On the Line Video Transcript

We got up at 4:00 in the morning and we had to have breakfast ready for 6:00,

whenever they started through the line.
And then it ran until like 5:00 in the afternoon.

And then we were off from 5:00 until the next morning.
And then we made breakfast.

Then the next shift would come down and take over the galley.

The hours were long.

We were young then and we thought, oh, the Navy was going to be fun.

Well, then we end up in a galley, sweating in 110 degree temperatures, you know.

So it wasn’t what we thought it was going to be.

We’d get up in morning and we would go to

the shop first and we would get what the chief had

what they called a LOADEX, I think was the name of it.

And he would have everything that we would load that day.

Every mission had different armament on those planes.

We would load up, send it out, bring this one back, load this

one, send it off, bring this one back.

We did that for twelve of twelve hours.

We were really, really in good shape after about two or three months.

The ship’s plot, when it’s under way, has to be kept 24/7.

So you would have these charts laid out and essentially what you were doing is

plotting where you were going along the route that you were on.

But but what you were doing in the plot watch is essentially

maintaining where the ship was.

Now you say, well, yeah, it’s important, you know?

Well, it’s particularly important, you know, when you’re doing flight ops.

For people who always wanted to know exactly where we were with the guys

in Combat Information Center and also the air boss, they always wanted

to know exactly where we were because you had to be able to relay that to

the pilots who were navigating or trying to get back to the ship.

We had sickbay and sick call every morning.

OK. And one of the things in sickbay

is to weed out the real things from the fabricated things.

And we had some real things. I can remember the son of an admiral who

successfully gave me pneumonia by coughing in my face every morning.

But we had the usual run of the mill kind of things that young guys

can get.

My primary duty was, as I said, the legal officer of the Intrepid.

I was the only attorney.

We had an awful lot of young men separated from young wives who waved

to them and blew kisses to them, when Intrepid left Norfolk.

The first time, the COD landed with mail call there were divorce papers.

It’s devastating and I’ve counciled with lots of young sailors who

contemplated suicide. It’s a very difficult thing.

I was on at EA 1-F Skyraider.

It’s a propeller driven aircraft.

I was in a squadron that jammed the radar.

Did ECM – electronic countermeasures.

We had a pilot, a navigator and two crew members.

And I was one of the crew members.

We were very conscious of our brothers on the ground in Vietnam,

the Marines and the Army, and they were getting their butts kicked on the ground.