Here is the next Chapter of my Memoir/Novel, Lost and Found.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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The day when we would learn about our duty assignments finally came. We were marched to a part of the base where we hadn’t been before. The room we were sent to was very similar to some of the classrooms we had been in.

After most of us were all seated, a Chief Petty Officer walked into the room and ordered us to stand at attention. A few seconds later a Lieutenant walked into the room, saluted us as we saluted him, removed his cap and told us to be seated.

The Lieutenant was the most military-looking officer I had seen since I began boot camp. His posture was perfect – his salute was the snappiest one I’d ever imagined – his shoes were so shined you could see your face in them – his haircut was immaculate – even the way he spoke was stiff and formal.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “You are all to be congratulated for completing your training with flying colors. Your marks in all aspects of the training are among the best we’ve ever seen here at Great Lakes. You are no longer Seaman Recruits, and will be receiving your stripes as Seaman Apprentices before the day is done. We’re very proud of you.”

I found I was wondering if this was the standard speech given to every group of recruits reaching this point in their training. I suspected it was.

“Your next duty assignments have been issued and will be posted on the bulletin board outside of this room. The list will be in alphabetical order by your last names. You will receive further instructions on how to get to your assignments sometime tomorrow. Any questions?”

He paused and looked around the room. Even in this action his eyes were so penetrating it seemed as if you did have a question he would probably be able to pick it right out of your mind.

Seconds later he said, “Hearing none, I will wish you all good luck and good sailing!”

We were again ordered to stand at attention while the Lieutenant marched out of the room. We didn’t salute each other this time because the Lieutenant held his cap in his hand as he left the room. I was disappointed because I wanted to see another one of his salutes so I could practice mine to make it more snappy. The Chief then ordered us to stand at ease.

The moment the Chief left the room we all scrambled to get outside to see what our assignments were. Jim was the first one to make it the bulletin board and said as he saw me coming out of the room, “I’m going to Charleston, South Carolina to the USS Rice.”

I saw Joe was the next one to make it to the list, but he was gone by the time I made it out the door. I finally made it to the list and saw I was also going to Charleston and the USS Rice. I went looking for Jim and Joe to tell them, when Ralph came up behind me and said, “I’m going to the USS Rice. I tried to check where the rest of us were heading, but I got pushed aside too fast. Where are you going?”

I said, “Me too and so is Jim. I don’t know about Joe yet. I didn’t see him after he checked the list. C’mon, let’s go find him.”

I was already getting excited knowing at least three of us were going to the same place. I felt myself almost praying Joe would get the same assignment. As Ralph and I went out the door of the building, I could see Jim and Joe standing together, both smiling from ear-to-ear as they were punching each other on the arms. I pointed to them and gave a punch on Ralph’s arm as I yelled, “Looks like Joe’s going too!”

We started walking a lot faster to reach them. We were four very happy men.

As it turned out, many of the guys in our unit were assigned to the USS Rice.

A couple of days later we had packed up all our gear and were headed for a long and boring overnight train ride to Charleston. I did learn to sharpen up some skills at poker on the way down south, but considering how little I remembered as I wrote this about the train ride, I must have slept a good part of the time. The trip was basically uneventful and the “box lunches and dinners” we got were awful-tasting.

When we arrived in Charleston, we mustered in at the Charleston Naval Shipyard and were assigned to the USS Arcadia for an interim stay since our ship still needed a lot of work to make it ready for sailors to live aboard.

At our first mustering in, most of us were informed we were scheduled for a leave and could go home if we wanted or we could go into Charleston for seven days, or we could stay around the shipyard and bunk in aboard the Arcadia.

Jim, Ralph and Joe decided to go home for the leave. When they realized that I wouldn’t be going they became more curious about why I never talked about my parents or my life in Detroit. Jim said, “I know my parents would help you with paying for the trip if you want to go. They already know you’re one of the “Four Musketeers”, so you’re already part of the family.”

I said, “I know you guys want to know more about what’s up with me and my life, but let’s talk more about it when you return from leave. I think I’ll just hang around here to get better acquainted with the Navy Yard. I may even go into town during the day and check it out.”
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Here is the next Chapter of my Memoir/Novel, Lost and Found.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
=========================================================

The relationship between Jim, Joe, Ralph and I continued to grow each day. We were signing up for many of the same classes. We usually sat together at chow. The only area where we didn’t seem to have much in common was family. Jim and Joe were very close to their parents and siblings. Ralph was a little more reserved, but I could tell he still missed his parents and brothers a great deal. He just didn’t write as often or speak about them as much as Jim and Joe did.

One day as Jim and Joe were busy writing letters home and I was reading one of the training manuals from a class we were taking, Jim asked, “Hey, Rollo, how come you don’t write to your parents?”

I thought about how I should answer his question and still avoid giving him an answer which would be taking me into areas where I didn’t want to go. I finally came out with, “Jim, it’s a long story and one I really don’t want to go into right now. Is that alright?”

Jim nodded and went back to his writing. It would be months before this topic came up again.

Boot camp went by at a lightning pace. Since we were doing so much marching we knew at least a dozen cadence calls, many of them with a XXX rating. I won’t write any of the XXX ones as they are truly nasty. Here are a couple we did do in boot camp.

Everywhere we go-o
People wanna know-o
Who we are
So we tell them
We’re not the Army
The backpackin’ Army
We’re not the Air Force
The low flyin’ Air Force
We’re not the Mo-rines
They don’t even look mean
We’re not the Coast Guard
a boat full of retards
We are the Navy
The world’s greatest Navy
The mighty-mighty Navy.

That one was disrespectful of the other branches of the military, but we were in the process of being thoroughly brainwashed at this point in our training. It was constantly drummed into our heads about how we were now “Navy” – that we were now fighting sailors – we were the best of them all.

Here’s another one we did:

Saw an old lady walkin’ down the street
she had tanks on her back, she had fins on her feet
I said, “Hey old lady where you goin’ to?”
“The US Navy Divin’ school”
“Hey old lady ain’t you been told?
They save that divin’ for the brave and the bold”
“Sonny, sonny can’t you see?
I did recon ‘fore you were three.

As we were approaching the end of boot camp the four of us were sitting in the barracks one night before lights out and Ralph said, “Hey, you guys know the powers that be are making up assignments for all of us, don’t you?”

Jim responded, “No. What do you mean they’re making up assignments. What kind of assignments?”

Ralph said, “Where we’re going to be sent after we’re done here. Once we graduate from boot camp, we’ll be assigned to someplace where we’ll be starting our tour. It means we might get separated, you know?”

I felt something inside me tighten up. I was becoming attached to these three guys and the sudden realization that our time together could be ending in another week or so felt awful. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the most solid relationships so far in my life, besides Sally, were with Billy and the guys in the gang. I had also developed a camaraderie with the guys I worked with unloading the trucks down by the Detroit River. Those guys were mostly older than me, but I had spent a great deal of time with them. Still, the days with the Dukes were the closest I’d ever experienced in my life before the Navy.

But the relationship with Jim, Ralph and Joe had developed into something different and much more meaningful. These guys had beat the crap out of me and cleaned me up after. We ate together – we worked together most of the time – we spent hours talking together when we weren’t working – we slept in bunks next to each other – most of the classes we took were the same – we didn’t march together much because we were always lined up in terms of how tall we were. I was taller than any of them. Jim was the shortest, followed by Joe and then Ralph. So when we were marching I was always further back in the ranks than they were. Jim was usually near the front.

Our seventh week of training was more intense than I had ever imagined. The focal point of the week was grueling testing of all the material we had covered up to that point. It wasn’t done all in one sitting, but the test overall was about twelve-hours of constant brain-draining exams. The successful completion of this testing was required before we could “graduate” and be declared “sailors”. If we didn’t pass, we would be held back and forced to repeat the areas where we failed.

The intensity of that seventh-week of testing was even more frightening for me because I didn’t want to be left behind while Jim, Ralph and Joe moved on. Plus, there was the other fear of us getting separated by our “after boot camp” assignments.

The four of us were more quiet than usual as we would sit together at chow, or when we were just sitting around the barracks between tests and before lights out.

As we were sitting on our bunks Ralph said, “You know what? I think of the four of us as the “Four Musketeers! We belong together!”

Joe, the avid reader among us, piped up and said, “Yeah. Rollo is like d’Artagnan who wants to join the warriors known as the Musketeers. One of the first things that happens to him is he starts a duel with one of the Musketeers and is attacked by the guy he wants to fight and two of his buddies. They beat the crap out of him and they eventually become friends.”

Ralph said, “I never finished reading the book, but I do remember that part. Doesn’t d’Artagnan get into a bunch of trouble falling in love with women he shouldn’t?”

Joe said, “Yeah, that’s right. I was just comparing how Rollo started by picking a fight with me, how you guys helped me to fight him off and how we are now the best of friends. I just keep worrying about whether we’re going to get separated with the assignments next week.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Jim. “I really don’t want to see that happen.”

“I never read the book,” I said, “ but I sure do like thinking of us as the ‘Four Musketeers’. That just sounds right for us. I don’t want to be separated either. I don’t know any of the other guys here like I know you guys.”
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Here is the next Chapter of my Memoir/Novel, Lost and Found.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
=========================================================

The dental exam was the most traumatic for me. In fact, it became the source of my current dental problems. My Navy boot camp dental exam was the first time I had ever sat in a dentist’s chair. Being away from my parents’ home as much as I was made periodic trips to the dentist something which had never occurred. I doubt that my parents could have afforded it anyway.

On the day of the dental exam, a few of us were led into a room where five or six dentists were each standing next to chairs which resembled the sort of chair a barber would use. I sat down in one of the chairs. The dentist reclined the chair and said, “Open wide, sailor!”

I opened my mouth and he began to probe around with a metal pick. He was poking around in one of my back teeth on my lower jaw when he hit something which sent a jolt of pain through my mouth and made me jump and jerk away from his hand. “Well, looks like I’m going to have to do a filling on this guy,” said the dentist. “It’s a small cavity so it shouldn’t take long.”

The next several minutes were spent in pure agony. He didn’t do anything to numb my mouth as he drilled, scraped, pushed and pulled inside my mouth. The pain was immense. Even though my complete memory of this experience is blocked out of my mind, I do recall that I did cry out a couple of times during the procedure.

That experience kept me from seeing another dentist until many years later. It wasn’t until after my teeth were in obvious bad shape that one of my customers in the bank where I worked stepped into my life on a personal level. Since I was processing his banking needs I was aware he was a dentist.

One day while I was waiting on him, he said, “Roland, are you seeing a dentist for your teeth?”

I shook my head and he went on, “You do need to have your teeth looked at, you know. How long has it been?”

“Not since I was seventeen years old,” I answered.

“Where was that done?” he asked.

“In the Navy.”

We talked more about my fear of dentists and he explained that he was a teacher at the dental school connected to the University of Detroit and would be happy to set up a time for him to have a better look at my teeth. He was even willing to do it on a weekend so I wouldn’t have to miss work. His name was Doctor Simmonds and he was one of the nicest people I waited on at the bank. He was always polite, courteous, quiet speaking, and gentle whenever I would see him. I knew from seeing all my initials in his deposit book that I was the only teller in the bank he ever saw. I had also waited on his wife a few times.

Despite the fact Doctor Simmonds evoked no sense of fear in me, it still took him several attempts to convince me to come and see him before I finally gave in and made an appointment. However, even though he performed extraordinary and extensive work on my mouth over a period of several months, and charged me very little for the work, the lack of care over that earlier time period left me with dental problems lasting until the time I am writing this book.

Most of the remaining time in boot camp was devoted to teaching us the chain of command, who to salute – when to salute – and how to salute. We learned more about the necessity of standing watches, how to identify the various types of Navy ships, how to handle different hand-held weapons, and lots of sit-ups and push-ups. As you can probably guess there were hours and hours of marching in formation.

I did enjoy the marching and eventually got on one of the drill teams.

Learning how to roll our uniforms and pack a foot locker was all part of gearing up for “hell week” when we were inspected to death and had more tests than one would ever think necessary. Both the tests and the inspections were brutal.
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Here is the next Chapter of my Memoir/Novel, Lost and Found.

As I was editing this Chapter today, I noticed I was making a slew of typos. I hope I caught them all, but if you see any “goofs” — typos, misspellings, etc., be sure to let me know so I can fix them.

Thanks!

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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The four of us walked into the main barracks and Jim said, “You already know where Joe’s bunk is, and Ralph and I are over here,” he said walking towards the bunks right across the middle aisle from Joe’s bunk. “Ralph’s on the bottom bunk here and I’m on the top. This top bunk right next to us is open. Why don’t you take that one?”

Even though there was a part of me that didn’t want to trust these guys, I didn’t want to do anything more to piss them off. “Sounds good to me,” I said. “I guess we better start looking for whatever a work uniform is.”

Within a few minutes after we managed to change our clothes the sailor who was in charge of us came into the barracks. He walked over to an empty trashcan, took a wooden baton he had in his hands and began to roll it around and around the inside of the trashcan making a terrific, terrible noise. When he stopped making his noise he called out, “Okay, sailors, do I have your attention?”

A few guys nodded their heads and couple of quiet voices said, “Yes.”

“I can’t hear you,” the leader called out. “Answer me so I know you’re here!”

He kept repeating himself until he got a rousing “YES SIR!” from the recruits.

Before we could go get some breakfast, we had to put all our clothes back into our sea bags and leave our sea-bags on top of our bunks. We learned the sailor in charge of us was a Chief Petty Officer and we were to always address him as “Sir”. We learned that we had the rank of Seaman Recruit, the lowest rank of a newly enlisted sailor.

Our military training began as we went to morning chow – (it wasn’t “breakfast” any longer). We couldn’t just walk out of the barracks haphazardly, we had to leave the building two-by-two. We couldn’t just walk over to the chow hall, we had to march over there, attempting to follow the cadence being called out by our leader in a loud voice. “Left, Right, Left, Right, Left,” over and over again. He would occasionally interrupt his cadence by yelling at one of us, “When I say ‘Left’, that means your left foot dummy!” or other comments yelled at us like, “You have to be the most uncoordinated bunch of swabbies I’ve ever seen! How in the hell are we supposed to win a war with sailors who don’t know their right foot from their left?”

Once again, I was beginning to realize how lucky I was to have spent those three months in the Reform School. Being there had taught me how to tolerate this sort of verbal abuse and I learned quickly to just do what I was told and keep my mouth shut. I also soon understood there was a reason for it and it was to turn us into “military” people – people who would be willing to fight in a war – people who would follow orders without argument or second thoughts – people who would kill if necessary.

I wasn’t perfect however. There were a few times where I got caught mouthing off to the Chief and ended up in the middle of the marching drill field, in pouring rain or snow — in Chicago winter weather – doing rifle drills at two o’clock in the morning for a couple of hours while a sailor would sit in a chair with an umbrella over his head counting out, “One, Two, Out, In, Up, Down,” as I pushed the rifle out from my chest to arm’s length in front of me and also from my chest up, again at arm’s length, straight over my head and back again. It didn’t take long for the burn to set in and the weight of the rifle to gain multiple pounds as the minutes wore on. I ended up doing this twice during boot camp before I finally learned to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself. I did often wonder if the poor sailor who was sitting there in a chair watching me was also being disciplined for something. However, on my first trip out for “rifle exercise” I learned I was not to speak, because if I spoke I got an extra five minutes of my “mouthing off” consequences.

One of the rituals of boot camp is the haircut. It was on either the second or third day when we were lined up outside the barracks and marched to another building where we were told to stand in a line to wait our turn with the barber.

I looked over my shoulder at Joe who was standing right behind me in the line and whispered, “Barber? I don’t want a haircut!” As a member of the State Fair Dukes I had my hair cut so it was rather long on the top and sides and cut straight across the back of my neck and I had it trained into a D.A., which is what we called combing it so the hair on the back of the head went from the right side toward the center, and from the left side toward the center. The ‘D.A.’ stood for ‘duck’s ass’ which is what the hair style was supposed to imitate.

Joe said, “Neither do I. I finally got it like I like it.”

Joe’s hair style had a big pompadour in the front. (For those who may not know what a pompadour was, it was a way for men to style their hair so the hair in front was combed into a high mound.) Many of the good-looking guys wore their hair with a pompadour. Joe claimed the girls liked it that way.

As we were waiting in line, Jim, who was in front of me said, “I don’t see any guys coming out again. They must have a back door or something.”

I laughed and said, “Maybe they don’t want us to see what they look like with their new haircuts.”

The guy who was in front of Jim turned around and said, “Don’t laugh. Look at that guy over there.” He pointed to a sailor just appearing around the side of the building who still hadn’t put his cap back on and his hair was cut to less than an inch long all over his head. It was a buzz cut!

Once we saw that, we were all starting to get nervous. There were many comments of bravado saying things like, “I won’t let them buzz cut me!” Or, “No way, I’ll just tell them not to cut mine so short!”

But we all knew deep in our souls we were going to get a buzz cut whether we liked it or not. And, we did. The first thing I noticed was my cap felt too big. The second thing I noticed was I had lost all desire to be without my cap – I never wanted to take it off again.

Another part of the early days in boot camp had to do with the medical and dental aspects.

The medical was an experience. It wasn’t so much about finding out if we were healthy. It was more about getting a series of inoculations for various diseases and making sure none of us had any sort of venereal disease. I had my first experience with the infamous “short-arm” inspection. (In order to keep this book with some modicum of decency, I will not write a detailed description of this inspection. If you’re really curious, you can always Google the term.)
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Here is the next Chapter of my Memoir/Novel, Lost and Found.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
===========================================================

As I walked into the barracks with my sea bag full of clothes over my shoulder, I saw the top bunks in each corner of the barracks were already being commandeered by guys who got into the building before I did. I wanted one of those top bunks in a corner. I was also in the mood for a fight. I looked around and spotted a guy near a corner top bunk who looked like he’d enjoy a challenge.

I walked up to him, pointed to the top bunk and said, “Hey, are you taking that bunk?”

He looked to be about nineteen or twenty years old. He had dark hair combed into a large wave in front and a sharply defined part. He had the type of face you see in newspaper ads. He’d be one of those guys who always gets the girl. He was about the same height as me and had a slim build. He hadn’t started to change into his uniform yet and the clothes he was wearing were neat and well-pressed. He turned around to look at me and said, “Yep. I like the idea of sleeping in the top bunk. The bunk under it is still available.”

“I don’t want the bunk under it – I want the top bunk. How about we switch?”

“Sorry. There are still plenty of top bunks available. Just take one of them.”

“Nah. I want that one. Maybe you should take one of the other ones.”

“Forget it. I’m staying right where I am. Now, why don’t you move along and quit bugging me?” He turned his back on me and started to open his sea bag.

I grabbed him by his shoulder to turn him back to me and shoved him hard against the bunk. He almost fell into the lower bunk but grabbed the leg of the bunk and reached out to shove me back. I was just cocking my fist for a first punch when I felt strong arms grab me from behind, pin my arms to my sides, and another guy arrive in front of me throwing his fist deep into my belly. It wasn’t the guy who I was talking to – he was still hanging onto the bunk leg to keep from falling. The next thing I knew I was being tightly held by someone who was extremely strong, and thoroughly pummeled by two guys, the guy I was hassling and one other. They were giving me one hell of a beating and I couldn’t break away from the guy who was holding me. I noticed I was getting weaker by the second. I was getting the worst whipping of my life. At some point my lights went out.

I came to in the bathroom and these three guys were washing my face and blotting a couple of bleeding wounds. One of the guys, a big, blond guy who must have been the guy who was holding me – he was certainly big enough – seemed to be taking charge of my cleanup and kept saying, “What the fuck is with you? What the fuck were you thinking? Are you just stupid, or what?”

The good-looking guy whose bunk I wanted was holding a piece of toilet paper up to one of my eyes where I was bleeding.

The other guy had light brown hair and was shorter than either of his friends and reminded me of Billy in some ways. He was well-built and had a look about him which gave the impression he knew what was going on in the world. His hair was short and he was washing my face with a cool cloth. He looked at me and said, “I don’t know why you tried to hassle our friend, but here’s something you need to understand. You can constantly be looking for trouble with us and finding it, or you can start to realize we would rather not be whipping your butt all the time. Join us or fight us – it’s your choice. But I think you’ll be a lot better off joining us. Right now though, we better find you a bunk you’ll accept and we all need to get changed. That sailor in charge is going to be walking in here in just a few minutes.”

He held out his hand and said, “I’m Jim. The guy you were picking on is Joe and this big Swede here is Ralph. What’s your name?”

I said, “Roland.” I could feel my lip was swollen so it came out sounding sort of strange. “I’m sorry I picked on you, Joe – and I do have to say, you guys give a damn good beating. Quite a team.”

Jim started to head out of the bathroom and looked back over his shoulder and said, “Yeah. We are a good team. I’d advise you to join it – not fight it!”
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