My Navy Career Part 1

 

TWO OLD COUNTRY BOYS AND MY MILITARY CAREER PART ONE

 

We were just young country boys back in 1964. We had just graduated from Rosman High School. Now, I’m sure that everyone knows where Rosman is located. But just in case someone is reading this in California, or some other foreign country, Rosman is 43 miles east of Asheville, North Carolina where the Great Smokey Mountain Parkway begins.  Now, on the Parkway is a place called Devil’s Courthouse. I wrote about the Courthouse in another of my Owen Newsletter stories. I was arrested on the Parkway with my brother Howard and spent the night in Waynesville Jail, but that’s a story for another time (watery grits floating in liquid eggs only warmed up).

Anyway, my good friend Henry McDevitt and I somehow managed to graduate from High School. Some might think, so what, no big deal. Well, let me tell you in Western North Carolina up in the hills, graduating from high school is  or at least was a big deal. At that point, I was the first in my family to graduate. My mama was so proud of me, and she came to the graduation with my sister Thelma and my beautiful Grandma, Ethyl Chapman. My first cousin Eddie was a year behind me, and he graduated too. He was too stubborn to quit school. Eddie and I grew up together and we thought we were brothers instead of cousins. Hell, it would take a phone book to list all my cousins. A family reunion would reveal cousins that nobody in the family knew. They just come out of the woodwork. It could have been that they were not cousins at all but strangers driving by the Church picnic tables and seeing my Mama’s chocolate cake or my Aunt Francis’ Banana Pudding.  At any rate, we even had kissing cousins, some fine-looking girls. After a hug and a kiss, they would ask (are we going to hell now?). I would tell them there was a good chance so we might as well have another kiss. Jerry Lee Lewis had nothing on us.

Sometimes, I slide off the storyline so, back to the story.

 

Both Henry and I were good looking guys although I must admit Henry was better looking than me. The girls liked us. Henry was 18 and I was 17. After graduation, we spent some time fishing and partying up on old highway 64 by the trash pile by Harvey Morgan’s house. Harvey had stone steps with pretty marbles embedded in the concrete.  I would walk from my house to Harvey’s to watch westerns on Saturday nights. We did not get a TV until some time later and it was either 13 or 17 inches wide and someone had to hold onto the rabbit ears so the picture would come in clear. We had a choice of channel 13 (WLOS) or Greenville, S.C. on channel 4.

After our break from High School, both Henry and I looked for jobs. We must have put in 25 or 30 applications, and we were always told the same thing: “You boys get your military obligation over with and then we will hire you. We don’t want to train you and then you get a draft notice.” Henry and I hung out a lot down at his Mama’s house in Rosman. Verona was OK with us drinking some beer or white lightning as long as we did not drive, and we did have a few while listening to Johnny Cash records.

 

At that time in July of 1964, Viet Nam was getting a lot of attention, and the draft was pretty active.  Henry and I felt bad that we could not get a job and one morning after a night of drinking, Henry said: We better get our ass in the Navy before we get drafted into the damn Army. After sobering up a little, Henry called the Navy Recruiter in Asheville, or it might have been Hendersonville. He agreed to come to Henry’s house and give us our entrance test.

Well, the night before the Navy Recruiter came over, Henry and I pooled our meager dollars and bought a couple of cases of Schlitz  and Blue-Ribbon beer and stayed up all night drinking.

When the Navy recruiter showed up way too early in the morning, He banged on the door and someone let him in. Henry and I were still sleeping on the couch and on a pallet on the floor.

We got up all bleary eyed and wobbly and the recruiter asked if there was a place he could go over the papers with us. Henry turned around and with one arm, he swept about 20 beer cans off the kitchen table and asked if that was OK. The recruiter took some paper towels off the counter, wiped the table dry and broke out a pile of papers.

We sat there sipping on a breakfast beer and the recruiter had one too as he gave us each a sheaf of papers to fill out. Then he asked if we were sure we wanted to commit to joining the Navy and we said yes. Then he gave us our entrance exam while Henry’s mom made coffee.

Henry asked where we would be sent to, and the recruiter said either Great Lakes or San Diego Boot Camp. Well, we both told him we did not want to go up north to Yankee land, so we agreed on San Diego. Then Henry, asked where we would  go after Boot Camp and the recruiter said we could join on thee Buddy program and we would be stationed together.

 

Well, we both chose Naval Aviation . I qualified for a school, and I chose Aviation Electronic Technician School in Millington, Tennessee. I think Henry would have qualified too, but he drank more beer than I did before taking the entrance exam and he had one of those headaches. He did take some aspirin with his breakfast beer. We both swore by Bayer Aspirin.

So, within a couple of weeks, we rode a Greyhound bus along with a lot of other new recruits down to Columbia , South Carolina  where we raised our hands and became sailors.

Now, I had one night in Columbia before flying to San Diego. We went to Fort Jackson for breakfast before riding a Navy bus to the airport. After eating green condensed scramble eggs and day-old coffee at the Army base, I hoped the Navy food would be better and it sure was.

A Navy bus hauled us out to the Naval Training  Center called NTC. We got off the bus and were assigned to a Company. Henry was assigned to Company 495, and I was assigned to Company 522.  Everybody was marched to a barber shop where they took all our hair. Then we were marched to a warehouse where they gave us about a dozen shots and issued us some working uniforms, Bell bottom denim and blue  chambray  shirts. We were issued white hats, tee shirts  and jockey shorts along with two pairs of shoes, steel-toed work boots and dress shoes. While they were marching us to and fro, they called us maggots along with some other unpleasant names. Finally, we were assigned bunks and everybody collapsed. About 5 o’clock in the morning  reveille was sounded and we were told to get our maggot  asses out of bed and get dressed.

After a quick shower and shave, we were marched to the chow hall in our new bell-bottom pants and blue shirts with our white hats along with our steel-toed shoes. We had a company flag with a blue background and large numbers showing 522.

I wound through the line and a cook behind a row of steam tables looked over the shield and asked me what I would like for breakfast. I said how about some grits and two eggs and two biscuits . He laughed and said listen shitbird, hold your trey (a steel trey with compartments) out and move down the line. I held my trey out and received a biscuit covered with gravy and chipped dried beef (SOS), some little potato cubes, some scrambled eggs, and a muffin. We sat at long steel tables with knives, spoons and forks in stainless steel buckets and a stack of napkins. The table had lots of salt and pepper and hot sauce. There were drink fountains with milk, chocolate milk and a choice of apple or orange juice.  The food was delicious. After breakfast, we were marched out on a hot concrete area called the grinder. At the grinder, we were issued rifles and marched for miles. We were called maggots, shitbirds and girls. Finally, lunch rolled around and we were marched back to the chow hall where we feasted on roast beef, roasted potatoes, and carrots along with a dinner roll and shelled corn. It was also delicious. I drank chocolate milk and orange juice. Lunch ended too soon, and we were marched back to the hot  grinder where they taught us which foot was right and left and how to stand at attention, right face, left face among other drills. By the time suppertime rolled around everyone was exhausted. We were called all sorts of disrespectful names although maggot seemed to be their favorite. The days went by, and we were issued white uniforms and had to wear out dress shoes with leggings. Once in a while, we would get to sit on aluminum steps and listen to lectures about what was going to happen to us if we survived the training. We had no trouble sleeping and 5 o’ clock seemed to come earlier and earlier.

Our Company Commander, a Navy Chief, would greet us each morning and tell us we were going to have a fine Navy day and soon we would no longer be maggots, we would be United States Sailors , that is if we lived through training. He said a tadpole turns into a frog and a moth turned into a butterfly, so he had faith in us.

Stay tuned for Part Two.