Page 118 - Stand Down Vietnam

Ten days after I graduated high school, in 1963, I was
packing. I went to Davisville, Rhode Island. When I
arrived, I was given transfer orders for Norfolk,
Virginia, and assigned to ACB-2. Amphibious
Construction Battalion; we called that the gator navy.

I stayed there for five and a half years. I was the
senior E3 in the Battalion. I was in charge of the
tire shop. While at Norfolk, I made seven cruises to
the Mediterranean and two to the Caribbean. On one of
the Mediterranean deployments, we went to Turkey,
everything about the Turkish Navy was American except
the Turkish sailors. All the equipment was vintage
WWII.

During that assignment, the USS Enterprise was in the
same area; we got a tour of that ship. At the time,
the Enterprise was one of the biggest ships in the
Navy.

There is a Greek drink called Ouzo, it tastes like
licorice, but it can hurt you, I mean seriously hurt
you. Our guys were exposed to that stuff while in
Turkey.