It was Oct. of 1972 and my draft number was 98. I was a junior at ECU. I joined Theta Chi fraternity as a freshman and did very little studying and a lot of partying. ECU had been voted one of the top party schools in the US. I had flunked out of school even after receiving 4 "A" grades in my summer school classes. I still didn't have a 2.0 GPA and lost my student deferment.  It was a sure thing I was going to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I didn't want to go into the US Army or the US Marine Corps so I joined the US Navy.  After 3 months of boot camp in Orlando, FL (just 6 blocks from my grandma & grandpa Barry's home in Winter Park), I and my new shipmate Mark Lynam from Durham were transferred to tug duty at the Sub Base in New London, CT. The base was actually in Groton, CT.  We worked on the smallest tug that the US Navy had. It was the YTL-438 (Yard Tug Little) and on her stern was painted "Lil Toot".  She was built before WWII. We were proud of the Lil Toot and kept her ship shape and Bristol fashion. The pilot house was filled with beautiful wood and brass.  She had a crew's cabin down below next to the engine room with 4 bunks and a head, and I was the only one of the crew of 4 to live aboard her. There were 2 larger tugs on our pier with living quarters, a galley, and heads for the crew so I would go over to one of them to shower and eat every day.   We towed submarines, barges, donuts, the resident sub repair ship and resident destroyer in and out of Block Island Sound to the sub base.  Occasionally we towed the 3 masted bark "The Eagle". It was a training vessel for the US Coast Guard Academy just up the Thames River from the sub base. It was a beautiful sight to see her coming in with all her sails furled.  Mark and I had a lot of fun together in CT, but the winters were long and the summers were too short for two southern boys.  On the base were fast attack subs, boomers (Trident class subs), and old diesel subs from WWII still in commission (pig boats).  The diesel subs were eventually sold to the Brazilian Navy. I played soccer with them on the base athletic field.  Mark and I both bought motorcycles and spent weekends riding around New England.  We eventually rented an apartment together in Mystic, CT just across the river from the Sub Base.  Mystic Seaport Village draws a lot of visitors every year.  I was on duty one night on the Lil Toot and the electricity on our end of the base went out.  I was soon notified that my buddy Mark was killed when his motorcycle struck a power pole at high speed.  It was a sad day for all of us on the tug pier.  His parents came up from Durham and took him back home.  This was not long after my buddy Matthew Rudisill had passed away from a heart attack while playing basketball at VCU in Richmond, VA.  I had lost two good friends in a short period of time. I was later transferred to the aircraft carrier USS Independence homeported in Norfolk, VA. She had deployed to the South China Sea and Vietnam 9 yrs. earlier in '65. Thank God that was as close as I got to Vietnam.  I was glad to get back down south where the weather was better and I was happy that I was soon going to start seeing the world.  After 6 months in the shipyard for overhaul in Portsmouth, VA, we were ready for sea trials.  We went to San Juan, Puerto Rico and down to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and back to Norfolk.  Right after Christmas we went to the Mediterrenean Sea for a 6 month deployment. As we crossed the Atlantic Ocean to relieve the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt CV-42, we hit a terrible winter storm with gigantic  30'-60' waves.  One of those waves hit the Roosevelt broadside and knocked down one of her hanger bay doors smashing two F4 Phantom jets flat.  Waves that had struck our bow twisted the catwalk around the flight deck like spaghetti (our flight deck was 90' above the waterline).  Before the Navy sent me to engineering school,  I was a quartermaster in the Navigation Division on the INDY.  Quartermasters in the US Navy work plotting courses, correcting navigation charts, and standing watch steering the ship under special operations such as entering and leaving port, refueling, taking on stores, passing through straits and during flight operations (launching and recovering aircraft).  After standing a lot of watches on the bridge, I earned the qualification of Master Helmsman. The INDY was 1,075' long and weighed 80,000 tons.  On deployment she had a crew of 5,000 sailors and Marines and carried around 90 aircraft and 4 helos. The three galleys served over 20,000 meals a day- 6am/12pm/5pm and midnight. She had 4 main engines and her screws were 12' in diameter. We had our own radio station and TV station with movies 24/7. One of my first jobs was to wind all the chronometers on the ship.  They didn't have digital clocks back then. I had to check all 30 of them from the admiral's bridge down to all 4 engine rooms twice a week, wind them, adjust time +/-, and record settings in a log.  That's how I became familiar with the entire ship.  It took me 3 months just to learn my way around, and I got to know a lot of people quickly including the captain and the admiral on board. My work station when not on watch was in the bow of the ship at Secondary Control (SECCON). This space was forward of the catapult water breaks just below the flight deck.  I spent all day correcting nautical charts from around the world using the Notice To Mariners published by the Coast Guard every week.  We had to have our charts up to date because we could be ordered anywhere in the world at any moment. We could watch dolphins riding the bow wave by looking out and down from one of the 5 portholes in SECCON.  My living quarters were just below the flight deck under the port bow cat. Directly above my bunk was where the jets ramped up their engines and were launched. Every time they launched a plane the deck shook and it sounded like an explosion above. Not far aft of our living quarters was one of the arresting gear cables that the tailhook of the planes caught when they landed. When the planes hit the deck and caught the cable it would scream as it unwound and scream again when they rewound it. I never would have believed someone if they had told me that I would get used to the noise and be able to sleep in those conditions.  I spent a lot of time on the bridge and one of the strangest things happened one day while driving the ship during flight ops.  We launched two F4 Phantom jets at the same time. One launched from the port bow cat and the other from the port waist cat.  The engine of one of the planes caught fire and the pilot was told to eject which he did immediately. The pilot in the other plane in the confusion also ejected unfortunately and both planes went down in the sea and sank. Both pilots were picked up by the helos on station. We made port in Rota, Spain then on to Palma, Mallorca for several days of R & R.  After arriving in Naples, Italy, we went to the Agean Sea for a week to search for survivors of a TWA jet that was blown up by radical Muslim terrorists. Our home port was changed from Athens, Greece to Naples, Italy due to terrorist threats in Athens. I spent all my spare time traveling and seeing the sights. The ship's Morale, Welfare and Recreation office planned a lot of great sight seeing trips for the crew. Everywhere we hit port we had to take liberty boats from the ship to the beach.  The longest we went between ports was 47 days and that was murder. While in Naples, I went to the Isle of Capri, Pompei, Mt. Vesuvio and other local sites.  We left Naples and went to Cannes, France and Barcelona, Spain. We stopped at Palma, Mallorca again for a few days then it was on to Rota and back to Norfolk. I fell in love with Europe and especially Spain since I had taken many years of Spanish and I could speak the language. It was an incredible experience to go from the smallest vessel in the US Navy to the largest. I went on to eventually finish 23 years of active/reserve duty.  I hope you enjoyed my story.  Here  is a link - INDY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_(CV-62)

My fraternity brother was on the Independence about that time.  He was a pilot and flew Corsair attack jets. Bill Carrico is his name and he became a good friend of Rusty Petrea, also a Corsair pilot on the same aircrat carrier Independence.

What a full life you've had, Barry.

Wonder if Rusty picks up on your piece.  Like to hear from Rusty.  :-)

Barry the aircraft carrier driver....what an awsome sense of power.....  :-)

USS Independence

Dan, thanks for the reply. I had no idea Rusty was a Navy pilot.  I played a lot of ping pong with him at Martin and road my bike with him, Mike Haynes, Randy Rabb, and Caldwell to school in good weather sometimes.   While I was stationed in San Diego, I looked up Randy and Walter Keezel.  Randy had his own flying service at the airport in El Cajon and Walt owned a guitar shop just a few blocks from SD State Univ. They moved to CA in the early 70's I believe and still live there.