War? None for me, thanks.
Growing up as a Navy brat, I wanted to be a Naval officer just like my Dad. Living on bases in the states and overseas, I fell in love with the ships, planes, and uniforms. I saw Coast Guard cutters come into port listing dangerously from tons of ice that had formed during their iceberg patrols. Tired sailors were still chopping ice from the decks and superstructures with axes and sledgehammers. If the Coasties had not done this, the weight could have capsized the ship, and taken all hands down to Davey Jones locker.
Once I sat in some bleachers above the beach in Camp Pendelton, with other dependents, and watched as thousands of Marines waded ashore from Higgins landing crafts. This was a training exercise for the Marine and Naval personnel. Machine guns firing blanks clattered, and billowing smokescreens hid the transport ships just offshore. My father, a Navy chaplain, was in on the landing, but my mother and I couldn’t pick him out among the multitude of green-helmeted warriors.
I used to go with my father when he led Sunday services: Tent Camp II, Camp Pendleton, 1954
After my father came home, I was excited by the day’s events. I asked him all kinds of questions, but I could tell that something was bothering him. Finally he told me what was wrong. One of the men that rode ashore with him in the landing craft had tripped as he hit the beach, and his rifle had discharged, sending the paper wadding of the blank cartridge into the young marine’s heart. He died at the edge of the water.
This upset me at the time. I knew that war was dangerous, But it hadn’t occurred to me that peacetime training could be deadly as well.
On a Sunday in 1954, Tent Camp II, Camp Pendleton. That’s me in front.
A few years later, My dad was assigned to DASA, the Defense Atomic Support Agency at Sandia Base in Albuquerque.
Dad was assigned to multiple Atomic tests in Nevada. (US Government photo)
On one test, goats, burros, and beagles were chained around a tower at the Tonopah, Nevada test range. Plutonium was blasted into the teathered beasts, and they were slaughtered at intervals to determine the toxicity of the Plutonium, if a nuclear weapon misfired and the radioactive materiel was spread around.
I was beginning to doubt that I could ever perform my duties as a sailor or a marine. By the time I turned eighteen, The Vietnam War was raging, and I had to register for the draft.
I had always planned on enlisting in the Coast Guard after High School, because I’d heard that qualified volunteers could be assigned to Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica. Unfortunately, the Treasury Department, which ran the Coast Guard, had also agreed to furnish men to the Vietnam War. This was a no go for me. I knew that I could never go to war against the Vietnamese.
To find out how the US Navy helped me dodge the draft, You’ll need to read my Memoirs:
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