1 - Hey Nineteen!

I don’t really remember much about the two hour bustrip from the Navy Induction Center in downtown Los Angeles to San Diego. It was somewhat uneventful until we pulled into the airport terminal to pick up some more recruits on their way to bootcamp.

It was about 11 o’clock at night when we got there. There were about forty of us from L.A., plus a couple of Navy Petty Officers to make sure we got there O.K. As the bus pulled up to the terminal curb, a half dozen guys started hooting and hollering at a couple of young girls standing by the curb. Apparently, most of us had never been away from home and thought it was time to start having fun on our own. Before the hooting and hollering guys could get a second utterance out of their mouths, one of the petty officers came stomping up the center aisle of the bus and smacked two of them up the side of the head...hard enough to knock one of them onto the floor. “What the fuck do you fucking pukes think you’re doing?”, screamed one of the petty officers. Two other recruits let out a laugh. One of them immediately received a sharp backhand in the face and the other got it in the back of the head with a palm of a hand causing him to bang his forehad on the metal seat frame in front of him. “You are in the Navy now...my Navy...naval personnel do not fucking act that way!”, he said.

By now, an older, short, balding man had made his way up the aisle and joined in on the exchange. He was dressed a little differently than the petty officers who came up from L.A. with us. This guy had on a full khaiki uniform with ribbons, gold anchors on the collars, and an official looking cap...like an officer. “Which one of you swingin’ dicks had your filthy fucking mouth going off just now?’, the old guy said. Most of us tried our best to blend into the upholstery. One poor little slob with long, curly hair and bad acne opened his mouth and pointed at one of the perpetrators, “He did it, sir...it was him”. The older, officer-looking guy bent forward at the waist so his face was nose to nose with the poor little slob, “Do you see any gold bars on this uniform son? Do I look like a pussy-lipped fucking cocksucker officer?” The poor little slob’s mouth was just hanging open as if he was trying to talk but nothing would come out. “I work for a living you slimey fucking puke. I am a Chief Petty Officer in the United States Navy...you don’t call me ‘sir’...and you address me as ‘chief’ and only’ chief’...is that clear numbnuts?”

So, at this point in my Navy career, I had already learned a couple of valuable lessons and several more points of interest. First, I had never heard the terms “slimey fucking puke” or “swinging dick”. The “swinging dick” thing made sense, I assumed as males we all fell into that category. I would hear this term used many more times during my stay at the Naval Recruit Training Center. “Slimey fucking puke” was a creative use of three separate derogatory words I was familiar with separately but never heard them put together. Second, never call a Navy Chief Petty Officer “sir”. Evidently, the “sir” was reserved for commissioned officers. A Navy “chief” had been around for many years and had presumebly earned his stripes (not bars)...and his status. All of this would make more sense to me in a very short time, even after discovering the very next day (my first official day of bootcamp) that we were indeed required to call every person not a recruit “sir”, including the chief. Once that confusion was over, one had pretty much mastered everything one needed to know in order to make it through Navy bootcamp. Oh...and third...keep your mouth shut.

I was nineteen and on my way to Navy bootcamp. It was June, 1969.