Old Salt
Posts: 431
| Subject: Jan. 3, 1962
47 years ago today I joined the US Navy. Starting the journey of my life. I served 6 years on 2 boats. It was a great time, saw some of the world, the majesty and violence of the sea, made life long friends, was bored some, scared spitless a few times. But it was the men that made that part of the trip a joy. Today Im a member of US Submarine Veterans Inc. keeping up with shipmates new and old from the lates 30's to those that still serve today.
The journey goes on, its been a good ride and I owe much to those that took a kid and trained him to be a submariner and a man.
Stew if you see this an extra thanks to you. |
Old Salt
Posts: 431
| Subject: RE: Jan. 3, 1962
After posting the above to a non sub board the discussion turned to what our famlies went though, which led to the post below. Which ended in something I try not to think about too much.
Dear Flo was 19 when I took her from a small Eastern Shore town to Norfolk we had 1 month together as the sub finished its yard work. Then I left, gone 2 weeks, in one, gone a month, in a week etc etc for the summer and early fall. Then the biggie a 4 month Med cruise. She always laughs "I got married and was left alone in a big city".
After the Med Cruise we did alot on Mon to Fri weekly ops, So I was home when son was born on a Saturday.
Once when we visited Norfolk again I got lost looking for where we had once lived. She laughed and said,"I knew you were wrong, I lived here you just visited now and then".
It was tough on her, once when I was at sea it came over the news that 3 men had been washed overboard and lost from a Norfolk sub. Then nothing until I got home. Her first reaction was he is a snipe and doesnt go topside. But then she remembered how I had told of going topside to rig an FBT to a MBT, and of course it was not a Fairey Story as I told it.
As I neared the end of my enlistment there were offers of sending me to one of the other 3 nuke boats in Subron 6 if I reenlisted. The call of the Eastern Shore of Maryland life and a bad "vision" one night in December 67 made it a final desicion to not reenlist. One of those 3 nukes was USS Scorpion. Lost as we well know in December 68.
I'll never know.
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Jan. 3, 1962
