Veterans Day

On returning from your last trip to sea, US Navy tradition had it that you were supposed to write down all the ports where you had been stationed on your best hat. Then, as you sailed into port, you would sail it into the ocean. The Navy, of course, forbade it. That made it even more fun.

As the venerable old USS Hunley, AS 31, sailed under the two old (long-since demolished) bridges spanning the Cooper River in Charleston, SC, a white snowfall of rolled-up “Dixie Cup Hats” fill the air, settling in the blue waters NNW of Fort Sumter. I remember it well. My military career ended so close to where the Civil War started.

They, the Navy, had sent me to Charleston, and aboard the Hunley, when I returned from SE Asia and that all-expenses-paid trip of tropical sun and fresh sea breezes. I had requested to get as far away from WESTPAC as I could get.

A few weeks later, I was motoring to Arkansas on my way back to San Francisco where I was living when the Draft Board caught up with me. Everyone knows the story by now of how I got stuck in Little Rock working for a couple of young guys who had started an urban planning firm. Oh yes, you all know how I got snared by the most beautiful woman that had ever sashayed by me with no prior warning.

What most of you don’t know is how much I hated the fact that the military service had cost me four years of my life spent doing godawful things while my peers were luxuriating in successful careers.

What most of you don’t know is how I didn’t even tell some folks about that military career for dread of that suspicious look I still receive at time so many years later.

What most of you don’t know is how much I cherished memory of the time our ship put in at Fort Lauderdale, FL and had to move up a canal to our berth. As we passed rows of condos, word seemed to spread like a desert wildfire. Flags went out on balconies. People came out and waved. Some of the old men saluted us.

It was the first and only time the public thanked me during my four years in uniform.

What many of you don’t know is how my attitude about my military service changed with time. Take, for instance, the time a shipmate from Vietnam, living as a retired Cincinnati police officer found me on the internet and we ended up swapping yearly visits with our families.

What you may not have noticed, but I did, how veterans who had served came home and pursued successful careers and enjoyed the blessing of family life.

What you’ll never understand, is how sad it made us feel when the public allowed the media and movies to portray us, (they still do although we’re getting a little long in the tooth to be successful sociopaths) as drug-crazed loonies. Turns out the examples they used, the ones hanging out in faded military jackets, dirty with long beards, had mostly never served a moment in a real uniform. The ones who had lasted only a couple months or so. But, as a Jimmy Stewart character once said, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”                    

What you don’t know is how I finally decided to hell with the public, I had my brothers and sisters who had served in uniform and understood.

I wish them the very best on this special day. May any nightmares turn to peaceful, loving memories.

Wait. Wasn't I supposed
to sail the open seas?