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Sea Stories


My last days in the U. S. Navy were spent at a small training center just outside the city limits of Corpus Christi, Texas called Ward Island Aircraft Advanced Electronic Training Center.
We were taught the mysteries of radar, loran, transmitters and receivers and anything else on aircraft of that day that involved electronics. About a mile and a half down the road from our school was what we called “Main Base” but was more properly called Corpus Christi Naval Training Station where they taught pilots to fly and which had been an important base for sub-hunting aircraft during WWII. The war had been over for nine months when the events related below occurred. Most of the sailors at the school had completed their training, were in the Navy for “the duration of the war and six months’ and were eager to get out and splice back into their interrupted civilian lives. So with little to do we were a restless lot while waiting for the call to head for the Discharge Center at Houston that was a very busy place about then. So we were in a semi-mutinous and rebellious mood. The events below then occurred.

The ERNST Affair

The food served at Ward Island was about as good as anywhere else in the Navy. The Navy at that time served the same menu on all bases at the same time. Every Saturday night was cold cuts, Sunday noon was fried chicken, Thursday noon was wieners and sauerkraut. Friday breakfast was my favorite. It was pancakes with green syrup---I don’t mean just barely green I mean vivid green. On two or three mornings a week we were served corn flakes or bran flakes in a single serving box labeled “ERNST Corn Flakes” The box further gave the information that they were manufactured in Memphis, Tennessee. We ate them grudgingly even though they were the consistency of shoe leather chips, and we occasionally had to skim off the weevils that floated to the top when you poured the milk on them.

Finally a new student transferred in and sat down the first day and picked up his box of ERNST corn flakes and yelled, “What in the hell is this? Memphis is my hometown, and this company went out of business over five years ago! My Dad used to work for them”. So that steeled our resolve and dedicated us to the fight for justice. Within two days we had constructed a radio transmitter that was a marvel of miniaturization for that day, contained the very best of the most modern components stolen from the classroom supplies and operated with 102% modulation at about fifty watts on the frequency of the control tower at main base. We would pass the mike around and read comments from I think Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” on the air and then give a rendition of the ERNST story on the air and demand that an apology be issued by the Chief of Naval Operations and that all Ward Island sailors be awarded the ERNST combat service ribbon and be given special discharge compensation varying with the number of ERNST box tops we presented at the discharge center. The station of course was station E-R-N-S-T. To heat up the protest we found a telephone pole and a hatchet, and a budding Rodin fashioned it into a perfect phallic replica and we took a mass of purple crepe paper and wrapped it from tip to tail so that it was our purple shaft.

Morning colors was always at the plaza in front of the Commodore’s office. One morning he came out for colors and saw our “purple shaft” lashed firmly to the flagpole. He became a reasonable facsimile of a purple shaft himself. The rank of Commodore in the US Navy was used primarily as a terminal rank for an officer of long service who had screwed up royally at one time and was not destined for sea command or further flag rank. We suspected strongly that he had run a ship aground and that the Board of Inquiry had given him a reprimand as punishment. Some guy in the Company had a journalistic relative who confirmed this and gave us the details and we proceeded to air these at great length on station ERNST. About this time we found it necessary to decommission station ERNST because we saw a white station wagon with a rotating loop on top of the wagon slowly making circles around the base. We did not wait for it to get a firm fix.

But we were never served ERNST corn flakes again. Our barracks were searched with a fine-toothed comb, but they found nothing. We had put the dismantled transmitter parts and microphone in the dumpster behind the Commodore’s office. I wonder what the statute of limitations is for mutiny.

The Armory Theft

One morning as we sat at breakfast sirens sounded, bells rang and a raspy voice on the speaker system gave an “All Hands on the Commodore’s Deck” order. So we formed up on the flag plaza before the Headquarters Building and found the plaza to be ringed by Marines from Main Base with their rifles at high port. The Commodore announced that during the night someone had raided the armory on the base and stolen something like three hundred rifles, a score or two of .45 cal service pistols and five Thompson sub machine guns and some unknown number of hand grenades. He further stated that even as he spoke our footlockers and ditty bags were being searched by another company of Marines, and we were to stand at ease in formation until all of the barracks had been searched. He further noted that when these guns were found in our possession there would be severe penalties involved, and that the Marines on hand here had orders to shoot and kill any of us who tried to escape. The Marine lieutenant and Gunny Sergeant standing by him looked very perturbed when he said this but didn’t contradict him. Well naturally the searching Marines found nothing and we were released for a day of “make and mend” in about an hour. A number of us walked down to the armory and even though they wouldn’t let us too close it was not necessary to get very close to observe that the six foot chain link fence had been cut from top to bottom, folded back and the clear prints of a duel wheeled truck backing up to the armory door were crystal clear in the sandy soil. We all believed that we had just re-supplied some dissident group in Central America.

The Crying Seagull

One other minor protest involved the little local school newspaper that we had started when we first transferred in to Ward Island. It was Ditto reproduced in that day before xerography and was a very simple thing to cause so much fuss. In our final issue we posted a cartoon full page of a mother seagull with her wing around her crying baby seagull sitting on the chow hall window sill watching sailors eat daddy sea gull served in the guise of fried chicken. For some reason this upset the Commodore and he cancelled all future issues of the newspaper; which had a catchy name, but I can’t remember it.

We were the last class of sailors ever to go through Ward Island. The base was dismantled shortly after that even though Main Base is still there. Somehow I don’t think that we were the Commodore’s favorite class.

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Last edited by Mugtoe on 03-30-2003 at 10:42 PM

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Registered: Aug 2000
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Oxsan, you're so bad.

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Registered: Nov 2001
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Bad??? Why, Nymbus, I am but a cautious observer watching the storm of life pass outside my little window on the world.

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oxsan


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Registered: Feb 2001
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Reminds me of my dad's tales of the Air Force. Except some of those involved potential death, even though he never went to Vietnam.

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quote:

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Originally posted by oxsan
Bad??? Why, Nymbus, I am but a cautious observer watching the storm of life pass outside my little window on the world.

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