VW-1 More Guam Stories, Saipan Vacation

Friends on Guam.

YN3 (E4) Jerry Stamps: Jerry was a flying buddy who flew over on the same aircraft all the way from San Francisco to Guam. He was a drinking buddy and general good friend while waiting for housing to open up for Diane Doris and the kids. One other thing Jerry was good at was getting Guamanian girls pregnant! At least two and quite likely more. On Guam it wasn't a stigma to become pregnant. In fact it proved you could produce children to support you in your old age. An island girl who could produce children was desirable marriage material. A hangover from the  South Sea Islands old days when there was no Social Security system.

Airman (E3) Jim Voss. Jim was a young man who inadvertently became entangled in some discipline issues. Since he could type, he was a good candidate to work in the Operations Office ?where he could be closely supervised. Jim became a big asset to Operations as he quickly learned many of the office tasks and was self motivated enough to work independently on his own initiative.

AT1 (E6) Ed Metzger and his wife Sally. Ed and Sally were social friends. Visiting back and forth at each others residents. Card and board game friends. Sally started the preschool Cheryl attended.

Curt Jones and his wife. They were our bowling partners all the time we were on Guam. In New England it was mostly candlepin bowling. You used a small 41/2 inch ball and tried to knock down tapered pins. On Guam it was tenpins with a much bigger 8.5 inch tenpin ball. An entirely different game with a different set of skills. Curt Jones took us on as bowling partners in the first league we joined. Due to his tutelage, we learned as we bowled and became competitive. Once we became competitive, we changed our team name to the Diehards because we just wouldn't give up. On the last league bowling night we beat the defending champions for our first ever championship!

In our second year on Guam, Diane Doris and I started bowling for cash in couples Sunday night pot games. Win the game, win the pot of cash. Diane Doris was the secret weapon as she was a left-handed bowler and had a good bowling average. A left-handed bowler leaves certain pins standing. A right-handed bowler can just about always pick up the left-handed bowlers spares. And vice versa. She can easily pick up my right-handed spares. We won a lot of pot games! To the point that the other couples would groan when we showed up to bowl. It was all for small amounts of money but it was fun. Especially listening to all the groaning!

AT2 (E5) Larry Deck. Sharp, mentally quick, the guy you leave in charge of the Operations Office when you can't be there. For sure a future Master Chief Petty Officer.

Our Saipan Vacation

Saipan is another South Sea Island that figured prominently in World War II.  We have a weeks vacation, known as taking leave in the Navy, away from Guam. It's a quick flight over and there's a rental car waiting for us. A Datsun and our first experience with a Japanese car. This is 1966 before Japanese cars were common in America. Driving it was a novelty. It's not far to our motel and settling in is a breeze.

We were able to take this vacation because our regular babysitter was a married (!) sixteen year old who lived with her husband at her parents house. While we are gone she lived in our house without her husband and with guidance from her mom.

Attached to the motel is a large South Sea Islands style restaurant. It has a grass roof, no sides, and a wood floor. What's really different is the slow relaxed pace of the wait staff. Order scrambled eggs and toast and wait for them. Gee, you're actually talking with your companion while you wait! Then the island waitress puts a huge wood tray loaded with fresh fruit on the table. Chunks of pineapple, papaya, mangoes, and bananas. Big chunks. Before the scrambled eggs and toast get there, your bloated. Same for lunch and dinner. Apparently you can gain weight on fruit. Add the tropical drinks and you gain weight fast. It's all a wonderful experience. The only problem with the motel is at 4:30 AM every morning, the cows up in the jungle come down and walk around the back wall of the motel, past your bedroom window, mooing loudly all the way. In Saipan, the answer to that is taking an early afternoon nap. Not a bad idea.

The shores and jungle of Saipan are crowded with rusty war vehicles and unexploded ordnance. Walk only on well defined paths. It will take many years to locate all the ordnance and remove it. The estimated time was 25 years. Wow! That didn't seem right. Japan and America should be working on that at a faster pace. The people of Saipan didn't drop that ordnance on their own island.

The roads on Saipan are narrow with good pavement. The island is smaller than Guam so it doesn't take long to drive all the paved roads and then try the better paved roads to get to the more isolated sights. One of the best places is the Saipan grotto. It's a visually fantastic sight! At night driving is a little more difficult. There's no streetlights so slower than slow is a good option. A strange phenomena is the frogs. Drive around along the road and THOUSANDS of giant frogs are hopping across. The frog stream is 20 feet wide. Each frog appears to be about six inches in diameter and eight to ten inches long. Stop and wait. Wait some more. Wait longer. Still waiting. Another car came up behind us, swerves by on the left, and drives over the frogs. We quickly drive over the already smashed frogs. Diane says, "That driver was probably a native."  We decided that the people of Saipan are used to the frogs. Us squeamish Americans don't want to smash them. Before we got to the motel, there were more frog crossings. Not as big as the first one so we waited them out and got back to the motel about 1:00 AM. Three hours of sleep and here come the cows.

A few nights later we zoom around a corner and there's another huge wide frog crossing. Don't have time to stop and it's plop, plop, plop as we drive over the frogs. You can hear and feel the smashed frogs under the wheels. The car even slips sideways a little. Back at the motel we both agreed to no more night driving.

Soon the week is gone and we fly back to Guam with heads full of memories.

Fruit tray

Saipan Grotto

The frogs

Tenpin and tenpin ball

Candlepins and ball

VW-1 Living on Guam

Our NAS Agana, Guam base housing was a two story cement block unit. Two bedrooms, closets, and a bath upstairs. Living room, dining room, kitchen, and storage room downstairs. Nine hundred square feet. It was furnished with basic furniture including chairs, a couch, appliances, beds, dressers, tables and a slew of geckos to keep the insects at bay. The geckos are cute, harmless to us humans, and usually clinging high on the walls or up on the ceiling. The units aren't air conditioned because Guam temps rarely vary more than six degrees. Instead the front and side walls windows were screened and had wood louvers instead of glass. You regulated temperature and airflow by varying how much you had the louvers open or closed. Of course if the temp got below 80 degrees you fully closed the louvers and put a extra blanket on the bed! Our house is on Tamuning St. across the road from a cliff with a 1000 foot straight drop to the rocks below and providing us with a spectacular Pacific Ocean view. Built on top of the cliff is a very sturdy 16 foot high chain link fence to prevent falls from occurring, kids, pets, drunks driving over the edge etc.

Guam has one TV station and one radio station. Both make announcements when a ship is headed into Agana Bay with fresh fruits and vegetables on board. The lines start forming EARLY the next morning outside the markets. Fresh edibles are a big deal on Guam! Not so bad for us military people because the base commissaries, military grocery stores, have fresh food flown in on military aircraft. Many, maybe most, native Guamanian families have access to the military commissaries because a family member works on one of the bases. The Naval Station (ships) has a commissary, as does the Naval Air Station (airplanes), plus Andersen Air Force Base at the north end of the island has one. All three bases also have an Exchange, the military version of a department store. No shortage of places to spend your paycheck! Cookies, crackers, and many other items are sold in metal cans. Because once you open a bagged item, turn your back on it, the cockroaches are in tit. Revolting but true. And no they can't be eradicated. You save you cracker and cookie cans to store cereal and other foods that aren't sold in cans fresh.

Agana is Guam's capitol. It has a market and a large Department store. The Townhouse carries clothes, shoes, small appliances etc. It's the only big civilian store on the island. There's also a Radio Shack and several other name brand stores. Plus a multitude of Guamanian owned stores. Restaurants, bars, souvenirs, you name and they have it. And bowling alleys. Agana has two mega bowling alleys. Other smaller cities have one. Bowling and drinking are big on Guam. Knocking down pins and trying to stand up on your own two pins after bowling and drinking. Guam Fried Rice. The absolute best! Made with bacon or Spam. Or both. Spam is BIG on all the South Sea Islands! When you order fried rice it is served in a big upside down shaped mound on your plate. They use rice cooked the previous day because it becomes sticky overnight and will hold the bowl shape after being cooked with onions, bacon, and Spam.

The Townhouse Store

Tamuning St

Cheryl went to preschool on Guam. We sent her because she often seemed moody. Ed and Sally Metzger were friends of ours. Ed was also stationed at
VW-1. Sally said she was starting a preschool and she was certified to work with children who displayed minor issues. Cheryl blossomed being with Sally. When Christmas time arrived, Sally had a Christmas event featuring all the preschool kids. They were all dressed as presents. Except Cheryl. She's in the front row singing away with all the others. Turning to Diane Doris, I ask, "How come Cheryl's not dressed like a present?" Diane, "I don't know." A few minutes later she looks at me and says, "Boy are we dumb. She's the doll!" We both chuckle at ourselves. Sally laughed with us after the show. "Yes, she was certainly the doll."

There many things to do on Guam. There's 13 small towns scattered all along the coastline to explore. Over 150 miles of paved roads around and through the island to get where you want to go. Endless beaches. Wear shoes because there's a lot of rocks in the beach waters. Historical sights to see, festivals to attend, hiking, boating, waterfalls, nightclubs, take classes at the College of Guam. Bob Hope, Ann-Margret, and Joey Heather put on a show. You are always busy, busy, busy.

Base housing

Bob Hope

Ann-Margret

Japanese pillbox

Ancient stone figures

Guam sunset

Guam fried rice

VW-1 Something Different and Challenging

The island of Guam

VW-1 The V stands for heavier than air aircraft. The W stands for weather. Weather as in typhoons. The storms are named typhoons in the Pacific Ocean, hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. VW-1 are the Typhoon Hunters. VW-4 in Florida are the Hurricane Hunters. A second function for VW-1 is airborne early warning for U.S. fighter and attack aircraft flying to and over Vietnam. Early warning of enemy aircraft in the U.S. aircraft vicinity and of storms that could affect their mission objectives.

This is the EC-121 Super Constellation. A four propeller aircraft spun by four R2800 reciprocating engines. It's used to carry passengers and cargo. The dome on top of the fuselage is the radar used to find and track storms and other aircraft.
It's an old aircraft with old systems and doesn't present any technical challenges. I'm not looking forward to working on it.

First thing you do at any new duty station is check into the Duty Office and show them your orders and give them your personnel records. Also it's normal that when you're the new guy they assign you to a 90 day temporary duty, For senior petty officers, that's frequently a 90 day stint sitting in the Duty Office everyday wearing your dress blues and that's exactly what they assign me to. Assistant Squadron Duty Officer. Ninety days of answering the telephone, checking new people into the squadron and signing people out that are being transferred to somewhere else. Ninety days performing routine, boring, but necessary functions.

However, in less than a month Lieutenant Commander Brouillard (an O-4) walks into the duty office, takes his hat off, drops it on top of the desk, and flops down in the chair next to it. He introduces himself and asks the Squadron Duty Officer to leave. I'm thinking oh shit, what's this all about? He says, "I was looking at your personnel record and noticed that you have a Secret clearance." "Why do you have one?"
"I'm not sure I can tell you commander." "Suffice to say that at a previous duty station, one was required for certain duties I was required to perform and no one has ever told me that those duties can be discussed with anyone." "Why would you be looking at my service record?"
"Commander Parks noticed you." "You rarely see a one hash mark first class petty officer so you have drawn a lot of attention since you checked in." Commander Parks said that you must have something on the ball and requested that I review your service record." "In the review we discovered you're cleared for Secret."

A one hash mark first class petty officer

Lcdr Brouillard, "I'm the Assistant Operations Officer, Commander Parks
(an O-5) is the Operations Officer, we need someone in the Operations Department to handle Secret message traffic and correspondence." "After reviewing your service record we think that you're the man to fill the position.' "Would you be willing to take on that job?"
"I'd be willing to look at the job and see what it entails but I'm not a typist."
"The only thing you would have to type is the secret correspondence and two finger typing is good enough." "You'll have a whole group of people to type everything else, perform the record keeping, and any other functions that need to be done." "If you take the job you'll be designated as the Enlisted Operations Department Supervisor and your evaluations will be great assistance in making Chief."

Basically I'm in shock but it's worth seeing what's involved. After a few trial days in the Operations Office learning some absolutely fascinating stuff, it's impossible to not accept the position. And no working on a boring airplane is a bonus! The responsibilities include:
                                      Type and file outgoing Secret correspondence
                                       Review, distribute, and file incoming Secret
                                       correspondence
                                       Issue Flight Pay orders and pay vouchers
                                       Process and distribute daily Secret message traffic
                                       Issue tax exempt re-enlistment bonus tax documents
                                       Supervise 10 office workers in performing the non secret
                                       correspondence typing, maintenance of enlisted crew
                                       flight logs, pilot flight logs, and aircraft flight logs.
                                       Other duties as assigned by Lieutenant Commander
                                       Brouillard and the junior officers under his supervision
                                       Confer with Commander Parks, the Executive Officer,
                                       and the Commanding Officer as required.
                                       Write evaluations every six months on the 10 men
                                       working in the office. The first time at writing evals!

Commanders hat

Commanders are 0-5 rank. The first officers to have gold braid on their hats. They called it gold braid. We called it scrambled eggs. These three commanders are the three highest rank officers in VW-1. Working with them is likely to be intimidating!

There's a waiting list for base housing. Housing only becomes available when someone gets transferred or discharged. Meanwhile living in the barracks and eating in the chowhall is a viable alternative until the family gets here. In the months of waiting there's an R&R (rest and recreation) trip to Atsugi, Japan with side trips to Yamato and Yokohama. Japan is very different than America! Many residents speak English making it easy to experience the great beer and food that is available seemingly everywhere.

Our car and household items arrive before Diane Doris and the children are brought to Guam. There's enough time to get our base housing set up and usable before they arrive. The long flight over is grueling for Diane Doris with a four and a two year old. Think about it. Flying on a slow C-118 passenger aircraft with two small kids from Boston, MA to San Francisco, CA, from San Francisco to Hawaii, Hawaii to Wake Island, then Wake Island to Guam. Each flight is about ten hours, no layovers, a mom by herself with two small children in an environment and situation they don't understand. Forty hours in the air,. Plus the wait time at refueling stops. Incredibly difficult. When they get off the plane in Guam, Diane Doris has the kids dressed in sailor suits she made for them! Cheryl in a blue sailor dress with a white collar and a red neck sash, Carl in a white sailor top and shorts with a black neck sash. It's a heartwarming sight! The family is here! Time for us to experience life on Guam.

VW-1 Here We go Again! Change is good?

Here we go again is right!
A normal Navy tour is three years. Being transferred three times in three years is unsettling. Transferred to VR-6 in Feb 1962, to VR-22 in Feb 1963, and now orders arrive in Jan 1965 for transfer in March to VW-1 at Naval Air Station, Agana, Guam. This transfer to VW-1 comes after the Navy spending thousands of dollars on training at Charleston Air Force Base for C-130 aircraft, the cost of an investigation to issue a secret clearance, and a promotion to AE1. Seems like a lot of money spent with not much return for the Navy. And where the hell is Guam?

We can't take our 8 foot by 35 foot trailer to Guam. Navy personnel are required to live on base in Navy provided typhoon proof housing. Typhoon proof? That sounds interesting. We are able to sell the trailer for the $1300 we paid Jim Gettle for it five years earlier. It's traumatic to sell your first home, where you lived for the first five years of your marriage and where your two children spent the first years of their lives. After selling it we learn there's no housing available on Guam for approximately six months! Now we have to find a place for Diane Doris, Cheryl and Carl to live until Guam Navy housing becomes available. More trauma. Eventually we do find a place for Diane and the kids. This has its own challenges because since I'll be living in the barracks on Guam and when Diane Doris gets there we'll be living in Navy provided housing, we no longer get paid off-base housing allowance. Paying for housing while not getting a housing allowance consumes the vast majority of the Navy paycheck!

It's a long flight to Guam on a C-118 aircraft! Long being the operative word. Norfolk, VA to Alameda, to Oahu, Hawaii, to Wake Island, to Guam. About five days in all after a layover on Wake Island. On the flight is Jerry Stamps. Jerry asks me, "Where ya headed?" "VW-1 on Guam." "Not me," says Jerry, "I'm going to some outfit called Aerron One." That's when its obvious Jerry isn't in Naval Aviation! "They're the same outfit Jerry." We both laugh, fly as seat partners the whole trip, become beer drinking buddies on Guam, and remain friends as long as we're both on Guam. Jerry was a Yeomen Petty Officer Third Class (E4). Yeomen work in administrative offices processing paperwork in every Naval Command. And there's plenty of paperwork. It's an important job.

Wake Island

Looking at this photo you can see how narrow the landing strip is on Wake Island. Actually you can just about throw a rock over it at its thinnest section! The triangular section at the bottom of the photo is where all the family housing, barracks, the four lane bowling alley, the dining hall, and a small store is located. Everyone eats at the dining hall. Wives, kids, and the sailors stationed there. If your family went to Wake with you, your tour was for 18 months. If your family did not accompany you, your tour was 12 months. Some wives loved the laid back beach and sand life on the atoll and some didn't! If your family came with you, you inherited a jeep with a plywood body. Plywood because the metal jeeps bodies rusted away quickly!

Living quarters

Headquarters and store

The Wake lagoon

Sunken Japanese ship from WWII

After a few nights on Wake Island it's time to get back on our airplane and fly to Guam.