"Dave LaCourse" wrote in message
...
//snip//
d;o) It was 44 years ago for me. The first one there were three of us,
so it
was four on and eight off. Ya never really got a good sleep, and hot
bunking
didn't help. I still have my purloined gen-u-wine submarine laundry bag
that
snapped onto the bunk.

January/February and April/May 1971, for me. I had one of those laundry bags
too but lost it in a move, along with my poopie suit.

I too didn't see anyone I recognized. I figured they would surely have
Capt.
Ed. Beach.

Triton? Twin reactors, biggest boat the US ever built. I remember reading
about its round-the-world-submerged cruise in National Geographic when I was
a kid. Probably one of the reasons I volunteered. So it's partly your
fault!!!

Bi-weekly showers? Man, you had it tough. We showered every day. The
thing I
remember best is eating the floor. All the canned goods were stored in
the
passage ways and you could tell how long you'd been at sea by the the
floor
"disappearing". I don't remember the rabbit meat, but our first two or
three
days at sea we ate lobster (east coast sailor d;o) ). I remember getting
hooked on mocha - a bag of cocoa dissolved in a cup of coffee. When we
pulled
into a port in Germany and finally had some fresh vegetables, I can
remember
removing a green worm from my salad just before I began chomping down.
Great
steaks and surprizingly good mashed potatoes. Oatmeal. Lots of oatmeal.
The
meals inbetween meals were called "soup-down" and you had soup,
sandwiches,
cheese, and usually a good movie.

At the end of my first trip in 1971 on the Barb we docked in Yokosuka, and I
still remember looking up through that round hatch at the brownish-blue
Yokosuka sky and thinking how great it was to see it again.

And the smell of your clothes. You didn't realize you smelled until you
went
top-side and breathed fresh air. When we returned to Groton after ops
were
secured, we played games with the Brits, acting as a radar picket. On the
surface for several days in rough weather in the North Atlantic. Nearly
everyone aboard, include Beach, were seasick, many with a size 2 can tied
around their neck to vomit into. But, everyone did their jobs.
Unbelievable.

Yep, we done pretty good, buddy. I sure as hell wouldn't wanna do it for
a
living, though. d;o)


Lots of the people I met in SecGru and on the boats were truly remarkable
people. I think guys like us had the best of both worlds - we could go on
really interesting trips on the boats, but weren't part of the crew, didn't
have to do all the grunt work, and could return to our "normal" lives in
places like Kamiseya (suburb of Tokyo/Yokohama) when the interesting work
was done.

Bob