by Robin Hutton
Reckless’s problems began when she couldn’t get past a road rail. According to one of her handlers, Colonel B. C. Evans, “She got her front feet over the rail, but her lame hind leg bothered her and she wouldn’t go on.” In short, she was stuck halfway across the rail. Several Marines, including Evans, “lifted her front legs back over the rail and walked her to a break in the fence.”
This caused about a fifteen-minute delay, but Reckless needn’t have felt badly; eight other Marines dropped out of the march due to, variously, blisters, an abscessed tooth, sore muscles, and a sprained ankle. Reckless, however, made it the entire way, carrying, for show, two empty artillery shell casings.36
Art Sickler remembered, “There [were] about 3,000 of us, and we marched down towards San Diego and we marched for two days and then we had a big beer bust. They came in with three semis of different beer. The Marine Corps always treated us real well that way.
“I didn’t mind the marches because, being that I was the handler of Reckless, when I got tired I could put her in the trailer and drive along. That didn’t set too good with the other troops, but that was the job and someone had to do it,” Sickler said with a chuckle.
“A company commander told us . . . , ‘You’re not a Marine until you can go out the night before and get on a hell of a drunk, and get up the next morning at three and you go on a ten-mile hike and when you get back you have whiskey and bread for breakfast.’ And that’s the way we were treated, you know.
“Cpl B.C Evans gets out first aid kit to dress bruise on a hind leg of Fifth Marines famous horse S.Sgt Reckless, who had trouble on march.” Actual caption from San Diego Union picture, March 5, 1958, p. a-13. San Diego History Center
“We had beer and just a day of rest on Wednesday and the camp looked pretty tough. And I remember Reckless, she was close to me all during this time and she would drink beer like crazy.
“And I got after these guys, and said, ‘You know, she’s going to colic on us. You stop that.’ I was getting pretty upset with them doing that. She was eating everything . . . and we had chips and beer. About the only thing she wouldn’t eat was the beefsteaks we had.”
Sickler also said Reckless didn’t like to fool around. “If she didn’t like something, those ears got pinned right down. You could tell [she was thinking], ‘Don’t aggravate me. I’ll do anything for you, but don’t pester me.’ She would pin her ears and you would show her respect! . . . I can still remember her asking for beer, and she was turned down and she would kind of pin her ears. She was just so great.
“. . . And so we marched back . . . And as bad as we looked on Wednesday, we were up the next morning at three o’clock and I had Reckless all ready to go; she walked a pretty straight line then, and then we marched back.
“And I remember that march so well because Colonel Schmuck was leading the march, and the troops were kind of complaining that we were strung out and we weren’t able to stretch out and take bigger strides because the strides were so small, and we didn’t understand what was going on.
“But I have the picture coming up to camp at the 5th Marines headquarters company, how we were strung out. And when we got up the hill, there goes an ambulance waiting for Colonel Schmuck. . . . He had a rupture and he was rushed to surgery, but he would not give up.
“It chokes me up even when I talk about it . . . he was just a tough guy, but he was fair. And I’ll remember him like I remember Reckless,” Sickler added.
PFC Sickler also remembers meeting a Marine sergeant who served in Korea with Reckless. “I don’t remember the sergeant’s name,” Sickler recalled, “. . . but this sergeant had seen me handling Reckless, and I got to talking with him when I noticed he had a big scar out the back of his neck and in the front right by his Adam’s apple.”
Sickler asked about the twin scars, and the sergeant described a wartime patrol through an irrigation ditch muddied by drizzle. Rounding a turn in the ditch, the sergeant encountered an enemy soldier in the process of dozing off.
“And when he heard the sergeant come up on him, he got startled and jumped up and pulled his bayonet and he stabbed him right in the Adam’s apple and it went through his neck. And the sergeant said he pulled his revolver . . . and just unloaded it because he was point blank right against him. And he said he had to unload that whole thing before he dropped.
Various pictures of Reckless on the march. Art Sickler, Clay Shanrock
“But then Reckless was there, she was back a little ways with some troops. In the bottom of that ditch, they placed the sergeant on her, and they got him back to sickbay for medical care. He [the sergeant] survived that—it missed everything, his jugular vein and stuff like that—so that was a miracle in itself, and just that that horse was there to take him out again, you know.
“That horse, the different things I heard, that horse saved so many lives over there that she’s never had the credit . . . that she should have had. She probably saved more lives than a lot of medics did.
“She just won your heart because she was so obedient . . . like she understood you. You didn’t have to say something, she just felt it, you know? And all the time I spent with her, she got to know me and we were just the best of buddies . . .
“I will never forget that horse as long as I live.”37
Reckless’s Duties
Life at Pendleton for Reckless was no free ride. The U.S. Marines required duties—especially public appearances.
On June 8, 1958, Reckless led the opening parade at the Navy Relief Rodeo and Carnival at Camp Pendleton before twenty-five thousand onlookers. She got to rub shoulders that day with TV western stars including Gunsmoke’s Amanda Blake (“Miss Kitty”) and Milburn Stone (“Doc”), and Johnny Washbrook (“Ken McLaughlin”), the teenaged costar of My Friend Flicka.
Reckless also participated in military parades, mostly on base. Typical of these events was the 1st Marine Division Reunion in July 1958. That day, she was led to the parade grounds by Sergeant Lynn Mattocks, who positioned her to review the two-thousand-man procession that kicked off the festivities.
Reckless proudly leads the opening parade at the Navy Relief Rodeo and Carnival. Robert Hammershoy
“My job in 1958,” Sergeant Mattocks recalled, “was on special occasions when Sergeant Reckless was requested to make an appearance . . . I would walk her down the street and lead her . . . across the parade field. The folks at the Camp Pendleton base stables always had her groomed up and ready for me, and I would . . . make sure her mane and tail [were] very Marine Corps, in the proper place and such, and she’d be dressed in her best blanket with her ribbons and everything.
“And I’d just walk her along. That year, I led her in the Memorial Day Parade, Veterans Day Parade, Marine Corps [Birthday] Parade, the Christmas parade—you name it.”38
Mattocks also led Reckless when she reviewed the troops during Changes of Command parades, which honored officers leaving for new assignments or generals receiving additional stars. A general departing for Marine Corps headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, would receive a formal ceremony and big parade on the great field at Pendleton. Reckless would be paraded out in full blanket and ribbons as part of the Change of Command, joined by the color guard and led by a Marine in full dress uniform.
Staff Sergeant James Wright recalled seeing Reckless in just such a capacity at his graduation parade at San Onofre, California. “When we graduated from the Infantry Training Regiment (ITR), we were then sent to a specialty. But for graduating ITR, we would have a parade and pass the reviewing stand where the officers were. And there was Reckless, standing right off to the side, watching us graduate. She was dressed in her best blanket and was treated just like every other Marine that bore her title. I will never forget that image.”39
Reckless also was on hand for retirement ceremonies and made guest appearances on Armed Forces Day. The Marine Corps brass were thoughtful enough to give her a pass on public appearances when she was pregnant, but naturally she reviewed the
troops when two of her colts joined the Marines.
What Reckless Shared with Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper was a reel war hero, winning a Best Actor Academy Award® in the title role of Sergeant York. Reckless was a real war heroine with the decorations to prove it. But the mare and the movie star also had something else in common: both could fall asleep anywhere, anytime.
Cooper often surprised film crews by effortlessly dropping off for naps between camera set-ups. And even in war-torn Korea, Reckless could fall asleep at will—in the tents of fellow Marines, for example, or as handlers brushed her down after a hard day.
But once she took up residence at Camp Pendleton, Reckless perfected the art of nodding off during parades and reviews. Sometimes after standing in place for long periods, she would get bored, cock her left hind leg (her lame leg), and, with the tip of her hoof touching the ground, drop her head slightly and go sound asleep. She even let out an occasional snore.
Reckless is a mascot for her Marines. Camp Pendleton Archives
Reckless was the only Marine ever allowed to doze during a formation or parade—and for a good reason. At the time, no one realized she was doing it.
Keeping a Reckless Pace
Reckless kept her Camp Pendleton handlers on their toes. One in particular had trouble keeping up with his charge. Corporal Jesse J. Winters fed, exercised, and looked after Reckless’s overall needs, including cleaning her stall.
“Because she was a war horse from Korea and carried ammo across no man’s land to the troops on the front line,” Winters recalled, “when she returned to the states, there were written orders that nothing would ever be placed on her back other than her blankets.”
Winters asked how he was to exercise Reckless if he couldn’t ride her. “That’s when I learned that I was to run alongside until she got tired and wanted to go back to the stall. Lucky for me she knew the word oats and I could usually get her to cut her runs short.”
Word around the base was that the young Marine was the best-conditioned leatherneck in the Corps because he had to run five miles a day next to her.
“There were times that some of the Marines, after a night on the town, would turn her out to run free, or, a number of times, take her into a barrack and tie her up to someone’s bunk, or the first sergeant’s door knob. As you may expect, I got little sleep those nights.
“On one occasion . . . she found her way to the flower garden of the wife of the base commander. I’m sure there were a lot of snickers about that, but let me tell you I was one PFC sweating bullets getting her out of there with the general standing in front of his house. I remember he was saying something—I don’t think it was good. I do remember throwing him a salute as we took off at a trot up the trail.”40 Reckless was almost put on restriction for eating the commander’s flowerbeds.
Marching toward Motherhood
Reckless was in a rather delicate condition for a second hundred-mile hike less than a year later, in January 1959. This time, the Marines hiked around Pendleton’s perimeter and into part of the adjoining Cleveland National Forest (Twentynine Palms area). Twenty-five hundred 5th Marines took part in the five-day march, setting up overnight camp areas which included corrals for Reckless; otherwise, the rest of the camps were set up “‘Civil War style,’ with shelter tents lined up perfectly.”41
Acting Gunnery Sergeant Frank D. Brady from Bridgewater, Massachusetts, was there that day. Brady worked for the disbursing office, which paid the Marines. “My office didn’t have to go on the hike, but the captain and I flew up there and paid them,” Brady recalled. “The kids would be out all day long getting in shape to go back to Pendleton. And she [Reckless] would go along. And she was at the end of the column and there was a jeep and a trailer pulling her, and she’s riding. And the Marines were walking along and grumbling that, ‘Here I’m walking and that damn horse is riding.’
“But at night when they got back to the area, they’d have a warm meal and had a portable kitchen, there’d be fifteen or twenty of them back there feeding her their apples and everything and petting her and making friends again . . . she never wanted for nothing.”42
This hike was no walk in the park for Reckless. What the guys probably didn’t know was at the time, Reckless was pregnant with her second foal. Seven weeks after the hike, on March 2, 1959, Reckless gave birth to her second colt, Dauntless. Again, newspaper headline writers behaved as if they had invented alliteration: “Marines’ Famous Mare Becomes Mother Again” and “Marine Mare Mother.”
Reckless Fans: The Next Generation
For the children of Marines, living on base had perks—especially if you were allowed to hang out at the stables.
“I was an enlisted kid, not an officer’s kid,” recalled Rebecca Meador of Hamilton, Ohio, “so I couldn’t have my own horse. Therefore, I helped take care of Reckless. She had her own paddock at the end of the barn-stable area; there were pipe rails around it and it had a shelter, like a little cover, but there were plenty of trees in it. After she died, they had a plaque that talked about her being a Korean racing mare and that she had been injured twice in battle. I seem to remember one time they said she had been hit by a jeep.”
It turns out that Reckless had acquired a friend around this time. “It was a flaxen mane chestnut Shetland pony named Sampson, and boy, was he a stinker.” Meador recalled, smiling. “He would chase her around and nip and kick at her. He was really hairy, with a bushy, bushy mane. He was a stinker to the kids riding him and he was a stinker to everybody. He’d chase her and then she’d chase him. And then he’d get tired of it and then they’d stop and graze side-by-side again.
“Some kids got in real trouble when they got up on her bareback, because it was not allowed . . . you couldn’t ride her. Not only because of her arthritis, but she had rank in the Marine Corps. And you didn’t do that to her—you didn’t treat her like that because of that rank. So, we’d mainly go over to her pen and groom her and stuff and watch Sampson be a pain.”43
Denise Dwyer Reed from Commerce, Georgia, was ten when she first saw Reckless, at the base rodeo. “I remember kids at the rodeo feeding her popcorn and she would drink Coke. My best memory was seeing her with her colt, Chesty. . . . She was out in a large paddock with board fences and had a little run-in shed for shelter. Nothing fancy, but then you know the Marine Corps is pure simple function.
“One time when she was being led around in her paddock, I saw a private salute her as he went by. I’ve never forgotten that image after all these years.”44
Cat Ballou and Mr. Ed
Debbie McCain, from Fallbrook, California, was nine when she posed with Reckless and Dauntless in 1959 at the base stables.
Her father, Captain G. M. “Jinx” McCain, had brought her to meet the famous Marine during a cookout at the stables. “It was somebody’s birthday as I remember and one of the guys was having some food and Reckless ate a big plate of food and drank a bucket of beer. When she was done eating and drinking, she disappeared. And next thing you know, we looked over and she was leaning up against the stables taking a nap—and she just kind of stayed there for a long while. She didn’t go anywhere.”
Thinking back on it, Debbie laughed. “She looked just like the horse in the movie Cat Ballou leaning up against the side of the building. That image just stuck with me.”
(Among the best-remembered images from the 1965 comic western was that of a drunken Lee Marvin passed out astride his equally inebriated equine, who’s leaning against the side of a building, legs crossed during its own sodden repose.)
Debbie agreed with the prevailing opinion that Reckless marched to a different drummer. “She would come out and find a soft place in the sun and just lay down in the middle of where all the horses were. And she’d just lay there until she got finished sunning, and we just let her alone and she’d get up and wander off and do her own little thing.”
And when it came to food—watch out!
“Down at the base stables, as ki
ds you’re always back there and you’re always eating something,” Debbie said. “And if she knew that you had food, she would hunt you down. And she wouldn’t take no for an answer. And she was really pushy when she found out you had something to eat.
“So you just . . . knew that she knew that you had food, so you might as well just give it to her because she was going to follow you around and push you or nudge you or whatever until you gave it to her.
“So she turned into a big bully when it came to food. And not necessarily horse food, but she liked hot dogs and potato chips and sandwiches and cookies and candy bars—anything that you fed her, she would eat. And I’m sure it was because the Marines taught her to eat all this stuff; they spoiled her rotten.”
Young Debbie McCain poses with Reckless and Dauntless. Debbie McCain
Evidently the sins of the mother were passed to the boys. “All three of her sons would eat anything. Just like her. They had an appetite for food.”
But loving junk food wasn’t the only thing Debbie remembered about Reckless.
“She was the first horse I think I ever saw drool. I mean, she would just salivate if you had food and she saw you eating. She was like Mr. Ed with the lips—she would just mouth it and you gave it to her.”45
At one point, the Marines put up a sign that read, “Please don’t feed Sergeant Reckless”; so many visitors brought carrots that she put on weight, and there was real concern so many vegetable sugars could cause medical problems.46
Reckless’s Final Promotion to Staff Sergeant (E-6)
Around this time, the Corps changed its rank structure, adding two new pay grades, E-8 and E-9. Reckless’s ranking of staff sergeant was level E-5, but with the new structure, her status was revised to acting staff sergeant, so she qualified for another promotion. It was also time for Dauntless to follow family tradition and join the Marines. As summer faded, on August 31, 1959, Reckless received her final promotion, to staff sergeant (E-6).
