The last day of classes before Christmas vacation I took a bus to Pensacola Naval Air Station.  I then presented my orders to the scheduler on the flight line.  Not problem there.  Whew.  That is because I was not on active duty, just a reservist.  No one else there was looking for a ride.  There were not flights to San Diego.  However I got a ride on a flight as far as Dallas NAS.  That night there were two pilots flying a 4 engine prop job, otherwise empty, to San Antonio!

San Antonio is an Air Force base.  Lots of people were looking for a ride there.  My situation did not look good.  One airman looking at my orders asked his sergeant if I could use the orders to get a ride.  He said I could if there was room.  The terminal was about to close.  An airman looking for a ride also told me we'd better beat it to the enlisted barracks and get a bed before the crowds got there.

Good advice.  I got a place to sleep for the night.

The next morning I was back at the flight terminal.  Lots of planes were coming and going, but with few seats available.  Most were loaded for Vietnam.  Also, lots of people wanted to go to the west coast.

Once on the ground in Colorado Springs  I saw that the military terminal was loaded with people wanting rides.  Well before the terminal closed I was smart enough to walk over to the BEQ (enlisted barracks) and get a bed for the night.  The next day I was on a DC-9 military passenger plane on the way to Los Angeles.  LA is about 60 miles north of where my folks were living in Oceanside, just outside of Camp Pendleton.  That is 100 miles north of San Diego.

The flight was great because we flew over the Rocky Mountains during the day and the Grand Canyon.  What a view.

The arrival over Los Angeles was breathtaking..  From the air the lights of the city stretched from horizon to horizon.  I had never been to the west coast before.  The problem was the fog.  All of a sudden the airport was being closed in by fog/smog.  We were the last flight to land that day.  Once on the ground we just sat there in the middle of the runway.  We had to wait for a jeep to hunt us down and lead us to a terminal.  Visibility was about 20 feet.

Once in the terminal I called my dad to drive up and get me.  I had to wait for about two hours.  He never would have found me except for one thing.  I remembered that our car’s front right wheel made a loud clicking sound.

I couldn’t see vehicles driving by, but when I heard that clicking I ran towards the sound and stopped dad’s car.  A good thing he hadn’t ever gotten that wheel fixed.

I reported to the Shields the next day.  Drove my mom’s car.

When we mustered in the morning I told the chief I wanted to work in radio, that I was a radio striker (RMSN).  He waved me off saying I had to have a secret clearance to work in radio.  I told him I had the clearance.  It was in the personnel file I was holding.  I was to work in Radio for the next two weeks.

After a day or so on the ship one of the chiefs asked me if I wanted to change duty stations.  I asked him what the difference was.  He told me that if I changed I would have three days off for Christmas instead of two days.  That sounded like a winner to me.

My bunk was the top bunk in a stack of three bunks, right by a watertight door leading aft.   That means there was a red light right next to my head at night.  That meant a lot of noise every time someone opened and closed that watertight door.  I got used to it.

My duty station was in Radio on the second deck above the main deck, somewhere below the charthouse, which was behind the bridge area.

I spent many a night in the radio room on duty while we were in port tied up to the pier.  I was usually there by myself, checking the teletype, which clattered all night long looking for messages addressed to the ship.  Some nights I would go to the message center on base in the middle of the night. 

Walking back to the pier was always spectacular.  All the ships in port had Christmas tree lights strung from the bow to the stern, all the way to the tops of the masts.

The best part of the two weeks was getting underway for three days.  They made an announcement every time we made a turn, “Stand by for rolls.”  The ship would roll like a son of a gun.  You had to make sure to hang on every time we made a turn.

I remember my first meal underway.  I got my loaded tray and headed forward about 12 feet to the mess decks where there were tables fixed to the deck and had seats attached.  There was a hatch I had to go by.  I almost wound up down that hatch with my tray in my hands.  Gotta watch out for those rolls.

We fired the 5 inch guns.  We also fired the hedge hog ASW rockets.  That was a sight.  Then we dropped a depth charge from the stern.  It rattled me good, and I was hanging on good.

One thing I remembered was sleeping real well while the ship was underway.  All that rolling and the hum of the ship in general sure put me to sleep in nothing flat.

The two weeks was good.  I really enjoyed it.  My dad drove me to the air station in San Diego.  The man on the flight line was not sure and had to check with his boss as to whether I was eligible to fly on the flimsy kind of orders I had on hand.  In the end I got a flight on a P-3 patrol plane back to Pensacola.     >>>>>>

Once in Pensacola there was that long bus ride back to Tallahassee.

That was my one and only duty on a ship as an enlisted man.  I went to my next ship (in Vietnam) as an officer.

Tom Sparkman

October 12, 2008

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