That's where I was the night Bobby Kennedy got assassinated (June 6, 1968). He was the Attorney General when his brother was president, and for a while under LBJ, until he resigned to run for the Senate from New York (the same seat Hillary Clinton resigned from to become Secretary of State). I got in trouble because I was watching the coverage on TV, and I forgot to make the morning coffee. This was two months after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. Seemed like the world was ending . . .
But it wasn't. Shortly after that, I got transferred to Hawaii, to the USS Walker. It seemed a little strange to me that the Navy would send me to a destroyer, right after I told them I didn't want to kill anyone, but what did I know? First thing I did was have an interview with the captain. When he found out how I came to be there, he wasn't exactly happy about it, but he made the best of it. I remember him telling me that I was a very idealistic young man, and that he'd once been the same, but that over time, his ideals "had been tempered with experience . . ."
At the time, I felt sad for him. I didn't understand how anyone could let circumstances influence their belief in truth. I can see his point of view much more clearly now. I think its because my ideals have been tempered with experience . . .
This is a picture of the USS Walker, a Fletcher-class destroyer, and the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Admiral John Grimes Walker (1835–1907).
The Walker was built by the Bath Iron Works Corp., Bath, Maine. She was launched on 31 January 1943, sponsored by Miss Sarah C. Walker; and commissioned on 3 April 1943, Commander O. F. Gregor in command.
Walker spent the first seven months of 1968 in her home port (Pearl Harbor) conducting type training and preparing for a final western Pacific deployment. I went on board in June. Right after I got there, we sailed to San Diego and back. On August 4, I got transferred. On August 5, the Walker got underway on the fourth western Pacific deployment since the beginning of the Vietnam War. She arrived at Subic Bay, Philippines, via Midway Atoll and Guam on 18 August, then proceeded to Vietnam. After the last WestPac cruise, the ship was sold to Italy, where she was renamed Fante (D-561). Fante was retired from Italian Navy service in 1977, and broken up for scrap.
I went to San Diego, to the USS Prairie. On the Walker, I was a mess cook. On the Prairie too. And a janitor. The Prairie was a Dixie-class destroyer tender built just before the start of World War II. In layman's terms (I don't remember how to say it in Navy talk), the Prairie was the big boat that would sit in port and the little boats would park along side for replenishment and maintenance.
The Prairie departed for WestPac cruise shortly after I came on board.
But right before we left, we had to load up on all the stuff the little boats would need when they came along side. Like bullets. One morning while I was cleaning the bathroom (head), I got sent on a work detail loading 5 inch shells. They lowered pallets of bullets down a shaft to where a line of us moved them into the magazine (that's a Navy term that means "roomful of bullets"), kind of like a bucket brigade. You took the bullet from the guy behind you and handed it to the guy in front of you. Except, one time only, the guy in front of me wasn't there when I handed him the bullet. It was the longest time I ever watched something I had dropped before it hit the floor (deck). The noise it made gave new meaning to the word "CLANG!" And it remains the loudest noise I've ever caused and lived to tell about.
And the last bullet I loaded. I got replaced in the bullet line and sent back to the bathroom (head).
While the Walker would actually go out and shoot at North Vietnam, or selected enemy targets in South Vietnam, the Prairie just sat in port, waiting until the destroyers ran out of stuff. Or broke something. On the Prairie, I went to the Philippines, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong, to Yokosuka, Japan, then back to Taiwan, then back to San Diego. I also got a feel for how big the Pacific Ocean is. We sailed out of San Diego, and for most of the first day, we could see land behind us. For the next seventeen days, all we could see was water, no matter what direction we looked.
By the time we got back to San Diego, the Navy decided that I wasn't making it up about not wanting to kill anyone, and they sent me to Hospital Corpsman School.
(The Prairie was decommissioned on 26 March 1993 at Long Beach, California, and was later towed to Singapore and sold for scrap.)
I spent the rest of my enlistment in San Diego, first at school, then at Balboa Naval Hospital, and finally, at the San Diego Naval Training Center where I spent my days giving injections to recruits. And because I hadn't ever gone on to the extra training for the submarine missile fire-control systems, the extra two year enlistment extension went away! I got out of the Navy on August 6, 1971.
The next day, I got a tattoo.
*The information and photos of the Walker and Prairie comes from Wikipedia . . .
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