FOREWORD (2015)
Who am I, you may ask? Who is the author, and why should I care
about his adventures and misadventures around the world? Is he famous?
A politician? An athlete? A rock star?
The answer to those is a resounding “no”. I am basically a nobody – just a regular
American kid who decided to do his duty and earn a little money for
college. I'm just a nobody with a flair
for storytelling, and a good memory. The
stories in this book were ones I told and re-told for years after I got out of the Navy, until one day,
the “you oughta write a book about it” statements finally won, and I sat down to type. I figured I'd have it finished in 10 pages
and a couple of days... imagine my
surprise when 400+ pages and 18 months later, I had a book.
I have tried to recall the
stories, places and names as best I could.
I kept a journal with some daily happenings during our last six month deployment, but other than
that, they are mostly recollections of a past life. Stories beget stories, and memories trigger
memories, and I hope I got them all
in there, and I hope you enjoy them.
A couple little housekeeping
notes before you proceed – first, I have added this foreword to a collection I
wrote some 15 years ago. I've gone
through it and made sure it was all in order, but at this point, we are talking about
things that happened nearly 30 years ago.
Time may have dulled some of
the memories, but it can never fade them completely.
The other point is the names of
the people in my story. Due to legal
ramifications, and the fact that
there is basically no way for me to contact everyone who was a part of our
crew, or my life, during those years and obtain express written consent to use
their name, I have done the prudent (and
far less legally liable) thing, and changed many of them. If you are lucky enough to have known
me, or known the crew of this ship,
you should still be able to figure out who was who, but in the name of 30 years of peaceful living, I
have offered my shipmates the gift of plausible deniability, and not named
names. It doesn't affect the story any,
but if you know who you are, then you know who you are – know what I mean?
INTRODUCTION (original)
I was raised in the town of Laramie, Wyoming. Laramie was a town of 25,000 – big by Wyoming standards, but small by national standards. My junior high and high school careers were nothing extraordinary. I was a decent student – nothing exceptional and nothing terrible, just average. I was in the band(s), and had played soccer for a couple of years. My biggest accomplishment came in 1986, when I received my Eagle Scout award. I went to church with the folks, and was a straight-laced, small-town boy. I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t cuss much and I’d never so much as kissed a girl. I went on two dates my entire high school career – not exactly a Don Juan.
All of that changed the day I decided to join the Navy. A decision made to help pay my way to college became a decision that quickly changed everything about me. My attitude, my demeanor, my outlook – everything. It was definitely a case of “went in a boy and came out a man”. That seemingly simple decision to join the Navy created a new man. A more worldly, less naïve, and much more experienced man.
In the following pages, I have tried to recall as many of the stories and adventures of my Naval career as I could. In the almost 20 years that have elapsed since the day I decide to join, I’m sure that a few of the exact details of the stories have been forgotten. There are also probably several additions to the facts that have become inseparably intertwined with the actual events of the stories. I have tried as hard as possible to separate the facts from the fiction, but over the course of time, it becomes difficult to tell the two apart at times. There are also some stories that did not make the final edit for this collection. For one reason or another, I felt obligated to omit certain adventures from my work. Those of you who know me, and have heard the stories will wonder where they went, but I felt as though decorum would be better served without their inclusion. Decorum and certain legal ramifications. My hopes are that you, the reader, will get an idea of what military life was like for a naïve 18 year-old kid from Wyoming. It was an interesting time in my life, a time I would never want to forget, but also a time I would never want to live through again.
With those few cautions in mind, read on and enjoy the story of how I survived the Navy, or more accurately, how my liver survived the Navy!
Enjoy the stories, and may you have fair winds and following seas for the rest of your days.
- H.J. Peterson
Author - H.J. Peterson (2015)
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