USGI sea stories

[lefty o]

Worked with a guy for awhile that was Black Shoe Navy and spent most of his tour
on one of those Amphibious Assault ships carrying hundreds of Grunts and Amtraks.

Out in the ocean cruising along, there isn't much to do.
If you're going to tease the Grunts, you have to be rather creative.

On the USS Big Gray, the Grunts had to stand in line for almost everything.
And whatever you were waiting for had very short, precise hours.

A few sailors would line up in front of a door out on deck.
A Grunt or two would come by and ask what they were waiting for.
They'd tell him, "I need to buy a couple things, and am waiting for the door to open".
They would get in line with them.

After there was a few, one sailor at a time would say, "I have to go on Watch", "I don't need anything this bad",
"I'll have to come back later", etc. and trickle away, leaving several Marines standing in line in front of the door.
The sailors would drift off, and go to another level of the ship to watch...…..

Sooner or later one of the Marine Staff NCOs who had been on those ships before, would come along and ask,
"What are you people doing"?

"We're waiting for the door to open".
Then the Gunny Sgt or whatever would open the door,
showing that nothing was in there except some paint cans or a stack of mops.

Then it would start...………
A real life episode of Gomer Pyle with Sgt. Carter screaming and jumping up & down.

i think this is true on any amphib. we usually said we were waiting for ice cream.

[Winger Ed.]

i think this is true on any amphib. we usually said we were waiting for ice cream.

Hey, that would have suckered me into standing there too!

[lefty o]

Hey, that would have suckered me into standing there too!

to be fair, the marines dont have much else to do other than stand in line.

[wch]

A sign appeared on the Supply Room door that read "Sign up here for your GI lighter".
So most of the battery signed up, after all who wouldn't want a nice new issue lighter?
Would it be a Zippo? A Ronson?
Who knew? The speculation was rampant!
Finally the big day arrived and at the morning formation the First Sergeant announced "The GI lighters are in and all who signed up for them could get one after morning chow".
We lined up at the Supply Room door and it opened to expose a very large box of those OD "strikes when wet" matchbooks that were part of the C rats- yep, we got a free GI lighter, alright!

[Winger Ed.]

, we got a free GI lighter, alright!

We never got nothing like that from our Supply Dept.
They had a big picture of everyone in the office laughing and cracking up..
Under it read, "You want it when"?

[popper]

Supply depot - large grey ship alongside! Milk and veggies gone a day from the US.

[Winger Ed.]

In a helicopter squadron, we had pretty much regular hours, but someone from each shop would have to stay until the last bird had come in.
That's a lot of time to hang around and swap sea stories if we were doing troop lifts late into the night.

One of my buddies had spent a few years as a Drill Instructor at San Diego.
He told of one time there was an Inspector General's inspection coming up.
Where ever you're at, a IG inspection is a big deal.
More so on a Grunt base, and especially so at a Recruit Depot.

His recruit platoon was scrubbing away,,,,,,, when he wandered into the Head,,,,,,,,,,, a Private was stuck.
Granted, he'd told them he wanted those pipes clean, "From here to the Pacific Ocean".

One Private was scrubbing out the commode, going as far towards the ocean as he could reach,,,,, and got his arm stuck.

They tried pulling, a bottle of soap, more pulling, and of course, plenty of yelling,,, nothing was working.

As a last effort before calling base maintenance to bust it, he told him,
"Sweet Pea, When I get back, you better have your entire scuzzy body on one side of that commode or the other".

He never figured out how, but the kid did it.
He'd gone out for a couple of minutes, but when he came back-
The kid had got his arm out of the thing without breaking it.

[RustyMusket]

My Dad was one of 10 brothers, 9 of whom served in WWII and Korea. My Dad is the last one now and at 92, he was one of the youngest in WWII..right at the end. I was the family historian and as I got older, I sat down with my remaining Uncles and they shared some stories. Most interesting was from one who was a medic in ETO. He was ""detained"" 3 times by Germans but traded back or let go. One thing I did learn was the horrors and revenge inflicted on Germans by displaced peoples until about November of 1945.

But about 3 months ago, while grocery shopping, I saw an old Navy vet with his son. I stopped and spoke with him and he proceeded to tell me a story of being "Lost" until 1946. Apparently, he was dropped on a small, uninhabited Pacific Island with 6 or so others and they were to send radio reports back to fleet about any Japanese ship movements they saw. The radio evidently died and they were left...or 'forgotten" as he stated as the island hopping campaign moved on to Japan. He said he became expert at using a bayonet on small sharks and they were close to starvation when the Navy came back looking for such souls. I think he said Feb or March of 46 was when they were 'retrieved".

[Iowa Fox]

I got out of the Army in 1969 glad to have my military obligation out of the way and behind me. There were lots of returning vets going back to work and we had several navy guys at work so I heard plenty of their sea stories. A couple involved the new guys out at sea that were sea sick.

One said in the morning before breakfast he would climb up on the fantail and get a baby albatross chick still in down out of the nest and put it in his shirt pocket. In the mess hall he would sit across from one of the new guys with horrible sea sickness. After getting firmly seated he would pull the chick out of his pocket, bite the head off and throw it in the guys tray. Never failed to made them loose it he said.

One said they walked around with a raw piece of bacon hanging out of their mouths to make the sea sick guys loose it.

Another one said the bars in the Philippines had jars of balutes on the bar counter like we had pickled eggs here in the US. He talked about buying the prostitutes at the bar balutes to win their favorer. He said they loved them.

The guys were characters and I didn't doubt their stories a bit.

[FISH4BUGS]

Not a GI story but a dependent story. Traveling from Germany after Dad's duty stations at Munich, Stuttgart and Dachau, in 1956 on the USS Buckner (or was it the Darby? I can't remember which) we encountered two major things - a hurricane and the Stockholm in NY harbor. We steered south to skirt the hurricane but still had 40' seas. Very scary stuff and sick as a dog for days on end. No one could go out on decks. They were roped off.
Pulling into NY harbor we saw the Stockholm with its bow chewed up badly.
I was only 8 years old but I remember it like yesterday.

[Winger Ed.]

While stationed at Quantico, VA the Air Station was it's own small, self contained, isolated place inside the base.
Besides the hangers & planes, we had our own barracks, slop chute, single seat barber shop, a 7-11 sized PX,
and our own small Chow Hall that could seat a few dozen.

Among the things going on there besides the maintenance dept. for the Presidential Helicopter Fleet,
we had a handful of Fleet helos- CH-53s, CH-46s, & Hueys for support
to the White House, OCS, pilot training, testing new aircraft & potential modifications, etc.

One of the things we did was carry the Marine Corps Band and Silent Drill Team to events up & down the East Coast.

In our little Mess Hall, with all the folks who lived on base and went home for Lunch, brought their Lunch, or just didn't eat Lunch,
It was REAL easy to find a seat.

I went in one day, and set up at one end of the dining room was the Marine Corps Band.
The one you see on TV! They were in utilities, and not dress blues or dress reds, but it was them.

How cool is that! It was 'a moment in life' for me.

All 15 or 20 of us sat there, and watched them go through a whole show's performance.
It was a totally un-announced performance and a 'thank you' to the Squadron for supporting them, often on short notice,
and a final practice for some event we were flying them to later on that day.

It was un announced, and if ya didn't come in at eat that day or know some one who did-
you'd never even have heard about it.

They performed their entire show for a couple dozen of us low ranking enlisted turds---
like we were the most important audience of European Royalty, or VIPs they'd ever had.

[MrWolf]

You were royalty. You were serving this great country. Thanks for your service.

[Winger Ed.]

Watching the news today, I saw an old friend. The President was getting off Marine One, and as he was on the airstair door,
you could see the pilots in there.
That reminded me:

When I first got assigned to the Executive Flight Detachment, I noticed the crew wore the usual helicopter flight helmets-
except on a White House mission. For those, they wore a headset like radio operators wear.
I thought it was odd. They'd have to wear sunglasses instead of having the drop down visors on a helmet.

I asked about it and was told the crew used to wear a standard helmet.
In the early days of the JFK administration, they took a White House mission, and the First Lady,
Jackie Kennedy asked the crew chief, "What's that"?

Without thinking, he told her, "It's a crash helmet".

She then asked, "Where's mine"?

From that day forward, the Marine One flight crew has worn the wire frame headsets the hear the radios.

[William Yanda]

"I grew up near Port Hueneme, home of a USNCBC battalion, and I believe, the engineer school. When I grew up I joined the Army mostly to get away from the Navy." Wayne

How did that work out for you? I joined the Army by special invitation.....from my friends and neighbors!

[Winger Ed.]

How did that work out for you? I joined the Army by special invitation.....from my friends and neighbors!

I'd wanted to be a Marine ever since I was a little kid.
There was vets in the family from the other services, but no Marines.
It was just something I wanted to do, and got a Avaition Maintenance guarantee.

The parents were none to pleased either.
The Marines were almost all out of Viet Nam when I went in.
I always knew if there had been a military plane that crashed anywhere in the world before we got the word about it.
My Mom would track me down and call to be sure I was OK.
But after I got out, they were finally cool with it.

[LUBEDUDE]

My brother, RIP was a Marine on the USS Coral Sea. He never opened up me about Nam for over 20 years. Besides loading ordinance to aircraft, he made napalm.

He told me that he thought it was such BS having to deal with inspections when he had so much more “real work” to do getting the jets loaded up for battle.

He came up with a trick to weasel out of inspections. He would light up a cigarette while mixing the diesel fuel and Tide to make the napalm.

When the CO would come to his area the assistant would say, “Fortlage is crazy, I wouldn’t go in there”. Sure enough the CO turned around and left never to return for another inspection.

My brother never told anyone that it took burning magnesium to set off the napalm.

[shdwlkr]

Some of my first bosses when I started working in engineering were vets, one I remember most was a WWII vet he went from Normandy to Berlin. He would get really drunk some days and I ran interference with the higher ups for him. They got to the point if he was not talking they would come and ask me if he was having a bad day and I would answer yes. He talked about a lot of things when he was in such a state mostly to me as we worked that close. Another of my bosses was a Korean vet that lost part of a finger as it got shot off. Now I am wondering what happened to a high school friend and fellow vet from Vietnam era that I can't get a hold off. War is hell, but losing contact with close friends that endured some similar things I think is worse as you know first hand what might be going on with them.

[jonp]

Grandfather went ashore at Normandy and walked all the way to Germany. Since he spoke French he was in front through France and he had a knack for language so picked up German pretty fast and was always on patrol as an interpreter or something. He rarely spoke about any of that but did tell me one time when I was very young how he got his purple heart.

He was out on patrol one night just after crossing into Germany and his squad got caught in a rock slide. They were all killed except him and he had a broken back unable to move. Along came a German Soldier who found him. They looked at each other and my Pepre thought he was all done but he said the German put down his rifle and said "no more, I'm fighting no more". He picked up my Grandfather and carried him several miles back to his base and surrendered. My grandfather said he visited that POW in England before he was shipped home after getting out of the Hospital and ate dinner with him. He couldn't really think of how to thank him enough so they talked about each others homes and stuff.

[LUBEDUDE]

Even though my brother would not talk about Vietnam for 20 years, he did tell about a few experiences about being on leave in the Philippines after being home for about 10 years.

Most stories were of gambling and hookers. But the one I will always remember probably has more to do with the culture there.

One day while walking down the street he saw a young boy run up behind a man and grab his Seiko or Rolex watch. It had that band where the clasp folds within itself. The watch thieves had a way of sliding a finger between the clasp and wrist and the make a twisting pulling motion to slide the watch off within a second.

As the child ran away with his treasure a policeman that witnessed it pulled out his pistol and shot the kid in the back of the head. He walked over and picked up the watch and gave it back to the man.

My brother said that there was little reaction of the onlookers.

[koehn,jim]

THat sounds like alongapo city at Subic bay. That was how they dealt with the thieves that prayed on service men. The rest of the Philipines was different.