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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Adventure
- Published: 09/01/2014
Down For The Count In GITMO Bay
Born 1953, M, from Salem Oregon, United StatesDOWN FOR THE COUNT IN GITMO BAY
Back in the day before Guantanamo Bay became a prison for terrorists it was a resort area for Sailors to relax and enjoy sun and fun on the sandy beaches of the Caribbean. Actually that was Barbados, Gitmo was hell on earth for Sailors to be trained in the art of War!
Gitmo was up to 20 hours a day 6 days a week of scenarios thrown at you to prepare you for any kind of conflict that could possibly arise on the high seas. It was intense situations, unexpected disaster, mass casualties and all in scorching heat! It was stressful and would push you to limits you would never imagine experiencing. But there was that one day of R & R, Sunday!
If you were lucky enough not to have duty on that one day off you were in for a day of snorkeling in the clear warm waters, beach volleyball and lots of drinking. The day would start off with something to eat, a visit to the package store and catch the bus to the beach. Eating was not a priority, only drinking!
One particular Sunday another ship’s crew decided to visit our beach. Yes, it was our beach, these guys had only been in Gitmo for a week, and we were on our 5th weekend. There was very little tolerance for these rookies and it got even worse when they beat us at volleyball! At the end of the day and the booze was all gone the ritual was to smash the Styrofoam ice chests and wait for the bus to take you back to town.
Now, we had to share a bus ride with these other guys which meant some of us had to wait for the second one which made us even more frustrated with these intruders. After waiting for the last bus back my head was starting to hurt, I was hungry, sunburned and annoyed. It was starting to get dark now so my buddies and I headed straight for McDonalds. If only we had ordered dinner to go this day would have ended much different.
While we were eating I heard someone setting at a table across the room using seriously obscene language to describe what the day had been like. Every other word seemed to have the F word intertwined in some way with whatever subject he was speaking about. Didn’t matter what, it was F that and F this and it really started to get on my nerves especially when I recognized the big mouth belonged to a familiar face from the beach that belonged to one of the guys from that “Other Ship”! There were children in the room and after this went on I decided to take action despite the urging from my companions to stay out of it and let it go! That wasn’t going to happen so I proceeded to cross the room and approached the table where the foul mouthed object of my annoyance was seated.
There is a good chance that my approach to asking him to watch his language could have been a little more tack full and I’m not sure what I actually said to him but I do remember the cold stare I received from him and his friends. He just smiled at me and nodded his head.
With no real response from any of them I turned and walked back towards my table thinking that obviously they don’t want any of this! My new calling, keeper of the anti-obscenity environment at McDonalds!
Three words could not have been any more volatile to a situation than the ones that hit me in the back of the head!
“Hey, F**K you”!
Just put a match to my fuse and stand by for the explosion! I quickly spun around and made a mad dash in his direction, or at least attempted to until my buddies grabbed me. It was now that he stood up and moved away from the table, this dude was Huge! One of my friends pointed out that this guy could kill me so they started pulling, pushing and dragging me towards the exit. Not without me making a few remarks in his direction that we would meet again.
Once outside and my buddies calmed me down we all started laughing at the incident and the reality of what could have happened between me and this goliath of a guy. We took off walking back to the ship which was maybe a mile or so down the road. After a few hundred yards a cab pulled up and asked us if we wanted a ride. We jumped in the back seat with me in the middle and told the driver to take us to pier 2. It was at this time a voice from somewhere outside the cab was heard.
“You better’ get in that cab”!
I leaned over to see who it was and recognized my buddy, Mr. foul mouth. Apparently he and his friends had been following us looking for the chance to jump us somewhere down the road. Now the wise thing for me to do would have been to tell the driver to step on it and get us back to the ship. But making wise decisions was never a trait of mine. So, I climbed over my friend and darted out of the cab to stand just a few inches from him. I do believe I shocked him with my bravery because he did lean back a little. Maybe somewhere in my mind I thought I could push him off his feet so I put both hands on his chest and shoved with everything I had and it worked! The guy disappeared into the night! My vision range was not too good, in fact after this day anything more than a few feet away was pretty blurry so as I peered into the dark searching for him the only thing I saw emerging was a fist that looked more like a ham headed straight for my face!
I’m not sure how many minutes later it was but I do remember that it was Christmas morning and I was sleeping on the floor for some reason. I could see the lights on the tree and they were blinking but I did wonder why we only used red lights this year. Still they were beautiful, flickering on and off.
“Get up Bill, Wake up Bill”!
I could hear my Mother trying to wake me up but I wanted to sleep just a little longer and why is she calling me Bill? Mom never calls me Bill, and why does her voice sound so strange? Slowly I began to come out of my slumber and my mind began to grasp where I really was.
It wasn’t Christmas morning it was the middle of July in Guantanamo Cuba. I wasn’t sleeping on the floor I was stretched out on the side walk. My Mother wasn’t trying to wake me up it was my buddies. The Christmas lights weren’t hanging on a tree they were a traffic light blinking red at the intersection about a block away!
When my buddies got me into an upright position and the cob webs cleared I was covered in blood, my blood! The guy had landed one punch on me which had spun me around and caused me to go face first in the curb and then they had all run off, probably afraid he had killed me! Shore patrol arrived shortly and called an ambulance. After an hour or so in the emergency room I had a broken nose, a concussion and required 15 stitches on my forehead.
The next morning I woke up with a hangover of historical proportions! Everything hurt! The Master at Arms from my ship came in to see me and closed the door. He told me that both of the witnesses said I was jumped from behind and the assailants fled but the cab driver says I started the fight. Through swollen bloodshot eyes I confessed to the Chief that the cab driver was right. He thought for a minute and then smiled and said as far as he was concerned, I was jumped and no one knows who did it.
I spent the next 5 days in the hospital at GITMO while my ship was out training. When we first pulled in to the bay some 6 weeks earlier we noticed a flag formation flying from the top of the building. Being Signalman, one of our specialties was flag communication. We all knew that the signal was supposed to mean “We Are Ready to Assist” but they had the flags in the wrong order. After a few days I was up walking around and asked one of the officials if I could go on the roof and fix the flags. I did and when I returned to the Ship my Signal Gang said they knew that I must be okay when they saw the flags had been corrected!
So that was GITMO in the old days. Work hard, party hard and spend a week in the hospital!
Yo ho ho, a Sailors life’s for me!
Down For The Count In GITMO Bay(Billy Sample)
DOWN FOR THE COUNT IN GITMO BAY
Back in the day before Guantanamo Bay became a prison for terrorists it was a resort area for Sailors to relax and enjoy sun and fun on the sandy beaches of the Caribbean. Actually that was Barbados, Gitmo was hell on earth for Sailors to be trained in the art of War!
Gitmo was up to 20 hours a day 6 days a week of scenarios thrown at you to prepare you for any kind of conflict that could possibly arise on the high seas. It was intense situations, unexpected disaster, mass casualties and all in scorching heat! It was stressful and would push you to limits you would never imagine experiencing. But there was that one day of R & R, Sunday!
If you were lucky enough not to have duty on that one day off you were in for a day of snorkeling in the clear warm waters, beach volleyball and lots of drinking. The day would start off with something to eat, a visit to the package store and catch the bus to the beach. Eating was not a priority, only drinking!
One particular Sunday another ship’s crew decided to visit our beach. Yes, it was our beach, these guys had only been in Gitmo for a week, and we were on our 5th weekend. There was very little tolerance for these rookies and it got even worse when they beat us at volleyball! At the end of the day and the booze was all gone the ritual was to smash the Styrofoam ice chests and wait for the bus to take you back to town.
Now, we had to share a bus ride with these other guys which meant some of us had to wait for the second one which made us even more frustrated with these intruders. After waiting for the last bus back my head was starting to hurt, I was hungry, sunburned and annoyed. It was starting to get dark now so my buddies and I headed straight for McDonalds. If only we had ordered dinner to go this day would have ended much different.
While we were eating I heard someone setting at a table across the room using seriously obscene language to describe what the day had been like. Every other word seemed to have the F word intertwined in some way with whatever subject he was speaking about. Didn’t matter what, it was F that and F this and it really started to get on my nerves especially when I recognized the big mouth belonged to a familiar face from the beach that belonged to one of the guys from that “Other Ship”! There were children in the room and after this went on I decided to take action despite the urging from my companions to stay out of it and let it go! That wasn’t going to happen so I proceeded to cross the room and approached the table where the foul mouthed object of my annoyance was seated.
There is a good chance that my approach to asking him to watch his language could have been a little more tack full and I’m not sure what I actually said to him but I do remember the cold stare I received from him and his friends. He just smiled at me and nodded his head.
With no real response from any of them I turned and walked back towards my table thinking that obviously they don’t want any of this! My new calling, keeper of the anti-obscenity environment at McDonalds!
Three words could not have been any more volatile to a situation than the ones that hit me in the back of the head!
“Hey, F**K you”!
Just put a match to my fuse and stand by for the explosion! I quickly spun around and made a mad dash in his direction, or at least attempted to until my buddies grabbed me. It was now that he stood up and moved away from the table, this dude was Huge! One of my friends pointed out that this guy could kill me so they started pulling, pushing and dragging me towards the exit. Not without me making a few remarks in his direction that we would meet again.
Once outside and my buddies calmed me down we all started laughing at the incident and the reality of what could have happened between me and this goliath of a guy. We took off walking back to the ship which was maybe a mile or so down the road. After a few hundred yards a cab pulled up and asked us if we wanted a ride. We jumped in the back seat with me in the middle and told the driver to take us to pier 2. It was at this time a voice from somewhere outside the cab was heard.
“You better’ get in that cab”!
I leaned over to see who it was and recognized my buddy, Mr. foul mouth. Apparently he and his friends had been following us looking for the chance to jump us somewhere down the road. Now the wise thing for me to do would have been to tell the driver to step on it and get us back to the ship. But making wise decisions was never a trait of mine. So, I climbed over my friend and darted out of the cab to stand just a few inches from him. I do believe I shocked him with my bravery because he did lean back a little. Maybe somewhere in my mind I thought I could push him off his feet so I put both hands on his chest and shoved with everything I had and it worked! The guy disappeared into the night! My vision range was not too good, in fact after this day anything more than a few feet away was pretty blurry so as I peered into the dark searching for him the only thing I saw emerging was a fist that looked more like a ham headed straight for my face!
I’m not sure how many minutes later it was but I do remember that it was Christmas morning and I was sleeping on the floor for some reason. I could see the lights on the tree and they were blinking but I did wonder why we only used red lights this year. Still they were beautiful, flickering on and off.
“Get up Bill, Wake up Bill”!
I could hear my Mother trying to wake me up but I wanted to sleep just a little longer and why is she calling me Bill? Mom never calls me Bill, and why does her voice sound so strange? Slowly I began to come out of my slumber and my mind began to grasp where I really was.
It wasn’t Christmas morning it was the middle of July in Guantanamo Cuba. I wasn’t sleeping on the floor I was stretched out on the side walk. My Mother wasn’t trying to wake me up it was my buddies. The Christmas lights weren’t hanging on a tree they were a traffic light blinking red at the intersection about a block away!
When my buddies got me into an upright position and the cob webs cleared I was covered in blood, my blood! The guy had landed one punch on me which had spun me around and caused me to go face first in the curb and then they had all run off, probably afraid he had killed me! Shore patrol arrived shortly and called an ambulance. After an hour or so in the emergency room I had a broken nose, a concussion and required 15 stitches on my forehead.
The next morning I woke up with a hangover of historical proportions! Everything hurt! The Master at Arms from my ship came in to see me and closed the door. He told me that both of the witnesses said I was jumped from behind and the assailants fled but the cab driver says I started the fight. Through swollen bloodshot eyes I confessed to the Chief that the cab driver was right. He thought for a minute and then smiled and said as far as he was concerned, I was jumped and no one knows who did it.
I spent the next 5 days in the hospital at GITMO while my ship was out training. When we first pulled in to the bay some 6 weeks earlier we noticed a flag formation flying from the top of the building. Being Signalman, one of our specialties was flag communication. We all knew that the signal was supposed to mean “We Are Ready to Assist” but they had the flags in the wrong order. After a few days I was up walking around and asked one of the officials if I could go on the roof and fix the flags. I did and when I returned to the Ship my Signal Gang said they knew that I must be okay when they saw the flags had been corrected!
So that was GITMO in the old days. Work hard, party hard and spend a week in the hospital!
Yo ho ho, a Sailors life’s for me!
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