Why again I love Grunts

Here again (in a different re-telling) is my story about WHY I am thankful to every kind of combat military, beginning with Infantry. Several things happened that I now understand were real Blessings from God.

I finished college in January 1968, when the Tet Offensive began. Uncle Sam sent me a letter that the Army wanted my bod. I wasn't very aware of what the war was about, all I knew was I didn't want to be shot at in the jungles of Vietnam. By the time for inductment arrived, I had enlisted in the Navy which was glad to get college grads, even with bad eyesight like mine.

At Navy boot camp in San Diego, whenever we swabbies felt the marching and discipline were too much, all we had to do was look through the chain link fence at the Marines in their bootcamp, going through their version of a warmup to survive Hell.

I asked for officer training, so had to wait maybe four months for a Navy decision. They asked us what we might do while waiting, so I signed up to be a punched card jockey. They had me preparing and delivering reports, including the report of sailors who needed orders after being turned down for officer training. I actually handed a report of my own availabililty to the Petty Officer who managed those decisions. He asked me what I wanted to do, so I said Computers !

He cut my orders for computer basic skills school in San Francisco at Treasure Island, and field specific school for Operations Control Centers in Washington, DC. I made one of the top three grades in the last school so they gave me choice of orders. That is how I got two years of shore duty in the middle of Oahu, living at Wheeler AFB next to Schofield Barracks (both are shown in movies about Pearl Harbor). I was working UNDER pineapple fields about 1/3rd mile east of Schofield at Kunia tunnel, an alternate operations control center in case nuclear threat forced evacuation of Pearl Harbor.

Since that training plus waiting took a year, all that Sweet shore duty took up three years of my four year obligation. After that third year, the Navy decided to send me to sea duty aboard the USS Constellation. Those three years gave me the chance to gain E-5 rank as a Data Processing Petty Officer. That is about as high as any enlisted can get without a longer commitment. This meant by the time I showed up on the Connie, I was high enough for daily management of our computer room, rather than scrubbing decks, cleaning rancid ashtrays, or worse.

Aboard the Connie, we had a couple months still of shore duty in San Diego. Then we did go to war via the Phillipines to Vietnam. Aboard the Connie, I worked sometimes 10 hour days, but in perhaps the only air-conditioned space aboard ship. Not like most of the guys who worked in sweltering heat, doing unpleasant or dangerous things.

For example I never had to handle planes up on the flight deck, where an engine can blast you off the deck into the sea (from five stories up) or worse. Once we were having a rare day off with a picnic on the flight deck, when we got a warning of unknown ships or planes approaching. We had to clear the deck so the two ready-five fighters (ready to launch in five minutes) could take off. That was when a flight deck crewman got sucked INTO one of the jet intakes. He was eventually flown off to a hospital in critical condition. I never did hear if he made it, or whether there was a real threat. This is a real story, not a movie script.

So now you know why I feel greatly in debt to every Grunt who chooses to do what I avoided, going in harm's way for us at home. Also to those pilots who flew every day risking Hell on earth for my sake. And to those sailors who took boats up the rivers, FIBERGLASS boats, hoping to out gun or outrun whatever posed a threat. There are many more folks, of course because I always had dozens of ships and planes protecting me in that multi-thousand ton ship with its one air conditioned computer room.

So yes I had plenty to be thankful for, and none of it deserved. No wonder I found it easy to start taking the Bible seriously. Once you do that for real, the God who wrote it begins treating you seriously right back.