My response to the restlessness and
the push and tug of growing up and striking out from the bosom of the
family (in view of the fact that we still had a military draft and
not being particularly interested in carrying a rifle and slogging
through mud and very much interested in “seeing the world”) was
to enlist in the USNavy after graduating from high school in 1959. I
was seventeen, feeling confined by small town life, restless, wanting
to break out of my cocoon and, as I saw it, spread my wings,
literally, on my first flight from Boston in a TWA airliner headed
for Chicago and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. It felt like I
had truly “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” as John Gillespie
had described it in his poem High Flight.
Of
course, the Post Office posters and the recruiter's enlistment pitch
turned out to be somewhat different from the reality of life in the
military. Thus did I become, on the one hand, addicted to the
lure and fascination of faraway places and, on the other,
disenchanted with the regimentation of military life.
As a sailor I
was something of a rebel with a cause—getting through my
hitch with my independence of thought reasonably intact. It grew
increasingly clear to me that I was being conditioned to be a
faceless cog in a machine, a number on a dog tag where thought and
opinion were discouraged while adherence to strict rules and
regulations were demanded. Furthermore, as time passed and I became
more familiar with the guys around me, I developed the strong
impression that many re-ups (career sailors), far from being fierce
warriors, were really dependent type personalities who needed to be
told what to do and when to do it. I also began to realize that I
liked to write (thanks to a snotty ROTC wonder Ensign who demanded
that I write an essay about driving carefully after I had been
invoved in a traffic accident that wasn't my fault). I think that
what I considered his arbitrary treatment of me as if I were a juvenile
delinquent contributed to my determination not to submit to the
unquestioning obedience required of a good soldier. In short, I was
not and could never be a real soldier—and I knew it.
my dog tags - the nick is for inserting the tag between your front teeth in case of death |
But I got around. And I also got a tattoo either in Milwaukee or Chicago, I don't remember which. It was the de rigeur thing to do on our first day of liberty from Great Lakes. You were supposed to brag later how you got drunk and laid and so out of your head that the supposed pain of the tattoo needle didn't bother you a bit. Well, in fact, full disclosure, there was no getting laid and I wasn't even drunk when I got the tat. Everybody invariably asks: "Did it hurt?" No. It stung like a series of mosquito bites, but it took a couple weeks to heal the scabs.
I was assigned to four ships in three years, sailed the Atlantic and Caribbean. Memorable [both for positive and negative reasons] ports included my stateside homeports: Norfolk, Virginia, Key West, Florida and Jacksonville, Florida. Overseas ports included Hamilton, Bermuda, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands and Funchal, Madeira off the coast of Morocco in North Africa.
I was assigned to four ships in three years, sailed the Atlantic and Caribbean. Memorable [both for positive and negative reasons] ports included my stateside homeports: Norfolk, Virginia, Key West, Florida and Jacksonville, Florida. Overseas ports included Hamilton, Bermuda, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands and Funchal, Madeira off the coast of Morocco in North Africa.
To be continued...
2 comments:
love it….and look at that young soldier's face, aglow, I would say!!
-R
:-) Ya, I think I must have been home on leave at the time, beween assignments--probably 18-years-old. Imagine that, over 50 years ago!
Post a Comment