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December 27, 2005

sailor boy

Just a few hours to go and he would be heading for Syracuse on a three day liberty. Helen and the rest of the femme fatales would be waiting for him and his buddies for the endless party to begin. After a week or two of living with guys, showering with guys, eating with guys, smelling guys, he desperately needed to be in the company of females. The anticipation of a chance to smell perfume scented hair, listen to an educated woman speak of things he only pretended to understand, and feel a soft supple body in the darkness was almost unbearable.

The year was 1966. The Mustang was the coolest and the Beatles were the hottest in the Army town of Columbus, Georgia. Like all the other young men in John's high school senior class , he was preparing for life after twelve years of public school. Most of them were checking out colleges trying to find the perfect party campus. But poor boys like John didn’t go to college. Mr. Johnson had a place called Nam for poor boys like him. But there was no way John was going to be drafted into the fuckin’ Army. He had enough of that from his step dad, the drill sergeant. John enlisted in the Navy; he wanted to see the world. He saw the world alright; he saw the inside of every bar and flop house in the Caribbean. It made a man of him just like his daddy wanted.

There were a few times in John’s life when Lady Luck smiled on him. This was one of them. Instead of going to Nam, John spent his two years on a LST home porting in Norfolk, Virginia and floating around the Caribbean for four months at a time training with jar-heads.

The Caribbean is where he learned how to play a game called “let’s see if we can kill the new recruit”. It goes something like this. First you take some smuck recruit to a nice little bar in a sleepy sea side town on a tropical island like San Juan, Puerto Rico. Then have him poor shots of rum down quickly followed by Heineken chasers. Then when you get the poor slob so drunk he'd screw the ugliest goat in the barnyard, you give him a glass or two of straight Bacardi 120 proof rum.

Sound like a fun game? John woke up from a 24 hour sleep back at the ship with vomit all over him. One of his ship mates took pity on him and rolled him over on his side so he wouldn’t choke to death.

USS Waldo County, LST1163

Posted by roadapples at December 27, 2005 09:35 AM

Posted by: livia at December 27, 2005 01:02 PM

Posted by: road apples at December 27, 2005 01:41 PM

Posted by: Tjilpi at December 27, 2005 04:18 PM

Posted by: kenju at December 28, 2005 12:10 AM

Posted by: Crystal at December 28, 2005 10:07 AM

Posted by: road apples at December 28, 2005 06:03 PM

Posted by: Paul at December 28, 2005 09:50 PM

Posted by: road apples at December 29, 2005 08:17 AM

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Posted by: road apples at December 29, 2005 06:13 PM