220227 Sentinel, Olongapo, P.I. 1968

One late night in Olongapo, Philippines I was inebriated and on my way back to the ship. I decided I needed to get a haircut. While there I thought a shave and a manicure was in order. I sat down in the chair, had the haircut and then the shave. As the barber brought a straight razor to my neck, I had a flash in my brain. These people do not like sailors and this guy could slit my throat and then bury me out in the jungle nearby and no one would ever find me.

On another night, I decided to avoid any trouble in one of the bars. I grabbed a jitney (leftover army jeep from WW-2 that Filipinos used for taxis) and I told the driver to take me somewhere where we could drink a few beers away from the madness of the bars there. He took me to a sari-sari (grocery store and combination bar). We were sitting there drinking several San Miguel beers, when an empty bottle came wissing past my head from behind me. I had just enough beer in me so I jumped up, turned to kick somebody’s ass whomever he might be. I took my first step toward the man when he pulled out another army leftover from WW-2, a .45 caliber pistol. That changed the equation in a heartbeat. Lucky for me, the driver grabbed me and protected me as we left the store.

One last story, I was assigned shore patrol in Olongapo one day. Shore patrol lasted from noon until midnight (curfew hour). On a previous cruise a friend of mine was on shore patrol and went into a bar to break up a fight between a sailor and a bar girl. His partner should have been watching his back, but did not. My friend got between the girl and the sailor and then pushed the sailor away as he heard a bottle break he turned and the bar girl sliced his forehead down to his lip. Back to my story, I was assigned a partner and all I could think of was if we got into a jam, would he back me up? The evening went without incident and at 11 pm we were sent back to the shore patrol headquarters to be ready for the cattle cars (Big trucks towing cattle trailers) to take the sailors back to their ships at midnight. The chief in charge randomly assigned patrolmen to each cattle car. The last car out that night started filling up and no one wanted to be on that run. There were over 60 men on that shuttle, evenly divided between marines, black sailors and red neck sailors. It was shaping up to be a powder keg. The chief recognized the situation and put extra shore patrol on the shuttle and I was lucky enough to be there in the mix. The cattle cars got pretty rowdy at times and more than one shore patrolman had been thrown off the car at 30 mph. All I could think of during that run was please Lord don’t let this thing explode on me. We all got back to the Kitty Hawk without incident and I went to sleep feeling grateful to be there in one piece, all 145 pounds of me.