210904 Sentinel, 58

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58

It’s difficult to imagine that 58 years ago today I raised my right arm in a courthouse to take an oath to defend this country from enemies both foreign and domestic. That started an 11 year journey that took me halfway around the world. If memory serves me correctly today I have a chronological order of where my journey took me. It began in Chicago as the first stop on my way to Great Lakes, Il.

From there it was Millington, Tn. Followed by Glynco Ga. Then it was Travis AFB outside San Francisco and on to Oahu Hi. For about 3 months of training at Barber’s point. On I went to Pearl Harbor for a very short time and then to Guam. From there it was Sangley Point PI. For many different times, one of which was a trip to Corregidor in Manila bay. From there I had a series of short-term stops in Atsugi, Japan, a trip to Tokyo, a trip to Wake Island, later Midway Island, both with a lot of history during WW-2. I did spend one day in Vietnam, at Da Nang instead of always being 100 or so miles off the coast for countless days and nights. After all of that it was San Diego (back in the really good days). From San Diego it was on back to port calls in Hawaii, Yokosuka, Japan, Hong Kong and a lot of stops at Cubi Point, PI. I had a lot of shore patrol duty when in port there. Those duties were mainly in Olongapo, PI and a couple of not so fun tours on Grande Island. There was only one way to get there and that was on old WW-2 landing craft herding a boat full of drunks back to Cubi Point pier, where the ship was docked. I had 2 cruises of that duty. Then I once again held up my right hand and shipped over for another 6 years. At that time it was back to Millington for more schooling and then instructing for 3.5 years. Back to sea aboard the Enterprise and following the same pattern as before on Kitty Hawk, with 1 exception, I added in Singapore, which was a whole different world. I finished the last year of my 11 years back in Ca. living and working on Coronado at the naval air station North Island. I think I covered all the stops, some were 1 time while others were more times than I can remember.