How Many Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines.......

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6 years US Navy, Oct '92-Oct '98. I was a nuclear-power Electrician's Mate on submarines. Started out on my first boat in '94 out of San Diego (USS Drum SSN 677), ended up decomming that pig in '95 in Pearl Harbor. Went to the USS Cavalla SSN 684 until '98, when my early-out was denied due to a "critical lack of nuclear-qualified/sub-qualified electricians" in the fleet. Gotta love the Clinton administration. So, of course, they dumped me into a 688-class decom, having just recently completed two 637-class decoms, and expected me to learn the entire ship in the five months I had left. Heh. I was actually so sick of the military by the time that I got out, it took me until 2001 to get to the point where I could read about WW2, even though I'd always been interested in it.

Hey, Les, where were you based out of? We did DDS ops with the Seals stationed out of Ford Island several times when I was with the Cavalla, most likely during '95 and '96.
 
USMC 76-96, in at 17 as a private, commissioned in 85, retired as a captain.

Started as a grunt (0341, mortarman, cross-trained as a machine gunner and platoon radio operator) - and nope, Der Adler, I'm not sorry, it was a great way to get to blow things up... at the time, every time I saw aircraft my first thought was, "shouldn't somebody be shooting at that?" Later gained a much greater appreciation, especially after getting to be friends with a USN CSAR 53 pilot (a great guy named Steve Edson, taught CSAR at MAWTS-1 in Yuma, a relative of the great Red Mike Edson of Guadalcanal renown.) I still liked ticking the airdales off by calling their flightsuits coveralls, though.

Did tours with 3rd Mar Div (Kilo Co, 3rdBn 4th Marines, Weapons Plt.), then 1st Mar Div (81mm mortar platoon, 3rd Bn 1st Marines), then got tired of being cold and wet and reenlisted for an MOS change to data systems. Stayed in data systems after I got commissioned 'cause I wanted a family life and already had a pretty bad back and a wrecked knee; they merged the MOS with the CommO MOS and I ended up spending a lot of time cold and wet anyway by the time I punched out.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I loved the life, the people, the USMC culture - it made me a much better person, taught me tons about people, and 95% of the time it was one of those "this doesn't feel like work - can't believe they pay me for this!" situations. It did probably cost me a couple of marriages, but they were mistakes anyway! Both my younger brothers followed me in, and it has made the three of us even closer than we would have been - my wife shakes her head sometimes and says we're talking in code again and asks us to switch back to English.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 
Actually, once I did get a chance to shoot at planes - sort of. I was the newest butterbar lieutenant at MCAS Yuma, so I got assigned to be the Smoky Sam officer for one evolution of the WTI course... they would load me and a handful of Marines into a helo and fly us to some hill out in the exercise area, and we'd set up and shoot little styrofoam SAM simulators at the planes when they flew by.

Some of the pilots seemed to take it personally and would come back and buzz us close enough to cause hearing damage. One A7 almost sucked me into his intake - I think the reason he didn't get twenty feet lower and scoop me off the hilltop was that he was scared of FOD damage.

I heard about a time when the 81mm mortar platoon from 3rdBn, 9th Marines accidentally shot down a Japanese Defense Forces Phantom at Camp Fuji, but I wasn't there so I can't swear to it. The way I heard it was that the pilot disregarded the warning that the mortar range was hot so he shouldn't fly through it and had the bad luck to pass through the same little bit of sky as a six-tube fire for effect with VT fuses. They had fired half a dozen rounds from each gun and the rounds had already been in the air for a good minute or two when they heard the jet coming, and the next thing they knew there was a bunch of air bursts and a smoking Phantom crashing in the impact area. The pilot was reportedly unhurt but unhappy.

On the serious side, I saw some tragedies. I was at the crash site when a CH-53 went down on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines in October 1977 on the last day of an exercise and killed the crew and nearly all the grunts on board. That day aged me about fifty years and changed me forever. There was another all-hands-killed crash of a CH-46 from the same squadron during a trip to Fuji for cold weather training three months later, and half my platoon had debarked from that helicopter just before it went down. And one of my best friends from TBS, Cliff Hewlett, ended up as a Huey pilot and was killed when he crashed at 29 Palms. I'd seen him at the PX the day before and hadn't stopped to chitchat because he was long-winded and I was late for a staff meeting. That's always bothered me.
 
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