COLUMN ONE : The Few, the Proud, the Sober : The day of the two-fisted Leatherneck carouser is fading as the Marine Corps wages a determined assault on its lusty tradition of drinking to excess.

EL TORO —  Those were the days, and Sgt. Maj. Carl Stucker, USMC, remembers them well. A quarter of a century ago, when he was a young private, it was an unspoken motto: You weren’t a real Marine if you weren’t a two-fisted drinker.

After a 10-mile hike through the back country, happy hour was the order of the day. Pitchers of beer or maybe kamikazes or whiskey with a chaser.

“I probably put some bartender’s daughter through college, as did a lot of other Marines,” Stucker recalled one recent afternoon as he nursed a post-work beer at a pub on the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. “For a Marine back then, there wasn’t much else to do after a hard day.”

But times change, and so has the Marine Corps. At El Toro in Orange County and other Marine bases throughout the country, there is a new attitude toward alcohol. From the lowliest privates to the commanding general, today’s Marines are increasingly the few, the proud, the sober.

Spurred by the anti-drunk-driving efforts that have swept the country over the last decade, the Marine Corps has mounted an all-out assault to curb its lusty drinking habits. The changes have ranged from subtle to substantial.

Happy hours have been curtailed, with a strict prohibition on reduced-price cocktails. Clubs on bases from coast to coast no longer serve drinks like Long Island Iced Tea and other concoctions featuring a potent blend of high-octane booze. Officers are now encouraged to boost camaraderie with post-work sporting events instead of pub crawls.

Rank-and-file Marines today are better educated and more likely to be married than their brethren of past decades, a factor that military leaders say increases chances that the troops won’t tie one on after a hard day’s work.

Perhaps most important, drunk-driving arrests and other alcohol-related slip-ups are now frowned upon like never before. For an officer, a drunk-driving conviction can mean the end of his career.

Military leaders say the results have been encouraging, and they have statistics to prove it.

A Defense Department study shows alcohol consumption in the corps has declined 29% since 1980, dropping from 1.75 ounces a day per Marine to 1.25 in 1988. (One ounce of alcohol equals a 12-ounce can of beer or a seven-ounce glass of wine.) Moreover, drunk-driving arrests for Marines nationwide have fallen 35%, down from 3,586 in 1982 to 2,345 in 1988.

“We feel we’re making really positive strides,” said James McHugh, director of the Marine Corps national drug, alcohol and health affairs branch in Quantico, Va. “We have dropped the per-capita consumption rate, we’ve dropped the percentage of heavy drinkers. The rate of decline perhaps is not as dramatic as we’d like to see, but we’re on the right track.”

The Marine Corps isn’t the only fighting force taking aim at alcohol abuse. The Navy, which pioneered the push in the 1970s with sophisticated drug and alcohol treatment programs, has seen a 38% decline in daily alcohol consumption between 1980 and 1988, according to the Defense Department study. The Air Force had a 31% drop during the same period, while the Army has enjoyed a 25% decline.

“There’s certainly been a deglamorization of drinking,” said Maj. John Wagstaffe, spokesman for the Army’s National Training Center at Ft. Irwin in the Southern California desert. “In the Army of old, there just wasn’t the stress on responsible drinking that there is today.”

But it is the Marines who enjoyed a reputation as both the hardest fighters and the hardest drinkers, the first to hit the beach and the last to leave the bar.

Indeed, the Marines were born in a drinking establishment. In 1775, the corps was founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, where the first Continental Marines were recruited to serve aboard American warships during the Revolutionary War.

The exploits of generation after generation of Leathernecks since then have become the stuff of legend. The Marines have seen their feats with both rifles and liquor bottles become the subject of a flood of Hollywood films, from “The Sands of Iwo Jima” to “The Great Santini.” And the celluloid tales have their basis in fact.

“There’s an Air Force club in Okinawa where Marines still are not welcome,” said Master Sgt. John Moste, an instructor at El Toro. It was 1973, Moste recalled, when he and a phalanx of Marines descended on the bar and proved to be unruly guests. “Yeah,” he admitted with a scowl, “we kind of trashed the place.”

No wonder. A Marine had no trouble getting a drink in those days. Base clubs invariably featured happy hours with discount drinks. And what a life off base. Marine towns outside the gates typically offered a potpourri of bars, enough to satisfy even the thirstiest fighting man. If you ran out of money, the bartender simply provided a $5 “chit book” as a line of credit until payday, servicemen recall.

Drinking in the corps was a badge of honor in those days, and the peer pressure to chug a pitcher of beer or two or three was intense. Attendance at happy hours was compulsory in some hard-charging units, several Marines said. Those who resisted were often shuttled off to kangaroo courts where humiliation was meted out.

“It was implied if not directly stated: You will go, you will have a good time,” recalled Lt. Col. John Shotwell, spokesman at the sprawling Camp Pendleton Marine base south of San Clemente. “A commanding officer would be relieved for that kind of conduct today.”

Leathernecks who exhibited signs of alcoholism or ran afoul of the law because of too much drink were typically protected when it came to career advancement.

“Maybe the old first sergeant . . . did protect his men when it came to problems with drinking,” said Stucker, who has been in the corps for 27 years. “He’d do it because he thought a lot of the Marine. He was doing it with the right spirit, but for the wrong reasons. . . . Back then, we just didn’t look at alcohol abuse the way we do now.”

By the late 1970s, however, the evidence was compelling: the Marine Corps had a problem.

As military pay increased with the advent of an all-volunteer force, more Marines could afford to buy a car, and the number of drunk-driving arrests began to jump. Meanwhile, the civilian world outside the base gates was changing. Society increasingly disapproved of drinking and driving; laws were strengthened, penalties increased.

For the Marines, the changes came slowly, but they came.

Commanders are now taught that heavy drinking and preparing for combat just don’t mix. Promotion boards, meanwhile, take a much dimmer view of Marines with an alcohol-related offense on their record.

Enlisted men hit by a drunk-driving ticket today are often fined or dropped in rank. In the rugged competition to step up through the officer ranks, an alcohol problem is seen as a nearly unassailable black mark on even the best record.

“I don’t know of any career that can be harmed as severely by a drunk-driving offense as that of a Marine officer,” said McHugh, national director of the Marines’ fight against alcohol abuse. “There are so many qualified people that they’re all equally promotable, and the boards have to find things to eliminate them from consideration. One of those things is drunk driving.”

With such potential pitfalls, Marines are increasingly wary about mixing alcohol and automobiles. Stucker, for instance, said he knows Marines who will sometimes ask their wives to fetch them from a military function if they know the booze will flow.

The corps has also taken steps to bolster its alcohol- and drug-treatment programs. They range from counseling sessions and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to an intensive, six-week stay in a Navy hospital for the most severe cases.

“I think the civilian world can learn a little from us,” said Maj. Earnie Giles, director of the joint drug and alcohol counseling center at El Toro. “But let’s face it. We have more control over our Marines and sailors than they do in town” over civilians who abuse alcohol.

If a Marine is successfully treated for an alcohol dependency before problems crop up, there is little career fallout, some authorities say.

Aside from the human factor, the treatment saves dollars and cents. Every $1 invested in rehabilitation results in a savings of more than $13 in training spent on a Marine who could have been lost to alcoholism, military officials say.

“It takes about $2 million to train a pilot up to the level of lieutenant,” noted Cmdr. Michael Johanek, director of the alcohol-rehabilitation department at Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton. “If we can save them a pilot, we can save them $2 million. And it’s the same with the other ranks.”

Big changes have also occurred at bars on base. At Camp Pendleton, for instance, bartenders and waitresses receive special training to better recognize the signs of intoxication. If necessary, a bartender can cut off a sloshed serviceman and summon a guard.

Drinks featuring five or six ounces of high-proof alcohol are strictly forbidden. Last call is no longer announced, and Marines may not order multiple drinks just before closing time.

Throughout the Marine Corps, reduced-price cocktails and other happy hour plums are now prohibited. Instead, free food is pushed and sporting events such as pool tournaments, darts and chair volleyball are offered to keep the Marines coming in. At the entrance to many base clubs, do-it-yourself Breathalyzer machines can give a drunk Marine an unbiased assessment of just how many he has put away.

At Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, the major East Coast training facility for Marines, a designated-driver program--featuring free non-alcoholic drinks for the person behind the wheel--has been well received, officials say. Designated drivers at clubs on Camp Pendleton, meanwhile, wear special buttons that they can turn in later for free food.

“The pressure for everyone to go tie one on has really decreased,” said Maj. Stuart Wagner, base spokesman at Camp Lejeune. “You’re always going to have some guy who says you’re not macho because you’re drinking a soft drink, but there are some who recognize it takes courage not to drink.”

At El Toro and other bases, sobriety tests are administered to Marines suspected of drunk driving as they enter the front gate. When a Marine is arrested for drunk driving in a nearby community, law enforcement officials routinely report the offense to base authorities and generally turn over the offender to the military after his release.

If convicted of drunk driving either on or off a military reservation, a Marine loses driving privileges on base for a year. “The potential penalties are probably stiffer than they are out in town,” said Lt. Col. Richard Morris, Camp Pendleton’s base provost marshal, which is the equivalent of a chief of police. “It’s much more direct because the command on base has such authority over the individual.”

Civilian authorities in cities surrounding El Toro, Camp Pendleton and other bases have noticed a change. Officer Ken Daily of the California Highway Patrol’s southern Orange County division remembers reeling in a seemingly endless catch of drunk Marines on weekend nights in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.

“They were some of our best customers. On paydays, we’d arrest one after another after another,” Daily recalled. “We arrested one officer three different times. The second time, he was in his flight suit. That just would not be tolerated anymore.”

Officer Bob George of the Oceanside police agreed. “There’s been a big change. I mean 180 degrees,” George said. “In the early ‘70s, it was constant. There’d be a whole carload of drunk Marines. You couldn’t just pick one up. You’d have to arrest the whole car.”

Military officials say that nagging troubles persist. Sometimes they can be manifested in tragedy.

Consider the case of Dennis Butler. In 1988, the 28-year-old Marine from Camp Pendleton was sentenced to state prison for 15 years to life after he was convicted of felony drunk driving for a high-speed accident that killed two people and severely injured a third on an Oceanside street.

But the Marine Corps tried to salvage what it could from the tragedy. About 20 members of the convicted Marine’s unit at Camp Pendleton attended the hearing on the orders of their company commander, who suggested that the occasion might prove an important lesson on the dangers of driving while drunk.

“The heavy drinker is becoming a pariah,” said Master Sgt. Moste of El Toro. “Our business is battle. . . . You want to turn your back on a guy with the shakes (who is) thinking about a drink instead of how a weapon works?”

THE MILITARY AND DRINKING Following are the results of a Department of Defense study on drinking in the U.S. military. All numbers are self-reported by personnel in each of the services and represent the number of ounces of alcohol consumed per person each day. The survey was conducted in 1980, then repeated in 1988. MARINES ounces of alcohol consumed per person each day: 1980--1.75 1988--1.25 percent change: 29% NAVY ounces of alcohol consumed per person each day: 1980--1.64 1988--1.02 percent change: 38% ARMY ounces of alcohol consumed per person each day: 1980--1.61 1988--1.21 percent change: 25% AIR FORCE ounces of alcohol consumed per person each day: 1980--1.08 1988--.75 percent change: 31% Source: Department of Defense

MARINES DRUNK-DRIVING ARRESTS DOWN A wide-ranging attack on alcohol abuse in the U.S. Marine Corps during the 1980s has led to a steady decline in the number of drink-driving arrests among active-duty Marines.

Figures in thousands ‘82: 3,586; ‘88: 2,345 Source: Department of Defense