Enlistment and induction into the US Navy in the late 1960’s was, for me, a four-part process, and I have a story about each.

Part 1: Visiting the Recruiter

In 1969, my initial thought was to join the Army. Yes, very risky considering the war in Vietnam, but there was a part of me that wanted to go, and besides, I could do an enlistment of two years versus the four-year minimum of the Navy or Air Force.

So I went to see the Army recruiter. We had a few visits. I was not enthused about ending up in the infantry, and he told me that there were alternatives. He was pushing flight training… helicopter pilot training. “You meet the qualifications and should easily be accepted. I submit form __#__ (something) and after Boot Camp it’s off to Flight School.”

It came down to our final visit and time for a signature. As he was reviewing all the documents, he turned away slightly and muttered under his breath, “…and there are no guarantees.”

I said, “What did you say?”

He replied, “…well nothing important… none of this is guaranteed, but you will get into flight school… I’m sure of it.”

My response was, “So I could just as easily end up in the infantry as anything?”

He replied, “Well… that could happen but not likely to you… you’re a shoo-in for flight school.”

I got up and walked out, turned left, and walked into the next open door… that’s how I ended up in the Navy.

Part 2: Testing

The Navy sent me to downtown Detroit to an office tower where they did aptitude testing. I arrived early… the first to arrive… and had to wait for about an hour for the rest of the recruits to arrive. They put me in a room full of school desks and told me to simply wait for the testing to start.

I wandered around the room looking for something to occupy my time and, after looking out the window into the next office tower, I found it. The towers were close and, on the floor below me, right inside the window, was a very pretty lady. She was sitting at a desk and was typing away. She was blonde and, as women did in those days, she had made herself beautiful. Her hair was styled, she wore a dress, nylons, and heels.

I was watching her working and knew that the hour I had to wait would pass easily. I had been appreciating her for maybe 10–15 minutes when she pushed her chair back and looked down at her leg… I couldn’t see what she was looking at, but she must have had a run in her stocking.

She looked around the office and, when she was sure no one was around, she opened her purse and changed her stockings while sitting at the desk. Here I was… 18 years old and I had never seen anything like this. I was literally weak in my knees. “If my Naval career is starting out like this, I have it made,” I thought… what good fortune.

I watched her until she was finished. She rolled her chair up to her desk and maybe it was the energy I was putting off, but she turned and looked up. She saw me and looked straight at me. She knew instantly that I had seen the entire event. She did not get upset because I had watched her, nor did she appear to be angry. She smiled coyly, I think she blushed somewhat, and then gave me a cute little wave… she knew she had given me a very special treat and did not feel bad or embarrassed about it.

I’m sure that my face was red enough for her to see it from where she sat… I waved back. I think it was a special moment for both of us. She knew that she had given a young man a moment and a memory that would last a lifetime… and it has.

Part 3: Physical Examination

1969 was the height of the draft and, in Michigan, the place for induction was AFEIC, Detroit. If my memory is correct, it stood for Armed Forces Enlistment Induction Center.

When I went there, I was in the minority because most of the guys being processed were draftees… they all thought I was crazy for enlisting. Very few of the boys were there by choice, but generally the draftees went along with the process so there weren’t any problems, just bad attitudes.

Remember though, this was a time when there was still a little bit of respect for authority… these same Boomers would, in the coming years, destroy the Greatest Generation value of respect.

We got poked, prodded, injected, analyzed, and examined. Near the end of the process, we found ourselves in a room in four rows of about 20 guys per row… we were stark naked. We were told to do things: “put your arms out in front of you, fingertips together, turn right, turn left, and bend over and spread your cheeks.” As we assumed all the different positions, doctors would move up and down the rows looking us over.

There was one guy who had been in line about four people in front of me. I noticed him earlier because he looked very rough… long greasy hair and generally grimy. We had spent nearly the entire day in our undershorts and his were gray and dirty… there was an unpleasant odor about him.

At one point in the process one of the doctors stopped the activity and walked up to the guy looking at his file. He asked the guy to hold out his arms again… one appeared to be shorter than the other.

The doctor asked him, “How many times have you broken your arms?”

“This one three times and this one four times.”

“How many times have you broken your legs?”

“This one two times and this one four times.”

“How many surgeries have you had?”

“Six.”

“You have heart problems?”

“Yes,” and he named off about every disease I had ever heard of.

At one point, the doctor who was doing the questioning looked up from the file… his head literally snapped up with surprise on his face. The inductee said, “Yep, false teeth too,” as he spit out his dentures.

The room erupted with laughter as the doctor yelled to a corpsman, “Get this guy out of here.”

The rest of us were determined to be fit enough to die for our country.

Part 4: Shipping Out

The day to leave home for the first time came. There were two other guys from my hometown shipping out the same day… Nick and Jim. I had gone through school with Nick and knew him well, but I had never met Jim. Jim was a good friend of Nick’s. We would end up being together through Boot Camp.

As best I know, Nick would become a Fire Control seaman on a destroyer and would do a tour in Vietnam. Jim would become a corpsman and would spend his time in the Navy at the Naval Training Center, Chicago.

Nick’s dad had volunteered to drive us to Detroit, so my dad would drive me to Nick’s house. I headed to the kitchen to say goodbye to my mom. Being a woman of the Greatest Generation that she was, she would never show weakness. She gave me a quick hug and pushed me toward the door, turning away because she would not let me see her cry.

At Nick’s, my dad shook my hand and said, “Good luck son… take care.” We were off to Detroit.

I’m sure everyone had heard this one fact about the military… “hurry up and wait.” That first day was exactly that, and we would not go to the airport until the evening. We sat around, we were taken outside to police the area, and we were sworn in… taking the oath of service.

Two memories from the induction center stayed with me. First, I decided it was time I learned how to drink coffee… I learned that coffee is an acquired taste. Coffee would become a big part of my military service and life.

Second, while we were sitting around waiting, we observed a group of about 12 motorcycle gang members come in to be inducted into the Marine Corps. They wore their colors and were very loud, exclaiming that they could not wait to go and kill “gooks.”

While we watched the show, a First-Class Petty Officer yelled out, “I need three sailors to go to San Diego for training.” I jumped up… “You guys want to go to San Diego?” I think Jim and Nick responded in the affirmative, but I didn’t really wait for them, and they both looked a little shocked as I ran off to volunteer us.

We were off to sunny California… a far cry from the rain and cold of the Great Lakes Training Center, Chicago. Our Naval adventure began.

The afternoon dragged on until the time to leave had arrived. Before we were shuttled to the buses that would take us to the airport, the Petty Officer came out and called my name… I was surprised. I stood up and he said, “Come here Mr. Volunteer.”

He proceeded to give me the file folders for all the Navy and Marine recruits heading to San Diego. He said, “These men all belong to you now… you lose one of them or any of these files it will be your ass… you understand me?”

I immediately knew what they meant by “never volunteer” in the military. I had a stack of about 50 files handed to me and the responsibility for a motorcycle gang that could take me apart if they so decided. This whole military thing immediately became very serious.

We successfully got onto the plane and headed west. The pilot came out from the cockpit and asked, “Who is in charge of these men?” I was the last on and was right up front and told him it was me… sitting there with the 50 files in my lap. He said, “I will be coming to you if there are any problems.”

“This is serious shit,” I thought as my anxiety grew. The bikers were somewhat loud but thankfully did not cause any major problems.

We had a stopover in Los Angeles. The pilot said we would be there for 45 minutes and that we could leave the aircraft. I took my files and went into the terminal as the bikers went screaming off to parts unknown. By now my anxiety had me sweating bullets.

I was sitting there in the terminal, not knowing if I would survive my first day in the Navy, and wondering what in the hell was I doing in this strange place. In the Midwest we always assumed that California was the land of the oddball and strange. When I was 8 years old, our family traveled to Kansas to visit family, but other than that I had never been any further than Toledo, Ohio. Now, I was in California… the land of the bizarre and strange.

All this was going through my head when some guy came walking by dressed in what looked like a Peter Pan outfit with heels on and swinging a purse. At this point, I began to think that the brig was inevitable. “Here I am, my charges have all run away, I’m screwed, and I’m in the land of loonies”… “if I survive the next four years it will be a miracle.”

Back onto the plane, a head count revealed that I hadn’t lost anyone… I was thanking God.

We landed in San Diego, they took the files from me, the Marines went their way, and we sailors went ours. It was about one in the morning when we finally went to bed… little did we know we would be shocked awake in three hours by screaming and sticks beating on trash cans.