ABNAKI NOTES

Captain James Williams, Annapolis Lt., Commanding Officer

Captain Calvin Reed, a “mustang” from WWII, Lt., Commanding Officer

James Hollis - W-4, Engineering Officer - all the first enlistment guys were “his boys”

Robert Nason, Lt., Executive Officer, transferred to Riverene Forces Vietnam

Robert Turner - Operations Officer USNR University of Oklahoma his wife was a school teacher

Frances Delorme - Chief Bo’sun, one of the enlisted men who by just being himself influenced me to not seriously consider a career in the Navy.

Kenneth Wetzler - Friend, drinking buddy, occasional opponent, crew-mate, deck force, from Lake Chelan Washington

Mel Lanham (aka Cranny Rat) friend and crew-mate Engineering, one of the most guileless people I’ve ever met.

Gary Born - friend and crew mate Engineering…Gary was and is the Myers-Briggs ESTJ poster-boy

“Buck” - Lifer, “brown-bagger” ET1, friend and crew mate.  Buck and his wife frequently invited me for dinner, beers, and a night of TV, and an overnight stay on the couch…they had a little boy, “Skipper”, who was a pure joy to be around when he was 3 or 4.

Robert Knapp, ET3, friend and crew mate…we departed the ship for discharge on the same day, and shared a car and driver to Clark AFB, where we were both bumped from our flights home for the better part of 3 days.

Julius “Billy” Wheat - friend, totally crazy man, Hattiesburg MS, killed in a rainy auto accident along with his brother, a few months after discharge.

Andrew Collins - friend, Jazz aficionado, Momma’s Boy from South Chicago, squared away 3rd Class Bo’sun, the first African-American I ever had broad and continuous exposure to.

EVENTS.

July 1962 - NTC SDIEGO for boot camp

Post-boot camp - NTC SDIEGO for Radio “A” School.

Ordered to (AO-51) USS Ashtabula in SEA…boarded in June 1963 Yokuska, Japan.

Ashtabula arrived home port Long Beach November 1963.

Transferred off to make a berth for a “lifer” after the ship was chosen for the Coral Sea Celebration.

Left the Ashtabula on leave November 16, 1963, my 20th birthday…with orders to join the USS Abnaki in Pearl Harbor.  In Tucson visiting HS friends when Kennedy was assassinated.

December 24, 1965 boarded the USS Abnaki.  Took the RM3 Exams on 12/30/1963 and was promoted to RM3 in 1964.

1964 mostly local activities, except towed a harbor tug from Oakland, CA to Pearl, and made a couple trips to Johnston Island Atoll.

Anchored a target raft southwest of Johnston Atoll for the B-52 bomb sight tests 1964

Towing a dredge from Johnston Atoll to Yokosuka, sunk the dredge in a typhoon mid January 1964

March 8, 1965 supported the amphibious landing of 3500 marines and their gear at Danang. Assigned to a Mine Squadron (92?) to produce a sonar map of the Red Beach 1 landing area, and standby for salvage and recovery if needed.

Spring 1965 - Dixie station small boat interdictions with a Vietnamese Officer aboard deciding which boat, when, how much…the guy (Vietnamese Naval Officer) showed absolute disregard for fishing nets, boats, and occupants…he represented everything the poor fishermen and farmers of Vietnam must hated about their government.  Anchoring out from Vung Tau, a mostly noncombat French Colonial city with an embarcadero bordering a long beach on the oceanside, and the back bayside where parts of the Mekong River flowed past. 

Spring 1965 - Yankee Station deterring the Russian trawlers who were attempting to interfere with air operations, and intercept radio signals.

Spring 1966 - Yankee Station, interfering with Russian trawlers, carrying an electronic counter-measures “sugar shack” and its two technician/operators.

Mid-July 1966 - Subic Bay, P.I. received orders to Treasure Island for discharge.

Left the ship traveling with ET3 Robert Knapp to Clark AFB for transportation home; we spent the next 3 days being bumped from flights by Air Force staff and dependents who were traveling to the States for the Boy Scout Jamboree, had no food or billet orders so slept in base theater, ate in the canteen, and waited in the flight center til we got rides home.  A grateful nation says “Thank You!” for your service.

Spent 5 days at Treasure Island, mustering out, dental work, poked and prodded, examined for the symptoms of all the diseases on our yellow-card, promoting reenlistment, threatening us about sharing SECRETS and sensitive information with anyone, and promoting active reserve duty when we got settled in at our home address…at the end of that week, I hitchhiked to Dayton, WA to visit my parents, then eventually rode a Greyhound to Tacoma, to live with my sister, brother-in-law, Jeanie, and Davie (2 years old) for almost a year.

In August 1966 (?) I was hired by the Department of the Army as a Crypto/Communications Specialist…a civilian, GS4 with a Top Secret/Crypto Access clearance, doing what I'd done in the Navy except I was out of uniform, in a 2nd floor "vault" for not much more money, playing cribbage with one other employee on graveyard shift, and waiting for the teletypes to start, then lighting up the "burn bag" as the final act of a long, mostly uneventful nightshift.