The first three months of 1970 were some of the coldest I’ve ever spent. It was then that I went through Navy boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois. We arrived there late at night after a bus ride from O’Hare Airport in Chicago, and were taken to old wooden barracks where we were issued bedding and assigned bunks. We hadn’t been asleep very long when the company commander came into the barracks running a Coke bottle around the inside of a GI can and gently waking us from our dreams.

Many were hoping it was all just a dream! I noticed there was ice on the inside of the windows. Did I mention it was cold?

The next three months saw us going to classes, learning to march (though we didn’t get a lot of practice as the ground was always covered with ice), shoveling snow, getting shots, and then getting more shots. We all had to pass a swimming test.

I got yelled at for swimming too fast. The lifeguard walking along the edge of the pool was afraid of slipping trying to keep up with me. We went to the rifle range where we fired 11 bullets from an M-16, which had been modified to accept .22-caliber ammunition.

The rifle with which all of us were all too familiar was the 1903 Springfield that we carried everywhere we went outside of the barracks. These weapons weighed nine pounds in the morning and 19 pounds at night! With these we learned to do the 16-count manual of arms. While I still remember my old service number, I must admit that I have forgotten the serial number of my rifle.

Probably the most disagreeable part of boot camp was the poison gas structure, a long narrow rectangular cement block building with a slab in the center that held a heater for a gas pellet.

After instruction on how to don gas masks, we entered the building with our masks in place. While the chamber filled with tear gas, we walked in a circle holding the belt of the man in front of us. After a minute or so we were ordered to remove our masks. We made one more lap and then went outside in a mass of tears, mucus and vomit. We had become gas mask believers! When we returned to the barracks we didn’t enter until we had stripped and our clothes were taken away for laundering.

Volunteering pays off

Early in my boot camp experience I did one thing that all recruits had been warned about by veterans; I volunteered. We were asked if anyone had ever played in a band, been on a drill team, or sung in a chorus. I admitted that I had sung and found myself in a boot company made up primarily of musicians.

While recruits in other companies went through a lot of physical training and during what was called service week, worked in the galley and performed other unpleasant chores, I went to choir rehearsal. I did spend about an hour one afternoon helping to sweep a drill hall.

I had been told that if I enlisted rather than being drafted, I’d have more choice in what I was going to do in the military. To a limited degree, that was true. About midway through we were taken to talk to men who would determine our role after Great Lakes. I was given two choices; I could be a corpsman or a CT.

I knew that corpsmen were Navy medics, and I had no interest in that field. I asked what a CT was and the fellow explained that he couldn’t tell me since it was classified. I told him, “Whatever it is, I’ll be one.”

We got to go on liberty twice, once in Milwaukee and once in Chicago. Before the first Saturday liberty we were issued liberty cards. They were all stamped “MINOR – DO NOT SERVE,” regardless of our actual age (I was 22) and as the company commander said, if we were stupid enough to use our liberty card for ID, we didn’t deserve to get served alcohol!

Late in March the temperature went up enough so that we finally saw a puddle and we knew that our time was nearing an end. Graduation was fairly impressive, with sailors marching around and actually staying in step. The band played, the choir sang, and the brass made speeches.

The next day we got on the bus for the airport with our sea bag over our shoulder and our personnel records and orders in our hands. Some guys bought several campaign and award ribbons for their uniforms. They may have impressed their high school sweethearts, but I hope they had sense enough not to wear them when they checked in to their next duty station.

My orders were to the Naval Communications Training Center in Pensacola. I was going to go from shoveling snow to cutting grass!

As I recall, I flew into Providence and then took a Pilgrim flight to Groton, arriving well after dark. When the plane came to a stop on the tarmac, the door was opened and the steps were rolled out.

On the plane was another sailor. He wore the three chevrons of a first class petty officer. I wore the three stripes of a seaman. He was definitely senior to me, so I let him get off first. My mother, who had been standing and waiting, saw a sailor get off the plane and ran to him, giving him a big hug. Then she looked. “You’re not my son!” she said.

He replied, “You’re not my mother, but I think I’m going to like being stationed in Groton!”

Robert F. Welt of Mystic is a retired longtime Groton Public Schools teacher.