A Veteran's Journey

Trivia Questions (Answers @ end)

1. Who said, “Someone out there is holding their breath, hoping you’ll fail. Make sure they suffocate.”?
2. In what movie did we hear, “Life is too damn short and too damn long to go through without someone at your side.”?
3. In what song (and who sang it) did we hear the following?
   There’s been a load of compromising
   On the road to my horizon
   But I’m gonna be where the lights are shinin’ on me

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Becky & I recently returned from a great trip to San Diego, visiting our son, Jared, and his two boys (our grandsons, ages 10 & 8). The weather was as I remembered it from years ago—cool, crisp, and not humid, like here in Florida. Fortunately, we had no travel woes, like so many others traveling during the holidays.

San Diego has grown (significantly) since I was there in the mid-70s. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to get over to Coronado, where my old aircraft carrier, USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) was home ported at North Island Naval Station. At the time, both USS Abraham Lincoln (CV-72) and USS Carl Vinson (CV-70) were in port.

I’ve visited the USS Midway (CV-41) Museum many times in the past, most recently in June 2022 during the USS Kitty Hawk reunion. And each time, whether I’m by myself, with family, or with shipmates, I typically made my way to the flight deck. After all, that’s where I spent the majority of my short Naval career—Three Years, 11 Months, & 29 Days: But Who’s Counting.

It’s hard to explain this to someone who’s not spent time on a carrier, but I can literally get lost up on the flight deck. Not physically, mind you, though with age comes lapses of… (I forget).

But just wandering around the flight deck, even with the limited number of aircraft on the USS Midway (or the USS Intrepid, CV-11, in New York, the USS Yorktown, CV-10, in Charleston, the USS Lexington, CV-16, in Corpus Cristi, or the USS Hornet, CV-12, in Alameda), I find myself easily venturing back to the days when I served aboard Kitty Hawk.

Back in the Day

During my time in the Navy (’73-77), I was an Aviation Boatswain’s Mate Handler and worked at two duty stations: NAS Agana, Guam and USS Kitty Hawk. On both stations, I was initially an aircraft Crash & Salvage firefighter. I’ve written several blogs about my first duty station in Guam. Guam was great duty and for 15 months, we worked one day on and one day off.

For an 18-year-old kid, fresh out of flunking college, Guam was a scuba diving paradise.

When I transferred to Kitty Hawk in March ’75, even though I was a “seasoned” aircraft firefighter, the flight deck of a carrier is much smaller than the two parallel runways at NAS Agana, Guam. That took a little while to get used to.

On top of that, there were “passageways” and “below decks” and “compartments” that I had to learn to navigate. None of that existed on Guam. Talk about a change in “lifestyle.” But… I was a confident 19-year-old ABH3 (third-class petty officer) and knew I’d figure it out. I’ll tell you from experience, it didn’t take long.

The Surprise

Oh yeah… I got caught up reminiscing about the good old days. It happens when you write a weekly blog like A Veteran’s Journey.

Back to San Diego… back to Christmas 2022… back to the USS Midway…

When we first arrived at our son’s house and greeted by our two young grandsons, one of the first things they asked me: “Granddad. Guess what we’re going to do tomorrow?”

My answer was simple and direct. “I hope we get to spend all day and all night with you.”

“We’re going to visit the Midway.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. I just turned 68 years old a couple of weeks ago. As many times as we’ve been to San Diego to visit, I’ve never been aboard the Midway with my grandsons. I believe they were too young at the time; and the pandemic certainly didn’t help. So, this was quite a surprise and something I’d been looking forward to for many years.

“What did you do in the Navy, Granddad?”

USS Midway Museum

When you’re my age visiting any place that charges admission, you typically ask three questions:

1. Any discounts for senior citizens?
2. Any discounts for AAA?
3. Any discounts for veterans?

“Sir, I need to see your military ID, please.”

I happen to have a copy of my DD-214 (that’s commonly known as a military Ph.D.) on my phone, so I whip that puppy out and show the cashier. Lo & behold, those four years in the Navy provided me with a $8 discount; that’s enough to buy a beer in southern California.

And we’re off…

“Let’s go to the flight deck so Granddad can show you some neat stuff.”

“We want to see the engine room first.”

Sigh. How can you argue with an 8-year-old?

But first, there’s the mock cockpits where grandkids (not granddads) can easily climb in and pretend to fly. There were also (new to me) several mock ejection seats nearby. While I watched the grands climb in and out of the aircraft cockpits, I meandered over to the ejection seats.

I seemed to recall there were three safety pins in the old Martin-Baker ejection seats on the F-4 Phantoms—at least, three that we in Crash were aware of. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s one at the headrest for the face curtain, one at the pilot’s seat between his legs, and one on the side ejection handle.

I guess in the long run, it doesn’t matter at this time, but just being able to identify where they were located—48 years after the cruise—brought back a ton of memories. Fortunately, while I was aboard Kitty Hawk, we never had an F-4 Phantom crash on the flight deck.

Below Decks

After the cockpit “experience,” the grands led the way down the stairs. And, before you ask, no… I can no longer “slide” down the handrails on my forearms like I used to. But I can tell you this… at 6’4”, I can still bump into the overhead pipes and miss the knee-knockers.

In all my visits to Midway, I may have ventured down below decks once or twice with my wife, daughter, and son. But this was much different—this was with a couple of young kids who had so many questions and their minds were racing so fast, it was hard to keep up with their exuberance. Needless to say, it was quite a learning experience.

The galley, the wardrooms, sick bay, engineering, berthing compartments, and CIC. I’d never been in the Combat Information Center before, either during my time aboard Kitty Hawk nor while visiting Midway. The only thing I knew about CIC was what I saw in the movie, Top Gun. You know the scene, you know the line…

“How long will it take to launch the Alert-5?”

“It’ll take ten minutes, sir.”

“Bullshit ten minutes! This thing will be over in two minutes! Get on it!”

This was a first for me and I can honestly tell you I was probably more excited than my grandsons.

All those dials, push buttons, and speakers, those green and blue radar/sonar monitor-looking things (I’m sure there’s a technical term there), and the multiple clear plexiglass boards where sailors wrote backwards. It was all new to me and equally interesting.

Next, we visited the Galley—I was always on the other side in the serving line, not behind where mess specialists (cooks) cooked around the clock, making 17,000 meals to feed 5,500+ hungry sailors. I never went hungry during my time in the Navy, unlike my dad who fought in Europe during World War II.

Of course, there’s a “display” of food in the serving line and guess what’s for breakfast? SOS, or as we commonly called it, “Shit on a Shingle.” There’s no other way to describe it, but SOS is a Navy staple and to tell you the truth, it ain’t bad.

Ask me if I’ve ever had SOS since I left the Navy…

Berthing Compartments & Engine Rooms

Try to describe to young kids where you slept and where you showered. It’s next to impossible. But being able to show them a Navy rack (stacked three high), and where you stored everything you owned in a “coffin” locker—that’s something else. “Show, don’t tell…” one of the harder concepts in writing.

“How did you fit in there, granddad?” My youngest grandson asked the obvious question. I’m six-foot-four, so I easily crawled into one of the racks. “This is how we slept.”

And I could go on and on about how good my bunk felt after working sixteen hours on the flight deck during flight ops. But… they were more interested in further exploration. Who am I to deny them that?

Our next stop was the engine room. I don’t think I’d ever been this far below decks. Back in the day, there was never any need to—this territory belonged to those who knew what they were doing. They kept the ship moving and the water clean. I’m sure there were more jobs, duties, and details. But when you’re on a ship that resembles a small floating city, there are so many (MANY) people who do so many things, it’s mind boggling.

But that’s what you do when you’re in the Navy on a ship—it’s called teamwork.

Showing my Grandsons What I Did in the Navy

Finally (FINALLY!), we headed up to the flight deck. The Midway provides a great opportunity (for me) to explain what I did back in the day.

Of course, my wife & son had heard many of these stories and each time I tell them, I seem to embellish them a little more.

I’m not the only one that does that, right?

But trying to explain aircraft launches and recoveries to an 8-year-old requires a little more simplistic approach. Trying to explain how an aircraft flies or why there are different aircraft… that’s tougher.

“See these big things hanging beneath the wings of this F-4 Phantom…”

“What’s a Phantom, granddad?”

Yeah… try to explain the difference between a Phantom and a Tomcat.

“Why do they use bombs, granddad?”

Yeah… that’s a tough one. Time to move on to the “skittles” portion of our tour.

Fortunately, the Midway has a display of life-size cutouts with the various colored jerseys and a brief description of what each sailor (both men & women) does on the flight deck. Now that I look back, I was both Crash and a Yellow Shirt director. So, I first stand next to the guy in a Crash firefighting suit and tell the kids, “This was what I looked like.”

Next, I walked down to the other end and stood next to the life-size cutout of a Yellow Shirt director. “Look, this is the other job I did. I wore a yellow jersey and float coat and looked like this.”

“But she’s a lady, granddad.”

I can’t win.

Catwalks, safety nets, catapults, arresting gear wires, the foul line… all were important to me back in the day. While I contemplated telling my grandsons about each and every function, I realized it didn’t matter to them… not now. What mattered is that they were on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier with their dad, their Grammy, and their granddad.

My Heart is Full

Three hours flies by when you’re visiting the Midway Museum. So much to see and do and so little time. But for the next few days at our son’s house, playing with the grandkids, I can’t tell you how many times they “built” an aircraft carrier and supporting fleet (destroyers, cruisers, escorts, and patrol boats) out of paper. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the term, “aircraft carrier,” or how many times they mentioned Phantoms, Tomcats, Hummers, Intruders, and Whales.

I guess no matter how many times I visit the Midway Museum, I always learn something new. Whether it’s with a small tour group, my son & daughter, or my grandkids. I can honestly say that when you visit a museum with a young person, especially the pre-teens, their curiosity is constant, and you find yourself wanting to teach them what you know.

It’s hard to explain, but the more I do things like this with my grandsons, the more I learn about myself.

My heart is full!

Until we meet again,
Andy

Answers

1. Anonymous.
2. The Three Musketeers (2011), Athos (Matthew Macfadyen).
3. Rhinestone Cowboy (1975), Glen Campbell; written by Larry Weiss, Darren Sampson, John Matthews.

Previous Posts Mentioned in this Blog:

• #53–You Always Remember Your First
• #79—What Did You Do in the Navy, Granddad?
• #83—Flight Deck “Skittles”
• #54—Westpac ’75 Aircraft Carrier Squadrons