Corpsmen did not even carry a weapon, and according to the Geneva Convention rules, could not be shot at; they only rendered first aid to the wounded. Of course, it does not work like that in war; the enemy usually does whatever it wants. Hospital Corps School had difficult classes such as nursing, physiology, anatomy, first aid and more.
I was learning new things and it felt good to be acquiring skills I could actually use. It was a big change from high school which seemed like a bunch of requirements, but no real life skills.
The problem was, I was in Naval Corpsman School only 25 miles from where I had grown up. I was drawn back to my friends and familiar town of Escondido when I was off-duty. I had a Triumph TR4 sports car that could really move. Before the 15 freeway was built, I could be back in Escondido in 20 minutes. The Old Highway 395 had some straight-aways I could cruise at 95-100 mph.
When I should have been studying, I was partying instead. It was like I had one foot in the past and one in the future, and it was tearing me apart. I had said my goodbyes to everyone. I was in for four years, but here only two and a half months later I was connecting with my old friends. My inner struggle was I wanted to be with them, but I couldn’t because I had a completely new life to live. I have to let go of the old and get busy with the new, the Navy.
I had one roommate back on the base whom I barely saw. One day I came back to our room and his belongings were all gone. I went to the office and asked where he was. The officer on duty told me he had been killed in a car accident. The officer on duty had his personal belongs packed up for the family. I was shocked.
The partying and the reality of what I was doing started to take a toll on me and my classes. One morning, they informed us that we would be greeting a few POWs (prisoners of war) that day. We were all assigned different positions around the hospital. I was out front. Three long black limousines pulled up and out came 10 or maybe 12 men in Navy dress uniforms. It was some of the POWs who had been released from Vietnam, and they were coming into Balboa Naval Hospital for treatment. They had been on the verge of starvation and I could see that even with their jackets on they were the thinnest people I had ever seen. They moved slowly as if every step hurt, and I am sure it did now that we know the suffering they went through for so many years. To see these men up close caused me to understand that life had some very stark realities.
I began to fall behind in classes and really wanted to just be in the regular Navy—whatever that was, whatever that meant. I requested to speak to the captain of the base to ask for a transfer. I stood before this seasoned captain in charge of the entire Balboa Naval Hospital Center and pleaded my case. He was not happy with me, but said that if I really did not want to take care of the men’s medical needs, then I should be assigned different duties. He looked in some book, called someone on the phone and said, “Sailor! Pack your sea bag; you’re shipping out to Guam!” I remember thinking, Guam, where is that?
GUAM, HERE I COME!
I was given 72 hours to get things in order and was told it would be at least a 15-month tour. I caught a Navy flight out of Travis in the San Francisco area which stopped in Hawaii to refuel. I asked someone, “Where is Guam?” They said it was a little dot in the ocean way over by the Philippines, and Hawaii was not even halfway there. They went on to say that it was a tropical island with beautiful beaches. I thought, wow, that doesn’t sound so bad.
After the plane refueled in Hawaii, we kept flying over the Pacific Ocean with nothing but water under us, and lots of blue sky; this was the farthest from home I had ever been.
Another seven hours past Hawaii I felt the plane going down fast, and I looked out to see us flying over jungle. It seemed like we were trimming the trees as I looked out the window and saw some villages with palm tree thatched shacks, and yes some pristine white sandy beaches, with crystal clear blue water you could see right through. I felt like I had just flown into a National Geographic story. I also felt that I would never be the same after spending 15 months here. I wondered if I had done the right thing.
As we left the plane and stepped out onto the tarmac, I could barely look up at the sky it was so bright. In Guam, a sunburn only takes about five minutes and the daylight is brighter; it took me about three or four weeks until I could open my eyes outside without sunglasses. A Navy driver was there to pick me up at the Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. I was his only passenger; he told me that there were four different naval bases in Guam and that I was going to the best—the Communications Station. I will never forget how surreal it appeared as we drove through the jungle on that small two-lane coral reef road. They use coral instead of asphalt for their roads. The coral is so plentiful in the ocean around Guam, they grind it up, add some tar to make it stick together and use it for making surfaces to drive on. The only drawback is it is slippery when wet.
We drove up to the main gate of N.C.S. (Naval Communications Station) where a Marine sentry with a rifle on his shoulder and a 45-caliber pistol on his side was standing watch. He motioned for us to stop. Next to him was a very strange sight; a bluish small creek of ground-up paper was running down the hill about a 150 yards from a large industrial-looking concrete building. These buildings had no windows. A Marine stood watch at the only entrance, and I could see him checking everyone’s I.D. before allowing them to pass. This messy-looking stuff flowed its way to the side of the main gate. I asked the driver, “What in the world is that stuff?” He told me that everything at this N.C.S. was top secret and the stuff that was slowly flowing (more like creeping) along the side of the road was actually highly classified or secret documents that had been shredded, then dyed blue. After soaking in the dye, they ran out of the building and on down the street.
In front of the headquarters was a large flag of the United States flying high on a pole in the bluest sky I have ever seen. Navy officers wearing dress white uniforms were coming and going. There was actually kind of a buzz going on in and around this place. I was taken into headquarters and assigned to work as a security policeman on the base. That was fine with me, sounded rather fun and I was even proud to serve my country in such a special place.
I was given different uniforms, training on small weapons, and I learned to use the police radio communication system. I was trained under a Guamanian who had joined the Navy and got to stay right there on his home island. His name was Joe. He was a friendly guy with a huge smile. He not only had several years experience in the Navy but also had grown up in Guam, so it seemed he knew everything and everybody. If I had any questions, all I had to do was ask him. Joe told me some of what was going on behind those concrete buildings we were assigned to patrol. Hundreds of radiomen and women and other communications professionals were receiving and sending and “listening in” on radio traffic from all over the world. Some were language experts, some were code experts, and all of it was highly classified, secret or top secret.
My job was fun, dangerous, and completely new. I liked it; I came on duty, checked out a weapon and a jeep or truck and went on patrol. The base was like a small town in itself. There were housing areas for the enlisted and the officers, barracks, a medical facility, a restaurant, a well-used bar, and the base swimming pool. The place I preferred to patrol was the building with the antenna field around it, out toward the bluffs. The antenna field was about 30 acres of tall grass with huge antennas that reached over 200 feet into the air. I patrolled around them, past the last set and right up to a sheer bluff of several hundred feet that dropped straight off to the coral reef ocean below. I would go out there at sunset to experience the view, and to this day I have never experienced a more breathtaking sunset than those in Guam. They were incredible! Sometimes I scared up a wild boar (they scared me) or a little island deer, and as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, I began enjoying this place and my job. I became pretty good at traffic patrol, investigating small burglaries and handling drunken sailor problems.
An experienced law enforcement patrol officer showed me how to use the forensic set to take latent fingerprints. I was dispatched
