|
LEAVING FOR BOOT CAMP |
|
|
| It is hard to remember the details of my leaving home for the Navy, but I do
remember that it was the first time that I had really been away from home. I know that it seemed to be the right
thing to do, to go out and defend your country. It was expected of all young men and the message was loud and clear. I had planned on going to college, according to the notation in my school year book. To be an engineer and attend Iowa University Engineering School. However, with the breaking out of war, everyone put aside their own plans and made themselves available to serve their country in any way that they could. I had gone to the enlistment office and joined the U.S. Navy with one of my friends from school. I even thought that I might spend 20 years in the Navy and make it my career. There was no thought of not winning the war. I had joined up for four years of regular Navy. I was a true volunteer. I was not yet old enough to register for the draft, but I was old enough to enlist in the one branch of the service that accepted those of us under 18 years of age. After a brief trip to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, for a physical examination, I was accepted into the Navy. We were scheduled to leave during the first week of July. I was anxious to get going and to start my newly found career. In my young years, I had not ever traveled far from Kansas City. Other than a few family trips to visit relatives when I was a small child, I had not traveled anywhere. Going to Boot Camp was going to be my first trip into the world outside of my home town. Not having traveled before made the trip seem like a new adventure for me. Everything that I was about to experience was going to be for the first time. I looked forward to it with some excitement and some concern. Kansas City, Mo., was a rail center in those years. We had a magnificent railway station called Union Station. It seemed like hundreds of trains arrived and departed every day. Of course, rail transportation was the only way that people took long trips. Airlines were relatively new and the roads of our country were not much more than paved winding trails originally used by wagons and buggies. Although paved, they wound around the hills and the valleys and made travel difficult, if you compare it to the new super highways of today. I do remember the excitement that I felt when we went to the train station to leave. The family was there to see me off and I have to admit that I felt good with all of the attention that I was getting. I felt like a hero going off to war. After the tearful good-bye to my family, we boarded the train and took our seats. I had never been aboard a train, so it was a new experience for me. Because of the crowded conditions on board the train, we were assigned to seats and it was expected that we would sit up for the entire trip. The first leg of the trip was to Chicago, another rail center, where we could catch a line that served Spokane, Washington. I remember very little of the trip to Chicago. It was probably night and there was nothing to do but to sleep on the route to Chicago. We were in a group that had a group leader that kept us together. Upon arrival in Chicago, we found the gate to the train that was scheduled to take us to our destination. The trip across Wisconsin allowed me to see that there was a different terrain in this part of the country. It was something that I had not seen before. The evergreen trees were beautiful to me, as all that I had seen in large groves were the oak and the maple of Missouri. Our train was a very long line of cars. The big six wheel drive steam engines began to labor as we began to climb for altitude. I believe that we are about at Billings, Montana, when we stopped there to pick up additional power to start our way up the steep grades of the Rocky Mountains. I had never seen more than one engine pulling a train before. The relatively level terrain of Missouri would never require the use of additional engines to pull the trains. At about Billings, the grades were even more steep. I looked with wonder as we wound our way up, up the side of the mountains. The track curved and switched back and forth to make it up the mountains. There were times that you could see both ends of the train from your window as we maneuvered around the curves. It was a beautiful sight to see the cuts in the sides of the hills where the tracks were laid. As the engines labored to take us over the mountains, great plumes of smoke and steam belched from the stacks of the engines. It was possible to feel the labor that was being spent to pull the train over the grades. I realized, as we made our way, that it took great skill of engineering to build a path that a train could take to get over the hills. I had never seen a train tunnel before. I was to see plenty of them for the next two days. It was exciting to me to see all of the things that I had only seen in the movie theater before. Another impressive sight were the trestles that had been built to cross some of the great ravines. Some were built of steel and others were built of wood. I imagined that the wooden ones were the original bridges that were built and would someday in the near future be replaced with steel. As I remember, Butte, Montana, was a rail division town. It was here that we stopped and took a four hour rest, while the railway personnel switched cars and prepared the train and engines for further travel over the mountains. It was a small town and not much was going on. It was possible to get a sandwich at a restaurant near the station, if you wanted one. I was traveling with my friend, James Garrison. We had enlisted together and considered each other as best friends. There were no bars open on the main street of Butte. The hour was too late for them to be open. We asked a taxi driver if there was a place open that a person could get a drink. Honestly, I had never had a drink in a bar and we were wanting to show the world that we were now men of the world. We were told that there was an all night bar just out of town. We hopped into a cab and headed for this place of wonder. We were about to have our first drink in a bar, provided that we could get served. We arrived at the bar and went in. We sat at the bar and when the bartender came to us, we tried to look old beyond our years. When asked what we would like, we ordered two slow gin fizzes. I have to laugh at that today. That is a ladies drink and by no means was going to show the surrounding world that we had reached manhood. The bartender was generous and I am sure that he had seen youth like us before, on our way to camp. Without hesitation he mixed us a drink and served it to us. We were getting the first drink of alcohol across the counter, that we had ever had. We were now men in our own eyes, probably the only eyes that saw it that way. However, it was a great adventure for us who had a very limited experience. The next day we were on the tracks again on our way to Farragut Naval Training Base. So much had happened in the three traveling days to camp. We had seen so much and all of it was new to us. Never again would we be innocents of our youth. From that day forward I was to experience many things new and of wonder. However, it was something that I am glad not to have to experience again. It was new but it was scary to one without knowledge. I would miss my home and my family. I would miss the familiar things that home represents and would wish that I could turn back time. I would grow faster than was meant to be and would regret years that would be wasted fighting a war among men. On the other hand, I would gather experience that would never have been available to me if I had not gone and that was good. I turned from a small boy to a tall man in only a few months. So much would happen to me in the coming months that it would be hard to remember it all. In looking back, I can see that this was the time that I was fully out on my own. I was responsible for myself for the first time. I had been pushed off the limb of family security and had been forced to fly on my own. Everyone needs to have that experience and to learn from it. If not, a person remains a child. I became my own man. |
Copyright © 1994, 2004, 2005, 2006 by Glen Stinson & Mark Stinson