It rained almost the whole time I was on leave and now it was time to go. I had been really watching the news reports from Vietnam and I was getting a little concerned. My family came to see me off, I was dressed in full winter uniform looking good. I was happy to be going on another adventure. No one in my family had been overseas. I would be the first. No one also in my family had ever been to war. I might be the first. The flight was going to Las Angeles then to Hawaii, then Guam, to Tokyo. Then from there a military flight to Okinawa.
The flight from LA was filled with a lot of service men. It took five hours to get to Hawaii, it was just a layover of about an hour. Long enough to get a beer. One beer, it cost $5.00. I couldn’t believe it. It took a long time to get to Guam about seven hours. We had a couple hours layover there. A couple of us bought a bottle of rum. It was very cheap there in Guam. We boarded and flew for another three or four hours. Most of the flight everyone slept.
When we arrived in Tokyo the airport was huge. I had never seen one that big. Another new experience was going through customs. Seemed scary and it took a long time. Finally we were off on a short military flight the rest of the way.
After reporting for duty to the commanding officer I was showed to the barracks. I couldn’t believe my eyes, quonset huts! In side were 6 racks with a set of wall lockers. In the middle of the hut was a pot belly stove. It was running as it was November, and in Japan it gets kind of cold.
I was only there for about two weeks when I got my promotion to Cpl. They needed a squad leader and I was it. This was to be my first management job, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I had seven or eight men that I was in charge of. They were my responsibility. In the following weeks we all became close.
It was early in the morning, pitch black outside, when we heard the siren go off. We all grabbed our gear, back packs were always packed and ready. We mustered for formation. Helicopters flew in we were issued our weapons. We had heard that there was some trouble in Korea, we thought where we heading to that we were going to fight. The order came to stand down. This had been a readiness drill. We did good. I was proud of my squad, no bickering or any trouble at all.
The following week we caught a float, that’s a cruise. We were assigned to an LST ship. This ship was flat bottom so that it could beach . There was a ramp on the bow we would drive the trucks and Jeeps and am-tracks up and then down into the hull of the ship. The stern of the ship was flat and straight up and down. It would be opened so the am-tracks could enter the water and leave the ship. This ship was made for amphibious assault. This ship was part of the fleet assigned with the USS Kitty Hawk.
While on ship Marines had very little to do. I got assigned to chase prisoner’s from the brig to Captains Mass. It really wasn’t much work. Sometimes you would have to oversee the prisoner while he did special duty as punishment, like cleaning the head or shining the brass on the ship or even swabbing the deck. When I wasn’t chasing I was relaxing by sitting on the fantail of the ship. We would sit there and smoke and watch the ocean go by and look for sea creatures.
The first port we pulled into was Cow Chung, Taiwan. As the ship pulled into the harbor the ocean water was perfectly still except for the ripple that the ship made. The water was a crystal clear blue. There were some mountains with green foliage covering them, and their reflection on the water was amazing. I tossed shiny penny in the water and I was able to see it flip through the water for what seemed like fathoms. I saw a sea turtle, it was huge, then I saw a sea serpent that looked like a huge electric eel. You could see fish of different colors. The water was an emerald green now as we docked. It was a town that amazed the eye. I had never seen such a place other then in movies. On the way into town there were bars. Many bars, filled with Sailors and Marines and women. Women seemed to be the main thing on the menu. As I walked along the docks I saw tattoo parlors and little monkeys hanging around outside the door ways to the different establishments.
We were there for about two days, which was plenty of time to tip back some local beer and catch a Bruce Lee movie. Of course it was subtitled which was fine because I came for the action.
