Posted on 11/11/2007 4:29:59 PM PST by Vermonter
Edited on 11/11/2007 4:55:21 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
This does make me thinks this way about my time being haxze gray and underway.
“I WAS A SAILOR ONCE. I WAS PART OF THE NAVY
& THE NAVY WILL ALWAYS BE
PART OF ME.”
I sent this one off to my former boss, a now 82 year old ex-squid, current zillionaire -- who always much, much preferred talking about his World War II signalman days, to his latter years business acumen.
(I picked up on this years ago, as an "ass-chewing avoidance system"...if he'd start to go off on me, I'd simply remind him that I'd been a Juggie and he'd only been the bus driver.....it never failed)
Thanks for the memories. It brought a smile to this Navy vet’s face.
Ah! An old timer! Let me just say that the nuclear subs have a nice smooth ride except when you come up to periscope depth. A common joke with the nukes when we were underway on my boat was we were just in a simulation and had never left the pier.
(My used-to-fish: USS L.Mendel Rivers, SSN-686.)
Wow, I don't think I would like that at all! Submariners don't need sunlight. We get the equivalent radiation dose from our nuclear reactor. And the screws hitting the water sounds scary--though I have to admit I did sort of like the sound of our fairwater planes slapping the surface when we were at periscope depth and inadvertently broached the surface in heavy weather.
The good old days. Wouldn’t do it again, but glad I have the memories!
“I WAS A SAILOR ONCE. I WAS PART OF THE NAVY& THE NAVY WILL ALWAYS BE PART OF ME.”
And how!
USS Parche SSN-683.
I visited the L. Mendel Rivers when it was briefly in port when I was at the Nuclear Power School in Charleston. I also saw it being cut up at PSNS in Bremerton (my boat got the cribbage board).
You just have to love 637 class boats. They were the workhorse of the Cold War. Sadly my boat was the last of the 637s. There are still the moored training ships in Charleston that are old 637 hulls with their old S5W reactors and there is another modified S5W reactor plant in New York, but all of the 637s are gone. Sad. They were truly one of the greatest ship classes in the history of the Navy.
True....the memories, the sound of the catapults and the arresting wire.....USS Forrestal, CV-59, USS John F. Kennedy, CV-67...
I actually served on the McCard in the spring of 1969 as part of the spook detachment. We were tailing the “Moskva”, the first Russian aircraft carrier. Tailed her all over the eastern Med for about 2 months.
Small world. I got off her when she returned from the Vietnam cruise. You probably took my place ;-}
And when the propellers of a carrier cavitate the water, it'll shake the computers off your desk!
...the piercing trill of the boatswainspipe... ""Sweepers, sweepers! Man your brooms!"
...the syncopated clangor of the ship's bell on the quarterdeck... "FIRE! FIRE FIRE!" FIRE IN THE AFT MESSDECKS!"
...the harsh squawk of the 1MC... "This is a drill! This is a drill!"
I like the surge of adventure in my heart when the word is passed "Now station the special sea and anchor detail..." "The smoking lamp is out throughout the ship!"
...I like the tempo of a Navy band blaring through the topside speakers As we pull away from the oiler after refueling at sea...
Our ship played Metallica.
HAPPY VETERANS' DAY!!!
Thank you for posting this poem. My husband was on the Coral Sea in the early sixties. I’m printing it up write now to give to him when he wakes up. God bless you.
We spent months in the Gulf of Tonkin following the Coral Sea around in circles. Thank your husband for his service for me.
Probably not. The McCard was in Naples on her way home to be decommed. Word got out that the Moskva had “declared” the Bosporous. Then the mad scramble began. They welded the spook van to the helo deck in Naples and then she steamed to Venice to pick up the rest of us. Two guys from Edsall, Scotland, two guys from Rota, Spain, and me from London. The others boarded in Naples. I think there were a dozen of us all total. We bunked in the helo hanger. Crew didn’t like that because it was their gym and movie theater.
Come to think of it, it was early spring of ‘70. I remember it being cold. Rough seas the whole time. Needless to say, ship’s company was pretty much pissed at us the whole time.
Bump!
My dad was Navy.
I loved it then and I miss it now,but at my age all I can do about it is tell my 11 grandchildren lots of Sea Stoies,I have to tell the grandkids because everybody else has heard them all....more than once!
outstanding post...it brings back good memories, bad memories and some things we’d rather forget ;)
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