This old memory is a long one so the whole story covers time on the island of Guam and when I finally got to fly with an air crew.
The island of Guam. Guam is small, 8 miles long and 4 miles wide, but at the time I was there it was still rather primitive. There was Anderson air force base at the northern tip. Naval air station Agana Guam in the center and Naval station at the south end of the island. There were more open spaces than developed spaces. The capital of Guam was the town of Agana, which was down a long hill from the air station. If you had a car you could drive through it and miss seeing it if you blinked. There were several stores there and they were nice and the clerks were nice too. There was a record shop where I purchased several 33 rpm records. There was a small coffee shop where I spent a lot of time and a jewelry store, where I bought a diamond ring for Joyce. It cost me $75 and I was so broke I had to make payments on it. It was a beautiful ring and when I left Guam for the USA we had the ring appraised it was worth $500 if purchased in the US. There were no taxes on purchases on Guam.
I arrived on Guam expecting to get on a flight crew right away. I had a year and a half training on everything I needed to be a crew member. What I got was 94 days of working 12 hours every day in the Air station galley! I started out by scrubbing metal trays in the scullery. It was hard work, damp and hot with steam behind me where the trays went through to clean them. At the end of the shift, me and another worker got to haul out a 55 gallon trash can filled with scrapped food off of trays. Every morning we went to work and a boson’s mate inspected us for cleanliness, including checking for anything under our fingernails.
Half way through my time in the galley, I was transferred to the night shift. That was the best duty in the galley. Me and an Alabama red neck named Harley D Orem started by scrubbing huge steel pots used for food during the day. Our supervisor was a second class cook named Cruze Beneventa. He was a native of Guam so this was very good duty for him. After cleaning everything it was time to make lunches for outgoing air crews and or passengers leaving Guam on navy transport flights. I enjoyed making sandwiches because I could eat all I wanted as I made boxes of foods for the outgoing flights. As the night went on it was time to leave the galley and wake up the day shift sailors at about 5 AM. Some got out of bed quickly, others were more difficult, we’d push and shove them and do whatever necessary to roust them out of the sack. After that I went back to the galley where I ran the grill, cooking bacon and eggs for anyone who wanted them. I started badly. I was slow, but after a few days I could wield my spatula and cook those eggs. I could crack 2 eggs at a time and put them on the grill without breaking the yokes. Our eggs came from the USA, by slow moving ships. The eggs were more than a month old by the time we got them. Sometimes the eggs were green and would pop and bounce across the grill. No one ever seemed to mind as I scraped those eggs off the grill.
Finally I was released from galley duty and was assigned to a flight crew. I was a happy camper. Being the two new guys, me and a friend (Cal) were assigned to go from the flight line to the galley and get all the food and coffee before flight time. Flights out had up to 30 crew members and the ground crew. The planes were basically military modified Lockheed Super Constellations like civilian passenger planes were. The galley was the same as civilian planes. There were no stewards on the plane. Usually the ground crew guys would do some cooking for us.
Our flights went from Guam to Cavite point in the Philippines. From there we flew to the coast of Vietnam where we flew overnight radar coverage for the 7th Fleet ships operating in the gulf. Come morning we flew back to Cavite, and some liberty time.There wasn’t much there but bars to drink some beer inside. We flew out every other night to watch over the 7th fleet. I did that for one year before my time was up and I had orders to report to the naval air station on North Island after 30 days leave. That’s where I was in the air group on the USS Kitty Hawk and that’s another story.
One last note on Guam. Decades later Guam was rediscovered by Japan and it became a tourist attraction. Hotels popped up like corn in a farmer’s field. The naval station expanded everywhere they could spread out to boost naval traffic in the Pacific. There are submarines there now along with surface ships, supply ships and repair ships and submarine repair ships.
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