Joining The Navy

I graduated from H.S. in May of 1965.  I tried going to Victoria Jr. College, just because everyone else had big College plans after H.S.  That didn’t work out well, but I got very good at playing dominoes. I believe I lasted just over a year before I gave up. 

By this time Lloyd and I had become best friends. He was behind me a year in school and did not graduate until May 1966.  We spent the summer doing what we normally did during the summer. Going swimming and working at H.E.B. 

Some time during the summer, we went to the local recruiter’s office and asked about the Navy.  They told us we could join up on the “buddy plan” and we could go to boot camp (basic training) together.  We thought that was a plan, so we took our brochures home and started figuring out what we wanted to be for the next 4 years. 

You have to remember that the US was deep into the Viet Nam war at this time, and the draft was in full swing. Both Lloyd and I were rated 1A in the draft. That means we were prime meat for the Army grinder.  We both knew that if we got drafted, we would go to VN and start getting shot at. Neither of us wanted that. Hence, joining the Navy looked better, and better.

In early November of 1966, we were preparing to go to boot camp. The problem came up when Lloyd decided to go into Diesel Mechanics training, and I decided to go into Weapons training. Lloyd wanted to learn about diesel engines. I wanted to learn about torpedoes.  

In the Navy there are three different divisions that I know of, one is the deck division, one is weapons and the third is engineering. Electronics might have been a separate division, but I’m not sure.

The point of all this stuff about divisions is that Weapons training was handled in San Diego, and Engineering training was handled in Great Lakes (some where near Chicago, I think).  Lloyd was going to Great Lakes for boot camp and I was going to San Diego. 

So much for our “buddy plan”.