Navy Boot Camp

Naval Boot Camp, Bainbridge, MD September 1969
http://www.usntcb.org/
For the life of me I can’t remember the exact date that I enlisted in the Navy. I know that I did it in September of 1969 but not the day. It is one I should have remembered. The above website is about the base where I had bootcamp at US Naval Training Center Bainbridge near Bainbridge, MD. I remember the trip getting there, though. I left Phoenix on a plane headed for Chicago, IL. and arrived there in a heck of a rain storm. There had been several lightning flashes outside my plane window while we were landing. It was my first plane trip since we had left Vermont when I was six and this trip was just as scary, especially since I was all by myself. At O’Hare Airport I changed to another plane and went to Baltimore, MD. In Baltimore I went by taxi to the Baltimore Bus Station to catch a bus that took me to a bar, yeah, you got that right, a bar where beer and liqueur where served. Of course by this time it was about 10:00 at night and the bar was packed with men drinking and at age eighteen I had never been in such a place. I’m sure those guys must have heard my bones shaking with fright. I had been told to use the pay phone to call a number for the base, which I did. In about a half an hour a blue Navy bus arrived for just little, ole, scared me. At least after all that had happened the dark, blue bus looked familiar as I had ridden one so much when Daddy had been in the Air Force. And the driver had a Navel uniform on. I sat right up front behind the driver and talked to him. I guess he picked up scared bootcamp recruits coming to the base all the time from the way he talked. I was put into some sort of barracks for the night without any supper due to the late hour that I got there. Boy was I glad I had grabbed a snack at the bus station in Baltimore and a candy bar out of a machine at the bar where the Navy bus picked me up. But I was too scared, and tired to be too hungry. Next day I meet all the other girls that I would be going through bootcamp with and we got underway.
It was to be ten weeks of learning how to be a WAVE. That is what women in the Navy were called. It stands for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. WAVES. Most of what we did seemed to consist of book learning about the Navy and marching, and marching, and marching. We got our uniforms, and were glad of the heavy pea coats to wear in the cold, fall weather. We had several days of rain but no snow. Some of the girls from warm climant states nearly froze. I was cold but glad I had been in Idaho and knew how to except the cold. In a lot of ways it was like a continuation of school just that it was a 24 hour a day school with no time off. We were up at 5am to dress, brush our teeth and off to the mess hall for breakfast, and on the go until about 6pm each evening when we were allowed to go back to the barracks to study for the tests we were always having, to do laundry, take showers and just hang our for a while. Lights out was at 10pm. We slept like logs until we were woke up to a shrill whistle at 5am the next morning.
The woman that was our company commander was Chief Patron, and she had two assistants named Jones and Wietherall. My best friend while there and the person next to me alphabetically was Sherry Bauer. There was also Carolyn Berry Cato, Miriam Vesco, Peggy Grim, Vicki Thompson, Linda Bond, Sandy Eastling, Kathy Jacobson, Barnes, Gleson, Deborah Braddy, Stephens, Michem, Brown, Wilson, Brooks, McMurry, Catron, Cook, McIntire and Langston. As with school and Girl Scout people that I have known I wonder where they are now and what they are doing.
There were new groups of girls coming in every two weeks and for a few weeks each group had the duty of putting up the US flag in the morning and taking it down in the evening. Since I had always liked to do this in Girl Scouts I volunteered to do it when it was my companies turn. There were two groups of girls to do it and we took turns. Thankfully it was the other groups turn when it was put up wrong. I’m not sure how they ever did it but they put the flag upside down. As they were coming back in someone noticed and they ran back to take it down and put it up right. I’ve no idea how often this might actually happen but it is the only time I know of it happening where I was.
During the time we were there we were supposed to ignore all the men that we saw which wasn’t very many. Men were to be considered like TREES. They were to be ignored as if they didn’t exist except to walk around them.
We were there over Thanksgiving which was the first time I had been away from my family during a major holiday. During the last weekend we got to go on a trip to the actual town of Bainbridge, MD. It was an interesting little town and I would like to go there again someday. It seemed very old fashioned with lots of old buildings and there were a few of the Amish horse and buggies or wagons on the streets. We had been instructed in no uncertain terms to leave them alone. I wouldn’t have bothered them as I had been brought up to respect other peoples cultures but I guess there had been some trouble between the Navy personal and the Amish at some point. To me it was just very interesting to see horses hitched to wagons in the streets. I remember I bought a Beyer horse model, a buckskin, to go with my collection of horse models at a Woolworths store while I was there. I had money in my pocket for the very first time in my life, as we had just got our paychecks, and I was going to spend it.
A few days later we had our graduation ceremony and the next day we were packed and headed for the airport to go home for a few weeks of leave and then to where ever we were all being transferred to. I think I was the only one going to San Diego, CA.