Sea Story Page
As Ex-PH2 alluded to in her “Knock Yourselves Out” post, TAH is akin to a watering hole where Vets meet and greet, and swap fables known in the Navy as “Sea Stories.” I’m certain the nautically challenged services have similar. A fairy tale starts with “Once upon a time” but a Sea Story always begins with, “Now this ain’t no shit.” So post up your favorite Sea Story or their equivalent. Here’s one of mine.
Now this ain’t no shit…
So there AWANEd was, onboard Naval Air Station Jacksonville, FLA (NAS JAX, or just JAX) on Day 2 of Rescue Swimmer School. The same morning PT regimen was conducted, including the Hospital Run, and we broke for lunch. (Day one was pretty brutal, and we lost about 30% of the class right off the bat, exactly as the instructors planned).
Much different choices for chow today among the now wiser remaining SAR candidates, I had soup and a salad, because we were hitting the pool for the first time.
It was called a Practical Evaluation, where the instructors would see if any of us could actually swim. Which is kind of key to become a Helicopter Rescue Swimmer.
An aside, passing SAR School was really not an option for me, as we were told if failed, our next stop would be ship’s company as a non-rate, meaning get familiar with deck grinders and paint brushes, or aircraft chocks and tie-down chains, depending. You can pick the ship’s color as long as its haze gray; they’ll pick the number. Neither option charmed me much.
So, after chow we mustered at the pool in our shorts and tee shirts, now stenciled with a number and name. No fins or dive mask allowed. The swimming pool, OK, training tank, was 50 yards in length and 12 feet down, everywhere. No splishy splashy shallow end. 12 lanes were described by dark tiles. The eval itself was one lap (up and back, 100 yards) of breast stroke, side stroke, and elementary back stroke, where your hands never break the water’s surface, easy.
I had been on swim teams since I was 8 years old, and raced for our high school’s team. We got to State level, but were crushed by a team of mutants who I swear had webbed toes and gills. Really cute young ladies, though, which had a big input on my swim team participation.
Anyway, my turn in the tank. This is a timed event, too, so just finishing doesn’t mean you pass. It means you MIGHT get another shot.
I jumped in, and started, making good time with the breast stroke (I used to race the 100 and 200 meter breast events) the went to the side stroke, which was easy, but nothing I’d spent a lot of time doing in the past, and then the elementary back stroke, sort of a breast stroke, flipped. Boring. I was well ahead of the clock. Then it hit me, I could impress the instructors with my swimming expertise by finishing the last 50 yards doing the butterfly, a fast double overarm stroke with a dolphin kick. So I did.
What a bad mistake.
“What the F do we have here? Mark F-ing Spitz??!!”
“Why are you F-ing up MY Navy practical eval, AWANED? Are you a F-ing commie??!!”
“I think Mark F-ing Spitz here needs to meet the Blue Baby!”
Oops.
I had managed to single myself out for special attention by the instructor cadre, not a good thing. I got the Blue Baby.
The Blue Baby is a 10 pound dumbbell weight, and cannot get wet. Doesn’t sound like much, until you have to swim with it. I was “awarded” 100 yards with the Blue Baby, and a ridiculously short time to complete the swim. I opted for the now not so boring elementary back stroke, and completed the 100 yards well passed the allotted, impossible time.
So, up on the deck for some extra PT because I didn’t meet the Blue Baby time, and repeat the Practical Evaluation, because I “contaminated” the first one with an unapproved swim stroke. I didn’t opt for the butterfly finale, this time. And I did pass just fine. Lesson learned.
The rest of the class were kept busy with push-ups and flutter kicks and what not while I swam. They weren’t especially happy with me, but the instructors would have found another reason to PT them.
It was going to be a long eight weeks.
And guess what my nick name was for the duration.
F’n Mark Spitz.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves"
AWEd1:
There is no Green “LIKE” button for your Mark Spitz story, so here is the best I can do:
*LIKE*
👏👍😊
Thanks for sharing the Sea Story…I think in the Army, we start off with “And there I was, minding my own business when…”
Looking forward in reading everyone’s elses stories…😎
Marine Corps Aviators of my vintage will often start a Sea Story with “TINS”.
TINS is the abbreviation for “This Is No Shit”.
The use of TINS allows one to get into the Sea Story faster, because as every old Marine Corps Aviator knows, speed is life…
The firefighter version of this always starts with “Chief, no-one was more surprised than I…”
Just for reference..
Whatever happened to “NO SHIT, there I was…”
Knick name should have been “Mis fits” LOL
And here is a story about me. It is a little more recent than AW1Ed’s story. The year was 2002, and I had just rejoined the National Guard after getting out right before 9-11. I was an MP by MOS, and my unit was sent to Fort Drum to replace the active duty units that were headed downrange. Being 6’4″, the powers that be decided that I should be at the front door to Division HQ to ensure that nobody who was not allowed to enter the building didn’t come in and muck things up. I was a little cocky after having gotten a coin from the Garrison commander because I did my duty and didn’t back down from a major who had left his ID in his office. In comes a man who I knew well, because I had deployed to Somalia in his company. He had been promoted from 1sg to SGM, and was working on Division staff in one of the offices. He sees me, and asks me what I had on my arm. Knowing what he meant, I lowered my head and in a mock apology, I answered “an MP brassard SGM”. He looked at me, and told me that I had better bow my head in shame. Then I hear a booming voice ask the SGM why he was giving the MP at the door a hard time. SGM tells the LTC in question that I had deployed to Mogadishu with him as infantry, and I am then introduced to LTC Mike Steele (who was in command of 2/22 Infantry, 10th Mtn Div at that time). The first thing I said to myself was “The Son Of A Bitch is huge”, quickly followed by “SON OF A BITCH THAT HURT!” as he smiled and punched me in the chest as a way of greeting me. That started a long series of like greetings from him, until the day I had finally had enough, and hit him first. He took a half step back, smiled from ear to ear, and proceeded to hit me back, cracking… Read more »
Huh. I had a room mate at Ft. Lewis when my Reserve unit did our two weeks active duty. I had been happily (more or less) sweating out my active duty in Alabama. He had been 10th Mountain and had gone to the hinterlands of Somalia as a grenadier.
I served with Mike Steele while I was in a Joint billet a couple of decades ago.
That guy was as big as a house. Nice guy, too.
Here’s my sea story. Jones Beach. Field 4. 15, maybe 16. Drank a lot of cheap, disgusting wine. Threw up somewhere around Guy Lombardo’s orchestra amphitheater. The end.
2/17 Air Cav:
You forgot “And there I was, minding my own business when…”
You crack me up…..😅
And here I am, minding my own business, hoping the statute of limitations thingy has expired and that I don’t get called on.
Back in the day I was the Maintenance WO assigned to 3d Bn 66th AR, 2AD
there we were…
At the end of the first Gulf war, while waiting to redeploy, the NCOs and I would meet for chow twice a day. We’d sit and tell new versions of war stories etc for a good bit of time. After a while, someone would stand up, put out his cigarette and announce “Liars Club Meeting Over!!”
I thought about that and it made perfect sense. Sitting around the table was nearly 100 years of military experience, and all those stories that go along with that service. Every story true, with the usual bit of exaggeration, or omission depending how far back the story was.
After returning from Germany, I was stationed at the Ordnance Center and School at APG. In the classrooms we had nice cardboard cards that were used to announce the instructor and class etc that was put on blackboards, we called them “slapcards”. Well, I had two made. One said LIARS CLUB and the other said LIARS CLUB MEETING. I put the Liars Club card outside the door to the office that I shared with the NCOIC and two retired E8s instructors. Just about every morning before class began, one of the instructors and I would exchange “stories”. If the stories got too involved, I’d say “wait one”, and put out the meeting card. I left the sign on the door and had comments by the BDE Cdr and other officers etc who understood the reasoning once I told them the story behind the sign.
It’s been 25 years of so, and while I don’t have the Liars Club sign anymore (the NCOIC threw it out over a Christmas break. Accordioned it up good so I couldn’t get it out of the trash.) I still have the Liars Club Meeting sign. It sits in my cube and I still bring it out on occasion.
AW1Ed one of my Navy buddies went to SAR school 1985 and later as an E-6 to BUDS retired in 2015 as CMCPO, told me SAR school put BUDS to shame in regards to the swimming. Best swimmers in the world IMO come from Pensacola, great story Spitz
I went before the move to P-Cola, and my instructors were all Viet Nam vets, certifiably nuts* and completely pitiless in keeping standards. I’d say about 20% of the class graduated. After the training tank was refurbed, a contingent of officers came to spectate the class drown-proofing in the new training tank (not a lot of fun, we had to keep our hands clasped behind the back). One of the instructors climbed up two stories into the overhead, and dropped a cannonball right next to the pool edge where the O’s were standing. The splash was impressive, and soaked the O’s pretty summer whites. He then swam under water to join the herd in drown proofing for camouflage.
Damn, I forgot to start this with “Now this ain’t no shit.”
*I’ll tell the story of chasing the alligator another time.
Speaking of chasing reptiles, that reminds me of a guy in my platoon at Ft. Benning. We were helping out at the Ranger school at Eglin AFB. The instructors at Aux. Field 16 had a standing reward for various kinds of snakes, and this guy would jump in the water, chase down water moccasins, and put them in sandbags he carried around for just such opportunities. He got several snakes of various species including, I think, a Coral snake.
They also had a standing reward for an alligator, but as far as I know nobody collected that one. The 18 ft. one-eyed alligator they had was a bit long in the tooth.
Interesting place.
All of the swimming that we had to do as Student Naval Aviators during Aviation Indoctrination at NAS Pensacola before we started flight training really kicked my ass, and I thought that I was a reasonably good swimmer.
As such, I can’t imagine what the Navy Rescue Swimmer trainees go through in the water during their training syllabus.
The Final Practical, our graduation exercise, was a 3 v 1 instructor to SAR candidate, where we had to use everything we were taught to get the ‘victims’ up the mock rescue hoist, complete with simulated rotor wash. (Ever wonder what those nozzles under the mock hoist were for?). I’ll just say they wern’t cooperative. I was surprised to get out of the tank on my own after I got that third guy on the hook- I was never so tired in my life.
There I was at 30,000 feet…
…inverted and on fire…
*grin*
With a pocket full of quarters and not a coke machine in sight.
Ah shucks, you guys have lived through everything. The closest I ever got was a bottle of gin, when the beer ran out, on a Sunday night, in Pennsylvania.
I woke up on Wednesday, or whatever day it was, and wished I had not. The guy I worked for was a retired bridge welder, running his own fabrication shop. He was way pissed off that I had not shown up for work so do he docked my pay and layed me off for the rest of the week.
Bless his heart, I was in Key West, before Friday, and never looked back. And, I have NEVER drank gin, again. Haha, I still like to weld.
Am hoping not to have lived though quite everything yet.
Patrick408: Re Pensacola, we sent quite a few ambulances to the pool for those who nearly drowned and one who did drown. The training was brutal and the dropout rate was very high.
HMC, So I’ve heard. I went through aircrew candidate school in Oct, 1986 and they had a guy who died at SAR just after I left that made the news but I think he was mistreated or had a medical condition or both can’t remember.
Lee Mirecki was his name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Mirecki_incident
His tragic death was the result of several factors, over-zealous instructors being one. I was in P-3s by then, but the incident reverberated Navy wide, especially among Aircrew. A couple of my junior Aircrew in the AW shop knew him from Navy Air Crew Candidate School (NACCS).
Yep, that was the guy. It was a lot later than first thought but after reading it, that was him. Sad story.
Wasn’t one of the instructors from that incident featured on here in one of the phony posts at one point or I am a thinking of another similar incident? That incident sounds vaguely familiar and it was this blog that got me to look into the incident.
On an aside, how does one upload a pic of themselves into the “Members Gallery”?
In fact, why has the “Recipes” section not be updated for over five years? I just finished cooking my world famous BBQ spicy beans at my VFW this evening that many want to pay me for but will obviously post here for free if allowed.
You can frequently find recipes posted on the WOT, and you’re welcome to post yours there, also. The “Recipes” section got a bit cumbersome after a while.
“…how does one upload a pic of themselves into the “Members Gallery”?
Short answer, you can’t. Email your pic to admin on the Contact Us tab.
Okay… here’s one of my own “Sea Stories”. It’s a mission we flew that AW1 Ed and other Navy Aircrew can relate to. Sorry if it’s a tad long. ———————————————– My crew had been tasked out from Lajes Field, in the Azores, to track a Soviet Boomer (ballistic missile sub). About halfway through the mission, the flight crew determined that the fuel management system was acting up, and we couldn’t draw from the center fuel tank. Well, we quickly determined that we had sufficient fuel (barely) to get back to Lajes, but not to divert anywhere else. We declared an emergency and headed home. While enroute, a thunderstorm developed over the Island, and we began to encounter headwinds that slowed us down and increased our fuel consumption. It was already after dark, going on about 2100 hours when we hit the storm, about 10 miles out from Lajes. Now, the thing about Lajes Field is that the only place they could build the runway was down the middle of this long valley, with nice rocky hills along each side. It’s also perpendicular to the prevailing winds, so you ALWAYS have a crosswind. Then, the runway ends just before you reach a 200 foot cliff that drops off into the ocean. Lajes is like the world’s largest aircraft carrier, except that it doesn’t move, unless an earthquake hits, which they do. Fairly often. But I digress… We had to come in over the water and over the cliffs, and the wind was really picking up, with lightening nearby and rain going sideways. The air also was burbling up over the cliff causing some good chop on the approach, as we quickly discovered. Sitting back in the tube, (the tactical crew faces aft for takeoff and landing), I could see some of the others doing the same thing as me. Cinching every strap just as tight as I could, and my helmet as well. Gloves on, visors down, etc. Just in case something went flying around. That first approach was a doozy, and we ballooned up on a rise of air as… Read more »
GREAT story, AW1 Tim! Thanks for writing this.
I’ve had a few flights similar to that, and they always involved night flying, crappy weather, not enough fuel, and a couple of times “blue water ops” with no available divert.
As you and AW1Ed well know, they were the sort of flight where after you finally get the aircraft safely on deck and shut down, you consider going over to see the crash crew so that they can use the “Jaws of Life” to pry the seat cushion out of your ass that got sucked up in there during your last attempt to get aboard with the Low Fuel lights glowing merrily on the caution panel.
Great memories, great times, and I still get sweaty palms just thinking about it. I wouldn’t trade any of those experiences for the world.
TINS.
Great story, AW1 Tim
Great flying! Nicely done, AW1Tim.
Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, as I understand it.
And any landing where you can fly the aircraft again is a great one!
Lajes, my first impression was looking at the runway’s centerline from the aft observer’s seat on short final, then seeing a C-130 off in the weeds as we taxied by. Great ASW, though- my personal best was a three CZ* detection-to-track on a Yankee SSBN that had gone missing.
Great story, AW1 Tim, thanks for sharing.
*Convergence Zone, a phenomenon of underwater sound transmission. In the Atlantic, usually around 30 NM apart, where underwater sound “converges” near the surface before bending down into the depths.
Yep, have heard some great stories about Lajes. Never experienced it myself.
But your story did remind me of the night we were returning from somewhere interesting and might have included some hangovers amongst the crew and the one noncrew pax – moi. Same kind of a deal – last minute storm blew in and we just didn’t want to land anywhere but home station. Crosswind so bad that it took several passes to get the timing right so that right wing didn’t drag the ground. Finally got her down then used a LOT of fuel to taxi on in. Late night, no ground crew, no cargo and the right wing is touching the ground. Great fun getting it tied down in a driving rain with only the crew plus me.
That was the night I discovered just how big a C-130 wing is.
TINS… Back in the ‘80s, the Army decided that they would foist off two (2!) of their really good ideas on us in the 3rd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne Division. The first was the Regimental rotation policy, (I’m sure it had an official name), This meant that we would move to Vicenza, Italy and replace the Airborne Battalion there which had been 1/509 Inf, and was now 4/325 Inf. (I’m not even going to address the morale crushing-ness of that decision.). This meant that transfers were halted for troopers in the Battalion, as a result all of our Fire Team leaders and most of the machine gunners were Sgt/E-5s. Most all had been with the Bn. in Grenada, and they were all coming to the end of their first enlistment. The second really great idea was the COHORT unit. They would take a group through Basic and AIT (in our case OSUT – one station unit training and jump school) and then they would send them as a cohesive unit to be the privates in a company. The confluence of these two really good ideas meant that we lost all the E-5 Sergeants in one fell swoop as they ETS’d from the Army. All the Specialists (E-4) who were due for ETS left too. If you weren’t going to Italy, (didn’t have enough time left in the Army, etc…) you were transferred out. Our company went from one that could anything asked of it to one that was scary to take to the field. We used to do live fire exercises from squad to company with no concerns, now I worried, (I was a Platoon Leader), that the privates would shoot one another waving their rifles around. They just didn’t know. This came to a head for me personally on a jump with the NEW and IMPROVED! company. Previously a parachute jump was like a good bowel movement, it happened without much thought and effort, and cleanly. The company loaded up on C-130s and flew off to a Ft. Bragg drop zone, (I think it was Normandy).… Read more »
Damn! At least when I jumped, I had every intention of getting back into my aircraft, and parachutes were something to be avoided or removed.
Thanks, Bones.
Bones, I had heard they used to rotate the units to Vicenza. I asked to go and arrived when it was 3/325th, two weeks later it was 1/508th. 82nd was trying to fix the problem of 1,2, 4th BNs ahead of the 4th BDEs being recreated. I was the unlucky victim of a similar incident (not someone getting thrown out of an aircraft), but an incompetent lower jumper pulling slips he did not need to. Stole my air as I was preparing to land and next thing I know I had landed. Probably a feet-ass-head landing as I don’t remember much until he was waking me up saying “sorry about that”! I ended up herniating a few disks but did not realize it for several months when I was trying to go to Ranger school. Needless to say I did not make it to that Class.
This page needed to happen. I don’t suppose I’ll continue getting away with the retelling of my fathers storys here…
Aw-1 is it too soon to tell the one about a case of beer, and our friendly instructor neighbor?
Another time, perhaps.
OK, I give. NTANS, there I was, VP-23 onboard NAS Brunswick, Maine. I was the AW (Aviation ASW Operators at the time) Shop Leading Petty Officer, responsible for the care and feeding of around 20 fellow AWs, ranging from nuggets fresh from the training pipeline to seasoned E-5s who knew everything, or thought they did. (On an aside, I was giving a NATOPS Checkride to an AW2 (E-5), who flat told me there was nothing I could show him about the aircraft or the sensor station that he didn’t know. So before preflight I spoke with the Flight Engineer and told him I was pulling Power Feeder #2 circuit breaker. AW2 saunters up to the station and hits the power switch. Nothing. Dark. No juice. I let him stew for a few minutes and then showed him the breaker. I gave him a Conditional Qual on the station, and the knowledge how to de-power both sensor stations in an emergency.) Anyway, there was a cocky E-3 (most AWs are Type A personalities) who really got on my nerves. He was a decent operator, but was woefully lacking in military bearing. He needed a Vivid Learning Experience. The AW1Ed family lived in off base housing, and were pretty tight with the neighbors. One of whom, Pete, an AO1, was a FASO SERE instructor. What a great job, I was jealous. Any way, a quota popped for a seat in the next SERE class, and I got to choose who won. Being a SERE grad, I knew exactly what the lucky winner was in for. No surprise, AWAN Cocky got the nod. After viewing his orders, I took a six-pack two doors down to AO1 Pete’s place, knocked on the door, told him about my problem child, and asked if he could get some ‘special’ attention at SERE. Pete was happy to do just that. Did I mention his role at SERE was the Sergeant Major? Yeah, that guy. Fast forward. Upon his return from SERE AWAN Cocky was a changed man, so I had to get a debrief. The Sergeant Major… Read more »
Great story. Still LMAO.
“On an aside, I was giving a NATOPS Checkride to an AW2 (E-5), who flat told me there was nothing I could show him about the aircraft or the sensor station that he didn’t know.”
YGTBSM. He said that during the briefing for a NATOPS Checkride? That must have been quite a “how do you like me so far?” moment for him.
The only way that that scenario could have been better would have been if he had shown up for the pre-flight briefing while chewing gum, wearing a polo shirt with the collar turned up under his flight suit, wearing mirror-lens sunglasses, and sporting a cowboy hat.
And riding a Kwak GPz-750 up to the aircraft. If he showed up like that I’d have UQ’ed him on the spot.
Yup.
A Ready Room down.
Ka-Boom.
What happened to the other qty. 3 ea 6-packs? LOL
We had a deal with one of our division Chiefs. In return for making him look good, keeping it to where he didn’t have to get his hands dirty or take the heat for a screw-up of ours he stayed out of our hair and cleaned, more or less, lower level machinery 1 every field-day by his little old lonesome.
On one of those field-days those of us cleaning upper level machinery 1 were having a friendly water fight with him. Every now and then he’d pop up out of the hatch and shoot water at us and we’d fire the same back at him.
The Old Man showed up during one of those water fights. While we tried, we were unable to warn the Chief and it wasn’t long before he popped up our of the hatch and nailed the Old Man.
Pucker up boys…
Much to our surprise, while he obviously was not happy with his wet poopy suit, the Old Man simply paused for a moment, an eternity perhaps, then he turned and drifted off further back into the engineering spaces.
Ok, I shit you not, this really happened to me… So there we were RP’ing from a hell of a day of patrolling the west of Baghdad around a town called Saba Al Boor. It had been a crappie few day as we had been blown up a few times already both earlier today and the day before, nothing major, just one flat tire that we were able to fix in place. As we start rolling back to Camp Victory, we take a road that we have not used in a long time hoping to avoid any IEDs on the better-traveled routes. There is a pinch point where there is a homemade bridge passing over a drainage canal that gets my adrenaline pumping. I have the Warlock and am #4 truck in a 4-truck patrol. We clear the bridge and start to enter a turn that is shaded by menthol trees in front and a date palm grove about 100 M behind. We have about 50 M spacing between trucks so we are not all blown up at once if they have something big buried in the ground. We are about ½ through the menthol trees when my window shatters, Jay, my driver instinctively cuts the wheel to the right and stops. We radio that we are hit but as I am looking out my side window all I see are 3 boys standing about 10 yards away from the road. They are about 3, 5 and 8 years old respectively. They see me looking at them and I see the oldest one-drop a rock. I get out, full battle rattle making me a fearsome site to behold and I closed that distance in ½ a second. I demanded from the 8 year old “Who threw the rock!” without blinking an eye he points to the 5 year old and I ask the same question “WHO THREW THE ROCK!!!” i’m fuming now but he points to the 3 year old I get down on one knee so we are eye to eye and I ask him “Did you throw the… Read more »
Thanks, AW1Ed.
I needed the laugh.
Never knew the Navy had a Blue Baby.
Ah yes, Lajes… Always a ‘fun’ place to operate out of… Talking about NATOPS checks brought back a funny memory. Back in 79-80, before I got commissioned, I was CNAL NATOPS for SS1/2 in everything from B’s to UIIs, I’d just done VP-66 at Willow Grove, and we had VP-8 the next week in UIIs. AW1 Donnie A was the squadron choice, and they had sent along a young SS2 for a ‘learning’ experience. Now Donnie and I knew each other from Hawaii, in the old B’s. So we get half way through the airplane on the walkthrough, this kid asked, “UH, what’s a bay?”
Donnie and I looked at each other and burst out laughing, realizing I had been giving him a Bravo check ride in an Update II. We went back and started over… Half way through, the kid pipes up again, and we both rounded on him, “What now?” He asked how we could remember both airplanes. We told him years of practice, and hours of study and EP training. If I remember correctly that kid later became a Blue Card himself.
Hey, I was there in 79/80 too, with VP-10. I went to NASB ASWOC afterward. I was wondering if Donnie might be Donnie Ackerman? I remember him quite well. He came from Barbers and after a tour or so in NASB, went to Helos and retired a Senior Chief.
Small AW world- I knew Donny down in Jax.
I was the NATOPS Blue Card holder in both VP-49 and VP-23.
He keeps cajoling me to come down to JAX and hang out with him, maybe spend some time RV’ing, etc.
Donnie and I got along really well, and we still keep in touch through FB.
I had a Blue Card for SS1/2 on the P-3b’s in VP-10, then for the P-3cuII while at the ASWOC.
Great times, and great memories.
Thanks for sharing, brother!
This is a RVN memory. We had been out in the field for two or three weeks and really had our asses handed to us that last day as we made it to Bn HQ in Danang. We were worn out and licking our wounds from the earlier struggle, made it in just before dark. Somehow we managed to scrounge up enough beer to get the entire platoon drunk beyond redemption. Around that time a Gy Sgt. came to us and ordered us to change oil and I think transmission fluids (M-48 A 3 tanks) as we were told to be ready to leave first thing in the morning, heading out again on short notice. By that time we were all pretty much shit-faced, knowing we had to follow orders as demanded. To make it a night we could halfway enjoy by eating something other than C’s, I sent two crew members to the Bn Supply area and told them to pilfer anything edible and bring it back. Tankers were notorious for this! They returned with cans of mayo, pickle relish, fake eggs, crackers, and tuna. As if I knew anything about cooking I was elected to whip up some tuna fish. Everything becomes blurry at that point and early the next morning little is remembered about what we had eaten. All of us nursing hangovers quickly realized a piss helmet was full of mixed pieces of rust and something that resembled dog food. As I said, we had changed fluids the night prior and none of us had been around water to clean up with. A crew member pointed out that we all had filthy dirty hands…but me. Right up to the buttoned sleeves my hands were immaculate! Did not take us long to figure out who had been such a great cook who knew in the dark how to mix a wonderful tasting (or so we thought) tuna fish. Funny thing, no one ever asked me to make any food like that again…EVER!
Dang, you’re making me hungry for tuna on crackers!
The Night I Shot Two SEAL’s. Really, this ain’t no shit! My first duty station in 1967, after boot camp, was ACB-1 aboard the Coronado Amphib Base as a lowly SA. For those who don’t know, ACB-1’s Steelworkers built pontoon causeways for use as portable piers, among other uses, which were sideloaded onto LST’s for transport to wherever needed. About half of ACB-1 personnel consisted of blue stripe Seabee’s, and the other half were mostly white stripers like me. The white stripers were responsible for putting the causeways to use, and we did the side loading and splashing of the causeways. So we wouldn’t forget how to do this, we had to practice beach assaults a couple of times a year. How convenient it was to have a beach, the Silver Strand, right out in front of the base! During my first practice beach assault operation, after all of the causeways had been splashed and assembled into one long pier, I was elected to be point man to ride the lead causeway into the beach. I don’t know how I was to be very effective defending the causeways with only the three blanks they issued each of us for our trusty M-14’s, but luckily we ran into no resistance that day. In a few hours, we had a complete camp set up on the beach, with the expectation of defending it for three days. Two of us were assigned to build and man an outpost to give the camp an early warning of any enemy movement coming our way. With a roll of phone wire, canvas, sound powered phone and shovels in hand, we proceeded to dig a shallow depression in the sand, or would it be our grave, a ways away from the camp perimeter. We covered the depression with the tarp draped over a couple of 2X4’s the beach had donated, and sprinkled a little sand over it for camouflage. We buried the wire leading back to camp. That night we backed ourselves into our cozy hole and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, a few hours after… Read more »
All these stories are great, and while some may think they are just trivial little incidents and anecdotes, they really are the threads that weave the fabric of our history. I am glad they are being shared, thanks to all.
First Westpac, limited (to that point) knowlege of Asian cuisine.
We pulled into Guam, and I took the liberty van down to Marine Drive, hoping to get some decent food and beer.
I went into a Vietnamese restaurant, okay, so far, so good. Ordered a beer and a plate of mint beef. Still good.
They set this thing in front of me, then come back moments later with the beef, rice, and lettuce for wraps. Still good. I’m digging in and really enjoying myself, and next thing I know, the whole family is gathered around me, asking me if I was really enjoying my meal, to which I replied I was. I finished up and left, with the family still giving me strange looks.
What I didn’t know at the time was that item they had sat in front of me was a hot plate, and that I was supposed to COOK the beef at the table. Turns out I ate about a pound of marinated but RAW beef. How I escaped without food poisoning or Hepatitis I’ll never know.
Then there was the seafood platter in Thailand, but that’s another story.
My first liberty in Rota was with my salty Ordie. We stopped at a tapas place, and he nudged me and told me to order something called ‘calamari’ so in my best high school Spanish I ordered ‘calamari y un cervesa fria, por favor.’ The bar dude replied, in a New New York accent, “Squid and beer, coming up pal.” The Ordie was trying to gross me out, and he was disappointed, ’cause with a squeeze of lemon, the calamari were just fine.
Damn it, now I’m hungry.