One of the few stories I have shared with my kids about Vietnam, a request from the Hyperborean Wanderer. As I was settling into my new digs, one of the old guys came up to me and gave me a spent .50 cal bullet. He told me it was his >lucky bullet given him by an old timer when he was a FNG. No one who had carried that bullet around had been wounded. I felt>like that was a pretty good deal. Within a few days he rotated back the the land of the big PX and I developed the habit of carryi...

I must have been about 6 or 7 when my folks took me to the walk in theater in Norfolk to see "The Day the Earth Stood Still". I remember that night not only for the impact the movie made on me...but also for the impact my dad had with the sign in front of the hospital that said "Quiet, Hospital Zone". That impact became a legend in our family's history. He challenged me to a foot race up the sidewalk to our apartment house. I immediately took off in my best post toddler run, but I was no...

The hit show "24" got a little contraversial last week, or more acurately, was the target of some contraversy. Seems some American Muslims were miffed that a show about stopping terrorist plots portrayed muslims in a bad light. Or something like that. I understand that the show wouldn't pack the same punch if the bad guys were...say...Tahitian or Swiss. The problem is that this show has become the ultimate "get even" fantasy for alot of people and no one wants to get even with the Swiss. ...

Life Happens got me twisted about what is and isn't a hero the other day. In my mind, "Hero" has always been defined by one person...a gold standard against which all others are measured...my dad. So I have decided to tell his story, in bits and pieces...and share with you some of the fun he shared with me. I may even share some of the other stuff, too. One of the Chief's greatest adventures was "wintering over" in Antarctica in the early 50's. As winter approaches down there, all the...

It was a rainy, chilly, miserable night out and the Chief was sitting it out in a waterfront bar with some shipmates. One of his buddies glanced out the window and noticed an old man across the street at the bus stop. He was bent and pale and thin and worn out looking, hunched up in a thin coat against the weather. They all agreed it was not a night to be out so they elected the Chief to go over and coax to old fellow into the warmth of the bar. It took some persuasion and the offer of ...

Homecomings were always special. Some of the cruises lasted a year or more and the Chief always came home with neat stuff, alligator purses from Cuba...Toys from Japan or Hong Kong...lots of tailored clothes from Hong Kong, too...always something. Except for the big Greenland cruise. That time he came home empty handed...so did all the guys in the machine shop. Here's why. Some of the older hands told some of the newer guys about the great fur deals you could get in Greenland...if th...

BJ Littlefield loved Squoshi...everybody loved her...but she loved BJ. Squoshi means little in Japanese. She was small and pretty and I loved her, too. BJ was a huge North Carolina football player who wound up in the Navy and working for the Chief aboard the Mighty Etai (etai means "ouch" in Japanese...our nickname for the Etlah, AN-79, a worn out old net tender that had been home ported in Yokosuka since the end of the war). A net tender is a pretty small ship with two huge "horns" stick...

If you wander long enough and meet enough people along the way, you may begin to get jaded and believe that there are just so many types of people. You change the hair color or the eyebrow shape or weight or height but basically there are a limited number of "types" in the world. You know you've met people and said to yourself, "he's just like______" , fill in the blank. Well, I know that there are some people in the world that there is just one of. World couldn't handle any more than one...

The Chief spent his whole Navy career on ships. The only shore duty he ever had was the diving barge in San Diego and that was afloat. So when we left Hawaii in 1962 to return to San Diego, he assumed he would get another ship to finish out his 20. Wrong. He was assigned to North Island NAS to a desk...in the safety office. No more diving, or metal craft, or any of the things he loved about the Navy...just a whole lot of the stuff he hated. Paperwork. Desks. And worst of all...he was ...

Not all of the sea stories I heard as a kid were from the Chief. This one came from my buddy Bobby's dad, the one who got us the job at Bloc Arena on Pearl. He was one of those WWII vets with apparent baggage but I never saw him act out on it. He was kind of sour alot of the time, but he really loved telling this story. In the south Pacific somewhere, early in the war, Boats (that's what we're calling Bobby's dad cause that's what he was) was detailed with a small group of sailors and ...

It was January 22, 1966, at 0400 (4 AM for civilians, for you marines that is when Mickey's big hand is on the twelve and his little hand is on the four). I had arrived in-country on Christmas Day 1965 and pulled guard duty that night (the new arrivals were the only ones sober enough to do it...subject for another article sometime). I spent New Years at the 69th Signal compound on Tan san Nhut AFB...in a fox hole because the Air Force guys fired their pistols in the air to celebrate the arr...

A cyclo is a loveseat in front and a motorcycle in back. They were mostly ancient two stroke engines notorious for fouling their spark plugs. It was common to see a GI sitting patiently in the seat while the driver squatted down by the engine, filing and blowing on the plug. I told you all that so I could tell you this. There had been a rash of crowd bombings using cyclos and pedicabs to deliver small plastic charges packed with nails and ball bearings. The technique was to drive the v...

He was in between flights at an airport somewhere, late at night, the place was practically deserted. He found a little bar in the terminal and dropped his seabag by the door and headed for the bar. Too late he noticed three soldiers at a rear table, blouses (that's coats to the uninformed) off and obviously had a good head start on getting a beer. The Chief was a known scrapper, fearless in that regard, but three to one...Army vs Navy...and these were big boys. If he had seen them fi...

In 1961 I had a part time job at the Block Arena on the base at Pearl Harbor. Pretty simple job...after sporting events were over and all the sailors had left the arena, my best buddy Bobby (his dad got us the gig) and I would pick up the empty beer cans and put them into the empty cardboard cases. Now, if you are too young to remember or know this, beer cans in the early 60's were still made of steel and the cases were heavy cardboard, not the flimsy stuff our aluminum cans come in nowada...

For most of his career, the Chief was a deep sea diver. His rate changed names over the years, sometimes he was a Shipfitter, or Hull Tech, or Metal Smith, or whatever...he was a multi-talented welder who could do it all in 200 feet of cold water wearing more than his body weight in diving suit and equipment. He was also very up to date on all manner of metals, melting points, gases, atmospheres, etc. I know because every year come testing time, I was his home study buddy. One of our s...