It was early October 1948, having just graduated from the Naval Recruit Training Center at San Diego; I sat staring out the Pullman coach window at the vista of the passing California countryside. Being raised in the piney wood and palmetto flat lands of the Deep South; I was in awe of the ever changing landscape, particularly the brown craggy mountains that jutted skyward and the arid desert flora...

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Todd Gentry was the “baby” of the family and a mamma’s boy. He enjoyed the pampering; milking it to the max as the older siblings left the nest. The “spoiled rotten” syndrome led to indifference to studies, running with the wrong crowd and tribulations with a no-nonsense father. As he reached his mid-teens he was given an ultimatum, “Shape-up son or your butt is going to sea!”

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The Naval Air Station, Quonset Point, Rhode Island and the adjoining Construction Battalion Center, Davisville were socked in. A winter high setting off Martha’s Vineyard had been dropping heavy snow along the Eastern New England coastline for several days.

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he USS Spiegel Grove, LSD 32 was tied forward of the troop transport USNS Henry Gibbons, TAP 183 at the long pier adjacent to Radio Point. The Gibbons having just arrived from the States was still securing her lines, while just off shore several destroyers assigned to Caribbean operations were riding their hooks in the designated anchorage of Guantanamo Bay.

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I was a Second Class Petty Officer recently assigned as an auxiliary member to the Pensacola Area Shore Patrol. The Naval Air Training Command required each subordinate activity to provide a certain number of Petty Officers to supplement the permanent SP staff. Through my close relationship with Admin’s leading Yeoman, he was my drinkin’ buddy; I got the job…no more three section hanger/flight line watches or demented Duty Officers!

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A couple of years after the “Big One,” [WWII] I enlisted in the Navy. I had graduated at seventeen and had spent that summer helping Father on the farm. In the fall after the crops were in, I returned to Orlando to work for my grandmother at her nursing home.

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A number of the Battalion Chief Petty Officers were topside watching the various docking activities as the USS Spiegel Grove LSD-32 dropped her lines to the pier at the Naval Base, Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. Some were still a bit mellow following a stop at San Juan. The Skipper had given Chiefs two-hour liberty while the ship was in port. Depending on how you look at it...

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t was another “year-in-country” or “Tam biet” [good bye] party and Wade Hamlin was knee wobbling S**t-faced. He sat slumped over the mess bar staring into a half-empty glass of Canadian and water. The cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth had burned down to the filter.

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In 1909 the first of a new class of vessels was launched at the New York Naval Shipyard. It was a 12,585-ton “Collier” built as a bulk coal carrier. Manned by a civilian crew the ship operated with the Atlantic fleet until sometime in 1912. At that time she was partially gutted and following extensive redesign and modifications at the Boston Naval Shipyard was re-commissioned in 1913 as an auxiliary repair ship.

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Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJG) Lloyd “Link” Mustin grew up hearing many tales of his family’s long history of service in the U.S. Navy. As the se...

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