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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Adventure
- Published: 03/01/2014
We Were Family
Born 1953, M, from Salem Oregon, United StatesWE WERE FAMILY
It’s extremely impressive the way veterans and service members are honored by today’s society. We are constantly being reminded of the sacrifice and honor associated with service to ones country. Service members in uniform are first in line to board flights at the airport, given special terms by finance companies, business’s are encouraged to hire veterans, some military rates have waiting lists to join and the pay is actually competitive with the public sector. It is way overdue and much deserved, and seriously something to be proud of as an American! But, it wasn’t always that way.
When I joined the Navy and reported to my first ship, the USS Tarawa in Long Beach California, I quickly learned that sailors were considered by most of the public to be trouble makers, moochers and drunks! One joke was that signs could be seen warning dogs and sailors to stay off the grass! Second class citizens? We would have to have been pardoned by the governor to reach second class citizen status.
So how was a country boy from Arkansas going to survive in this environment? Well I got lucky when a family decided to adopt me. The most dysfunctional family imaginable! A family made up of a bunch of brothers and one skinny little dad! We were Signalmen and commonly called the Signal Gang!
The Tarawa was an enormous ship! Stretching the length of nearly 3 football fields from bow to stern and towering 8 decks high from the flight deck. On top of this mammoth ship was our home, the Signal Shack.
When I climbed the ladders on the first day my heart was pounding, not so much from the climb but from anticipation of my initial meeting with the crew. My stress was eased when I met the guys for the first time. There was Dean, Pat, Pete, Mike, Michael, Bill, George, Ken, Mitch and Chief Forbes. They welcomed me onboard and into the family with smiles and handshakes. From there my education began!
These guys were from all over the country, North, South, East and West and all but the Chief were younger than me. When they found out that I was 24 years old the first comment was that now they have someone to buy beer! Everybody needs a purpose and I would take anything I could get. I had never been around that many people in my life that were from north of the Mason Dixon line and I had always been lead to believe that northerners were rude and obnoxious. I soon found out that not to be the case, obnoxious at times, rude occasionally, but really good guys, they just had funny accents!
I had joined the Navy to sail the seas and to my disappointment the Tarawa was tied to the pier for the first 6 months onboard for major design changes. The ship was the first in a class of ships designated as LHA, Amphibious Assault platform and proudly displayed a large number 1 on her ships crest! This time next to the pier, although not what I had expected when joining, turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me because it gave my brothers a chance to teach me the art of survival, not on the sea but on shore.
Getting a hotel room took careful planning. One of us would rent the room and then the rest of the gang would strategically sneak in from different angles and the desk clerk would never know that there would be 10 or 15 guys occupying the room by midnight. Well, most of the time we were never found out unless one of us climbed up on the roof or decided to hang over the balcony from the 10th floor on a dare!
Visits to the laundry mat would usually attract a bit of attention. When we washed our clothes we would wear a bathing suit under our jeans so when you put your articles in the machine you literally washed everything you owned, including the pants, shirts and socks you were wearing!
Budgeting our cash was a very calculating endeavor. If we were at a bar late at night and we had just enough money between us for one more round of drinks or a cab ride back to the base we discovered that it really wasn’t that far to walk and there was always the option of hitchhiking! When I was a kid my family talked about going on a trip to California, I was terrified of the thought! Afraid I’d be killed by the Manson family, and yet many times we stood on the side of a highway with our thumbs stuck out in the middle of the night in Southern California!
We all had nick names. There was Linc, Dino, MGB, BK, Boneman, Rockis, Eno to name a few. I think I may have had the most. I was Country Fried, Jed and Billy Burntout! That was later expanded to Beat Up Billy Burnt Out! That’s another story for another time!
Ah yes, when we played we played hard, but when we worked we were the best damn signal gang in the Pacific! The rate of Signalman was one of the oldest in the Navy. Our job was to send messages to other ships by morris code sent by flashing light. Using hand held flags by the method of semaphore and hosting flags on the yardarm which would strategically send orders with meanings decoded by the order of the display. We used a signal code book that was as thick as a dictionary. It was the most secure means of transmitting messages in existence!
Chief Eugene Forbes was the best Signalman I ever knew! He was a short little man with a red beard and had small arms. When he sent semaphore he looked like his arms were a wind mill! He was a true professional and pushed us to be the best, but he made working fun. If you screwed up, he’d let you know about. Sometimes he would get so mad that his face would turn as red as his beard! When you did a good job he would pat you on the back and tell you so. Nothing was better than having Chief heap praise on you!
Being a signalman meant you worked in some less than favorable conditions because you were always outside doing your job. Scorching heat, freezing cold, rain, gale force winds, but you tolerated it because you had a job to do. When you sent a message and got a “roger/romeo” back from the receiver you had done your job! When you read a 100 word message using an infrared scope in the middle of the night on a pitching deck during flight operations and received a “BZ” which meant “job well done” from the sender on a ship a mile away you couldn’t have been any happier if you just won the Heisman Trophy!
I traveled the world with these brothers. Korea, Hawaii, Okinawa, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines! We always had each others back and sometimes we argued and didn’t always agree but we always loved each other.
I left the ship in 1979 and served in many Signal Gangs over the next 17 years, but never one like the gang of the Tarawa. USS Tarawa is now decommissioned and the Signalman rating has been discontinued. That’s sad, but in a way it’s fitting, because there can never be another gang like we had. There’s a good reason for that, and that reason is that We Were Family!
We Were Family(Billy Sample)
WE WERE FAMILY
It’s extremely impressive the way veterans and service members are honored by today’s society. We are constantly being reminded of the sacrifice and honor associated with service to ones country. Service members in uniform are first in line to board flights at the airport, given special terms by finance companies, business’s are encouraged to hire veterans, some military rates have waiting lists to join and the pay is actually competitive with the public sector. It is way overdue and much deserved, and seriously something to be proud of as an American! But, it wasn’t always that way.
When I joined the Navy and reported to my first ship, the USS Tarawa in Long Beach California, I quickly learned that sailors were considered by most of the public to be trouble makers, moochers and drunks! One joke was that signs could be seen warning dogs and sailors to stay off the grass! Second class citizens? We would have to have been pardoned by the governor to reach second class citizen status.
So how was a country boy from Arkansas going to survive in this environment? Well I got lucky when a family decided to adopt me. The most dysfunctional family imaginable! A family made up of a bunch of brothers and one skinny little dad! We were Signalmen and commonly called the Signal Gang!
The Tarawa was an enormous ship! Stretching the length of nearly 3 football fields from bow to stern and towering 8 decks high from the flight deck. On top of this mammoth ship was our home, the Signal Shack.
When I climbed the ladders on the first day my heart was pounding, not so much from the climb but from anticipation of my initial meeting with the crew. My stress was eased when I met the guys for the first time. There was Dean, Pat, Pete, Mike, Michael, Bill, George, Ken, Mitch and Chief Forbes. They welcomed me onboard and into the family with smiles and handshakes. From there my education began!
These guys were from all over the country, North, South, East and West and all but the Chief were younger than me. When they found out that I was 24 years old the first comment was that now they have someone to buy beer! Everybody needs a purpose and I would take anything I could get. I had never been around that many people in my life that were from north of the Mason Dixon line and I had always been lead to believe that northerners were rude and obnoxious. I soon found out that not to be the case, obnoxious at times, rude occasionally, but really good guys, they just had funny accents!
I had joined the Navy to sail the seas and to my disappointment the Tarawa was tied to the pier for the first 6 months onboard for major design changes. The ship was the first in a class of ships designated as LHA, Amphibious Assault platform and proudly displayed a large number 1 on her ships crest! This time next to the pier, although not what I had expected when joining, turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me because it gave my brothers a chance to teach me the art of survival, not on the sea but on shore.
Getting a hotel room took careful planning. One of us would rent the room and then the rest of the gang would strategically sneak in from different angles and the desk clerk would never know that there would be 10 or 15 guys occupying the room by midnight. Well, most of the time we were never found out unless one of us climbed up on the roof or decided to hang over the balcony from the 10th floor on a dare!
Visits to the laundry mat would usually attract a bit of attention. When we washed our clothes we would wear a bathing suit under our jeans so when you put your articles in the machine you literally washed everything you owned, including the pants, shirts and socks you were wearing!
Budgeting our cash was a very calculating endeavor. If we were at a bar late at night and we had just enough money between us for one more round of drinks or a cab ride back to the base we discovered that it really wasn’t that far to walk and there was always the option of hitchhiking! When I was a kid my family talked about going on a trip to California, I was terrified of the thought! Afraid I’d be killed by the Manson family, and yet many times we stood on the side of a highway with our thumbs stuck out in the middle of the night in Southern California!
We all had nick names. There was Linc, Dino, MGB, BK, Boneman, Rockis, Eno to name a few. I think I may have had the most. I was Country Fried, Jed and Billy Burntout! That was later expanded to Beat Up Billy Burnt Out! That’s another story for another time!
Ah yes, when we played we played hard, but when we worked we were the best damn signal gang in the Pacific! The rate of Signalman was one of the oldest in the Navy. Our job was to send messages to other ships by morris code sent by flashing light. Using hand held flags by the method of semaphore and hosting flags on the yardarm which would strategically send orders with meanings decoded by the order of the display. We used a signal code book that was as thick as a dictionary. It was the most secure means of transmitting messages in existence!
Chief Eugene Forbes was the best Signalman I ever knew! He was a short little man with a red beard and had small arms. When he sent semaphore he looked like his arms were a wind mill! He was a true professional and pushed us to be the best, but he made working fun. If you screwed up, he’d let you know about. Sometimes he would get so mad that his face would turn as red as his beard! When you did a good job he would pat you on the back and tell you so. Nothing was better than having Chief heap praise on you!
Being a signalman meant you worked in some less than favorable conditions because you were always outside doing your job. Scorching heat, freezing cold, rain, gale force winds, but you tolerated it because you had a job to do. When you sent a message and got a “roger/romeo” back from the receiver you had done your job! When you read a 100 word message using an infrared scope in the middle of the night on a pitching deck during flight operations and received a “BZ” which meant “job well done” from the sender on a ship a mile away you couldn’t have been any happier if you just won the Heisman Trophy!
I traveled the world with these brothers. Korea, Hawaii, Okinawa, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines! We always had each others back and sometimes we argued and didn’t always agree but we always loved each other.
I left the ship in 1979 and served in many Signal Gangs over the next 17 years, but never one like the gang of the Tarawa. USS Tarawa is now decommissioned and the Signalman rating has been discontinued. That’s sad, but in a way it’s fitting, because there can never be another gang like we had. There’s a good reason for that, and that reason is that We Were Family!
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