Navy Days ... 1975-1981

and our saucy ship's a beauty!

We are sober men and true,

and attentive to our duty!"

-- Act I, Scene 1, H.M.S. Pinafore, by Gilbert & Sullivan

Where it began ... I can't remember who told me the quote above in the subtitle here; it was back in 1981 when I chose to pursue a more lucrative line of work. I do remember that it didn't take long to realize that it was, and still is, a true statement. I've often wondered since my departure from the Navy how different my life would be had I not allowed myself to be lured away by the hint of better pay and a better lifestyle. Lately, those memories of the "good ol' days" linger more and more; especially when I see stories in the news or documentaries on television about "today's" Navy. So... join me if you will on a stroll down my Memory Lane... to a six-year period of time that was perhaps the best time of my life, or at least one of the very best times.

I'll never forget that first morning at Great Lakes Recruit Training Center, one of the Navy's Boot Camps, situated on the Illinois shore of Lake Michigan... the day an 18-year old newly-graduated high school kid started to become a man. The Company Commander, an old salt by the name of Machinist Mate Chief Byrd, didn't waste any time indoctrinating us in the "real world." He was a skinny guy... small and wiry. His Navy issue black plastic framed spectacles that made him look like a geek was just a disguise though. His loud bark that first morning accompanied by the sound of him beating on a garbage can lid set the tone right away.

"RISE AND SHINE YOU D***-HEADS!!!" he hollered at 4:00 a.m. "You're in MY Navy now... your Mommies ain't gonna be holding your hands and wiping your snot-nosed faces anymore!"

Chief Byrd was a tough one, alright! He was the epitome of military professionalism; I never saw any sailor since, officer or enlisted, who was so "squared away." He didn't walk around, he marched with a snap in his steps, chest out, eyes always straight ahead... and he never smiled. He painted a far more accurate picture of what the Navy, and military, was really like as opposed to the sales pitches the recruiters gave. It was a better picture, really; although Boot Camp didn't teach a lot of specifics about what jobs in the Navy were like, it did teach me how to be disciplined... it taught me lessons that added to my value system, and it started the work ethic that I carry with me even now.

Nine weeks away from home in a regimented and sometimes harshly disciplined environment was tough for an 18-year-old, but it was comforting to know that it was also a long nine weeks for my "ship mates" ... there was a certain bonding among us 80 young men; like a huge family of brothers... with one "mean old man" as a Dad! About halfway through, Company 142, also known as "Byrd's Best" (we even had our own flag that said that!), came together as one of the finest groups in the entire battalion. We won the top awards for drill, and barracks inspections, even the scholastic parts. We were quite a well-oiled machine... and it was amazing. I'm sure our parents and teachers back home never imagined that so many kids from different backgrounds, different cities, and even different cultural experiences would end up being so well-organized.

The day we graduated from Boot Camp is still in my memory as one of the proudest days of my life, as I'm sure it is with those who marched beside me that day. We finished the nine week program as "Color Company" ... giving us the honor of being the first company to be presented passing in review for the base commander and other VIPs. We looked awesome all decked out in our brand new dress whites, marching in perfect synchronization with those drill rifles all at the exact same shoulder arms angle. And when Chief Byrd (he really looked awesome in his dress whites... all his medals and gold stripes!) gave the order "EYES. RIGHT!" when we passed the review platform, I actually got goosebumps seeing all of us snap our heads at exactly the same time. Add to this the sound of the band playing "Anchor's Aweigh!" and you can get a good idea of how that rush was for us.

Being Color Company had some other nice perks... we were permitted off-base liberty for the entire weekend that followed the graduation ceremony, and the entire week that followed while we awaited our orders for our next duty stations was a like a vacation. We could sleep in (until 6 a.m. instead of 4 a.m.!), didn't have to march in formation to the chow hall, and didn't have to do anything, really, except pass the time winding down from an often grueling routine. A lot of us joked about going back to our home-town high schools while on leave to do the customary "How I spent my summer vacation" monologues in some English class. And then, as sudden as our wake up to Chief Byrd's Navy had been on the morning of June 16, 1975, our time at Great Lakes came to an end. I never had another opportunity to go back to Great Lakes during my six-year enlistment, but the images of that place will be forever imbedded in my mind's photo album, as will be the faces of the rest of "Byrd's Best." (I wonder how they're all doing these days!)

A Pennsylvania Yankee in the Admiral's Court ... I left Great Lakes with orders to report to Denver, Colorado for my advanced training in my job specialty: air intelligence. (Why the Navy's intelligence training was land-locked so far from the nearest ocean at an Air Force base I never knew, but I wasn't complaining!) It was an intense course of study, and fascinating, and I often think that my introduction to that kind of work is what started this spark in me to be a writer. In a nutshell, intelligence work involves three very basic principles: gathering information, processing it, and then disseminating it to an appropriate audience... just what I do now, but on a much lower level, of course.

I graduated from the "Armed Forces Air Intelligence Training Center" in late-November 1975 at the top of my class, and as a reward, was given orders to a prestigious assignment... an Admiral's staff based at Subic Bay in the Philippines. It was sea duty aboard an aircraft carrier; actually three different aircraft carriers, since the Admiral's staff was permanently "home ported" there and the carriers were not. As a ship would arrive from the U.S. west coast for a six-month deployment to the Seventh Fleet, the Admiral would take it as his flagship, and remain on board until the ship was relieved by the next one. We were a separate command unit from the ship's crew... more or less just along for the ride.

My first shipboard experience was on the USS Oriskany... a WWII vintage ship, tiny by today's carriers, but still huge in comparison to typical cruise ships of the time. I was immediately stunned when I saw her... I really had never imagined anything so big. How could something that large float! The Oriskany had only five squadrons in her air wing; two F-4 fighter/reconnaissance groups, two A-7 long range attack/bomber units, and a helicopter squadron for logistical support, search and rescue, and antisubmarine warfare. Living conditions weren't so bad... crowded, yes, but comfortable. And just as I had finally gotten to know my way around that ship, it was time to transfer to the next one... the USS Ranger. "Stunned" suddenly became a mild expression when the Ranger docked alongside the Oriskany; she was nearly twice as big, in terms of actual size and air wing... nearly three football field lengths and about a hundred aircraft... nearly 5,000 total crew members. And as if that floating city wasn't big enough, six months later we moved to a metropolis... the USS Enterprise... HUGE! almost 6,000 men.

It was a "cushy" job, too, since I was able to avoid what was common for a lot of newbie sailors, regardless of job specialty: the dreaded three months of "mess cooking" or "boatswain duty" that often followed Boot Camp or advanced training... dirty work totally unrelated to a specialized job classification, and often times, an extension of the regimented routine of Boot Camp. Another nice perk that came from working for the Commander, Carrier Task Force 77, U.S. Seventh Fleet was the company I kept: we were a small group of about 30 men; a handful of enlisted men, specialists, like me, and senior officers, mostly Naval Aviators with certain expertise in different areas. My particular function was "Yeoman" to the "Operations Officer" ... a full-bird Navy Captain, T.J. Cassidy (who, years later, I discovered quite unintentionally, had been promoted to Rear Admiral and was featured as himself in a couple of scenes in the movie "Top Gun.").

It was a great job for an 18-year old... rubbing elbows with Navy brass and seeing parts of the world that many others can only see in books or movies. During my year-long assignment, I traveled to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia... and even floated around the Indian Ocean during that Kenya/Uganda uprising back in the summer of 1976... when that scoundrel Idi Amin started making trouble. (There were some tense moments then, for sure!) I even experienced that famous Navy tradition of crossing the equator when the "pollywogs" are initiated by the "shellbacks" into that Ancient Order of the Deep, "King Neptune's Domain." Now that was fun! (Well, the second time it was... when I was one of the ones doing the dirty stuff to those pathetic pollywogs!)

1976 was a good year for my first year in the Navy, but in retrospect, it was a short year, too. It was tough to say goodbye to the Western Pacific... beautiful countries, great weather, interesting people, both on and off the ships. It was also part of something in the Navy that is rare... when a sailor can see duty on both sides of the globe in a single enlistment period.

The other side of the world ... My next stop was Jacksonville, Florida; more specifically Naval Air Station Cecil Field... home of Air Antisubmarine Squadron Twenty-Two (VS-22) and other tactical support squadrons of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Air wing squadrons are separate command units from the ship, and as such are home ported away from the ship until the few months before a carrier deploys for one of those six-month cruises. VS-22 was part of the air wing attached to the USS Saratoga out of Naval Station Mayport, near Jacksonville, and shortly after my arrival to the squadron, we became officially embarked on her. Even though "mess cooking" or "boatswain duty" assignments aren't part of a squadron crew's routine when based at home, since we had been officially moved to the ship for the three-month "warm-up" phase prior to our Mediterranean Sea (Sixth Fleet) deployment, and since I was still just a Seaman (E-3), I was still "eligible" for that shipboard "dirty work" mentioned above. It wasn't so bad. I chose the mess cooking option; the steady, easy work helped pass the time, and "head of the line" privilege at chow time was a nice little perk, too. Following that somewhat less fulfilling experience, I was returned to my squadron and assumed my intended duties as the Intelligence Specialist that I had been trained to be, and had already been during my first tour with the Admiral's staff.

Most squadron personnel when embarked on a ship remain with the squadron; berthed in the same spaces, doing their particular aircraft- and squadron-related jobs, and generally conducting business as usual on the ship rather than at the squadron's homeport air station. Part of each squadron's command structure includes one Intelligence Officer (IO), who is assigned one Intelligence Specialist (IS), and both are then assigned to work in the ship's intelligence center, or CVIC. Although the squadron's IO's berthing quarters remain with the other squadron officers, and the IO's job remains direct support to the squadron, the IS is assigned to the CVIC staff, and for all intents and purposes becomes a temporary member of the ship's crew. In other words, the IS "belongs" to the CVIC for the duration of the time the squadron is embarked onboard, and works more as part of the ship's intelligence team and less in support of his own squadron's IO.

My time spent in the Saratoga's CVIC was amazing! Unlike my duty in the Philippines where I was more or less a "clerk typist" for a Navy Captain, my job in the CVIC was more closely related to the hands-on work of an actual Intelligence Specialist. I learned a lot... from how to operate a closed-circuit television camera system that was used for pre-flight briefings broadcast to all the squadrons' "ready rooms" to analyzing and interpreting the aerial photography that certain aircraft brought back from reconnaissance missions. I worked on target folders, mission planning scenarios, and even wrote scripts for special broadcast presentations (port visit information, mainly) that we did for unclassified briefings to the entire crew. I was finally applying all the training I had received in Denver, and learning much more than that course had taught. Granted, we were not at war then, so everything we did really was training; even flight operations that were conducted most every day, all day. Our mission and reason for deployment was simply "show of force" and "to be ready for anything."

During my tour with VS-22, I went to the Mediterranean Sea twice, and both times were better than any geography textbook I ever had to carry around in school. I visited Italy (even went to Rome for a weekend and saw the Pope in his window!), Greece, Turkey, Egypt (and met Anwar Sadat when he toured the ship), Yugoslavia, and returned to the good ol' U.S. of A. no longer able to sing that song: "I've never been to Spain." (and, yes... the rain in Spain really does fall mainly on the plains!)

My 'Rocky Mountain High' ... 1979 began for me with a road trip; cruising across that long and lonely stretch of I-70 through Kansas and listening to John Denver's Greatest Hits cassette (you saw that right... no CDs back then!) playing in the in-dash tape deck of my 1977 Plymouth Gran Fury. I was heading toward my next duty station: Headquarters, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

I never expected that I would make it back to Colorado when I left that school in Denver; I mean, aside from the instructors at the school, and Navy recruiters throughout the state, I really didn't know that the Navy had other billets in Colorado... no oceans! By that time, I had put on another stripe under my "crow" ... the Navy's version of rank insignia on our uniforms: a spread-winged eagle resting above however many chevrons that matched our rank. I reported to NORAD as a Petty Officer Second Class... two chevrons. Unlike the glorified clerk-typist job on the Admiral's staff, and the "training and readiness" mission of those previous Mediterranean deployments, NORAD was the real deal... monitoring actual and current events around the world in order to assess any threats against the United States and her allies.

It was a rewarding assignment for me, and in many ways the "ideal job." I worked 12-hour shifts in the intelligence center inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex where NORAD's buildings were located. Fifteen, 3-story, thick concrete buildings interconnected and mounted on hundreds of huge shock absorber type springs... built deep inside a solid granite mountain. The blast doors that separated this world from the outside world were solid steel... two of them, 25-tons each. The complex was designed to withstand a nuclear attack and go into a lock-down period with sufficient internal resources (power, water, habitability) to continue to function at full operational capacity. As an aircraft carrier is likened to a floating city, so to is the Cheyenne Mountain Complex... a city inside a mountain.

When I was on duty, once again I rubbed elbows with the brass... I was the junior ranking member of our intelligence team, and the only enlisted man. The 12-hour shifts could be grueling at times, depending on the DEFCON (Defense Condition of readiness) level we were at, but it was fascinating work. Part of my work involved preparing daily "situation reports" and "daily threat assessment summaries" ... electronically transmitted documents that were sent back to the Pentagon and the White House. (Yep... President Carter often read reports with "Prepared by: IS2 Todd P. Lentz, USN" on the covers.) When my team worked the 6pm-6am shift, our last duty of the shift was to present the daily briefing to the Commander-in-Chief and his staff. My part of that morning "show" was to update them all on the actual locations of enemy submarines and warships, and to offer, when requested, background information (and opinions) relative to those particular vessels. What a rush it was to have a four-star Air Force General interrupt a presentation to ask: "So, Petty Officer Lentz... just how long would it take for that sub to get within firing range of CONUS? (Continental United States)?" and to reply with confidence and expert authority: "Well, Sir... based on my analysis of the radar imagery available to me, and the boat's maximum cruising speed, I estimate 12 hours, 37 minutes." Yes indeed... working at NORAD was a rush!

(I'm reminded now of the day I met Ronald Reagan there. He was a personal friend of the General, and had come to visit and tour during his first presidential campaign. I bumped into him on my way back to the intelligence center from lunch. General Hill introduced me to him, and Mr. Reagan seemed amused that the Navy had people in the complex. "No oceans around here, eh Petty Officer Lentz?" "No Sir, none that I can find." Then General Hill told me to get a haircut! "Aye-aye, General!" I replied... with a grin... thinking about reminding him that Navy regs were slightly different than Air Force regs on things like grooming standards.)

Working at NORAD truly was a "plush" assignment. Four shifts on, six whole days off. I spent two and a half years there, and never took any vacation time, or as we say in the military "Leave." In addition, since Navy regulations for NCO housing were different than the Air Force guidelines (the Air Force was the governing authority of NORAD), I was given extra subsidence pay... housing and grocery allotments, to live comfortably in a nice apartment off base. (Two bedrooms, bath and a half, garden apartment in a nice part of town... $175 per month... all utilities included!) The best perk was one that neither the Air Force or the Navy, and the Army, for that matter, didn't even know about: my own brother was my "off base" neighbor. My older brother had joined the Army soon after I had joined the Navy. Six months after I received orders to Colorado Springs, Pete received his orders to report for duty at Fort Carson, the Army installation located in proximity to the Air Force base. It was nice to have my only brother as my best friend and traveling companion as we both explored the majesty of that "Rocky Mountain High."

If I may quote another line from another John Denver song* ... "And I have to say it now... It's been a good life all in all..." My time in the United States Navy really was the best time of my life... so far! I salute the men and women who are now experiencing what is probably the best part of their lives, too. "Anchor's Aweigh!"

Anchors Aweigh my boys
Anchors Aweigh
Farewell to college joys
We sail at break of day day day day
Through our last night on shore
Drink to the foam
Until we meet once more
Here's wishing you a happy voyage home!

* - Poems, Prayers and Promises; words and music by John Denver.