years. And at Subic Bay he had become sympathetic to what he called “Communist elements” among the Filipinos. Afterward, speculation arose that Lee wanted to break into the hangar and learn something about the U-2 so that he could use the information later on.[5] Although the speculation appears to be groundless, the rumor is still notable as a measure of Lee’s unpopularity among his fellow Marines.
When Lee returned with his squadron to Japan in the spring of 1958, he was court-martialed for the offense that had led to the wound in his elbow. The court decided that the wound was accidental, but for unauthorized possession of the pistol Lee was reduced in rank to private and sentenced to a forfeiture of pay and confinement at hard labor for twenty days. His confinement was suspended for six months.
Two months later, in June of 1958, Lee was court-martialed again. While drunk in a café, he had spilled a drink on a sergeant and abusively challenged him to a fight. Such episodes often occurred in after-hours drinking places, but the sergeant brought charges, another measure of Lee’s unpopularity. This time he drew a second forfeiture of pay and a twenty-eight-day sentence of confinement at hard labor. The earlier suspended twenty-day sentence was invoked as well, and during the summer of 1958 Lee spent seven weeks in the brig. Further, his request for extended overseas duty was denied.
Lee’s two courts-martial, his being broken in rank, his time in the brig, and now the refusal of his request for extended duty overseas—all were keen disappointments. But he had a new enthusiasm. In Japan he was again exposed to Communist propaganda, this time to Soviet magazines and to individuals who were fanatically pro-Soviet. “Soviet propaganda works well,” he was to say later, referring to his time in Japan.[6] He made up his mind that he would go to the USSR.
After a brief tour in the South China Sea, he returned with his unit to the United States and in November 1958 was assigned to the Marine Air Control Squadron at El Toro, California, another base at which U-2 aircraft were stationed. Again he was part of an aircraft surveillance crew, and one of his superior officers, Lieutenant John E. Donovan, has said that Lee was “competent, very competent,” on the job. He took orders willingly and was cool in assessing emergency situations.[7] Donovan urged him to go to noncommissioned officers’ school.
Nevertheless, it was clear that Lee’s enthusiasm for the Marine Corps had eroded, and at El Toro he began to flaunt his enthusiasm for the USSR. He acquired a Berlitz phrase book and started to study Russian ostentatiously in the barracks. He subscribed to a Russian-language newspaper, and when he and his roommate played chess, he always chose the red chessmen because he liked the “Red army.” He played Russian songs so loudly that they could be heard outside the barracks. He asked to be called “Oswaldskovich,” used words such as “da” and “nyet,” called some of the men “Comrade” and was pleased when they called him “Comrade” in return. It was the behavior, one would guess, not of a spy but of a slightly egregious schoolboy hungry for attention. Nonetheless, some of the men did call him, jokingly, a “spy”—and Lee loved it.
From a lieutenant named Nelson Delgado, Lee also learned a few words of Spanish. With Delgado and some of the other men he followed the ups and downs of Fidel Castro, who came to power in Cuba on January 1, 1959, while Lee was at El Toro. He talked enthusiastically of going to Cuba and fighting Castro. But his talk about Castro had nothing like the shock value of his talk about Russia because Castro had not declared himself a Communist yet, and the United States had not made up its mind whether he was an enemy or not.
Lee had other characteristics, besides his interest in Russia, that set him apart from his fellow Marines. He had completed only the ninth grade, but he listened to classical music, read books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and tried to appear more intellectual than the other men. He loved to lure his officers into discussions of foreign affairs to show off his superior knowledge, and then, when he had outshone them, he treated them as if they were unfit to be in command over him. Lee apparently had a very high opinion of himself. One friend said that he liked to “come out top dog.”[8] He seldom went out with girls following his return to California, explaining to a roommate that he was saving money and would one day do something that would make him famous.
With less than a year left of his enlistment, Lee was promoted, for a second time, to private first class and took and passed a series of high school equivalency tests. He did “poorly” on the Russian-language tests he had asked to take. And he made no plans to reenlist. He wrote to his brother Robert that once he was out of the Marine Corps, “I know what I want to be and how I’m going to be it, which I guess is the most important thing in life.”[9] He applied and was accepted for the spring 1960 term at Albert Schweitzer College, a liberal arts school in Switzerland, stating that he hoped to study philosophy, broaden his knowledge of German (a language he did not know), and live in a “good moral atmosphere.”[10]
By his last summer in the Marine Corps, the summer of 1959, Lee was taken off radar duty and assigned to clerical and janitorial jobs. He was considered to be deficient in discipline and sloppy in his personal habits and in barracks inspection, and it was said that the sergeant major was going to take steps to “straighten him out.” It was even rumored, falsely, that he had lost his security clearance.
Lee was anxious to get out of the Marines. In August of 1959, he saw his opportunity. Marguerite had sustained a slight injury to her nose while working in a candy store the previous Christmas, and Lee, with four months left to go in the Marine Corps, applied for an immediate hardship discharge on the grounds that he was his mother’s sole source of support. Marguerite, who in the past had supplied her sons with false documents so that they could enter the service before they were of eligible age, now supplied documents attesting that she was disabled and unable to support herself. Less than a month later, Lee was released from active duty and transferred into the Marine Corps reserve. On September 4, 1959, as soon as he knew that his release would be coming through, he applied for a passport, stating that he planned to study at Schweitzer College and at the University of Turku, Finland, and would be traveling to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, England, France, Germany, and Russia.
4
Recently declassified documents concerning the Martin Schrand case are: Warren Commission Document No. 35, December 1, 1963; Warren Commission Document No. 492, March 11, 1964; and Warren Commission Document No. 1042, June 3, 1964.
5
Oswald first described himself as a Marxist in writing in a letter to the Young People’s Socialist League dated October 3, 1956: “I am a Marxist, and have been studying socialistic principles for well over 15 months” (Warren Commission Report, p. 681). Oswald was not yet sixteen. In his interview with the author in November 1959, Oswald said that “for two years I have been waiting to do this one thing”; i.e., defect to the USSR. He was stationed at Cubi Point (Subic Bay) at the beginning of those “two years,” and it is not inconceivable that at this base or at one of the two other U-2 bases at which he was stationed, he did try to learn something about the super-secret aircraft that would heighten his acceptability to the Russians. (The rumor linking Oswald with Schrand’s death is mentioned in an affidavit by Donald Peter Camarata, Vol. 8, p. 316, and the fact that the hangar Schrand was guarding sometimes housed a U-2 appears in testimony by Daniel Patrick Powers, Vol. 8, pp. 280–281. Both men were part of the original group, including Oswald, that had been together since Jacksonville.)