Embedded Files
00:00 Logan: What made you join the armed forces? How did you feel about the war?
00:06 Ron: I uhh got graduated high school in 1967. and i was not uhh my grades weren't quite good enough to be college eligible. It was uhh try to get a job or join the military, at the time my draft status was 1A and basically that was like the kiss of death as far as work goes.
01:20 Logan: (laughs).
Ron:Uhh i had a job lined up as a draftsman at eastern greyhound lines. And uhh the interview went very well, and then they asked me the killer question, “what was your draft status.” I said 1A, and that was the end of the interview. Uhh they wouldn’t hire me because they were afraid they’d get me trained, and then I would be drafted. So umm thats how i got into the military, uh my choice was army, navy, marines, or airforce. I wasn’t really into airforce, um and i saw what some of the marines do and i didn’t want to be on the ground. And i saw the army was doing the same thing and i didn’t want to be on the ground, so i uh joined the navy because i’ve always liked ships and boats. So thats how i did that
Logan: hm
Ron: As far as the Vietnam war um... it was a political war uh it was a war where we were basically fighting with um one hand tied behind our backs. so it wasn’t, and then when I got out of the service and came back to the states um i wasn’t exactly a well liked person because i was in vietnam and i was in the military.
01:50 Brendan: Ok um did you ever see the movie Saving Private Ryan?
01:53 Ron: Yes
01:54 Brendan: Ok um, did you think it was an accurate portrayal of the war?
02:01 Ron: As far as World War Two probably it was.
02:08 Brendan: Yeah
02:09 Ron: um its hard to say I wasn’t in world two.
02:09 Brendan: Yeah
02:10 Ron: uh but as far as world war two it probably was a fairly decent portrayal.
02:16 Logan: But as far as vietnam was it similar at all?
02:19 Ron: No
02:20 Logan: No
02:20 Ron: No, Vietnam was a total different war. world war two was fought over in Europe for the most part, accept for the Pacific area which was mostly in jungles, but even then it was somewhat different.
02:37 Logan: Alright um what was your most vivid memory of the vietnam war?.... Like what you remember the most?
02:48 Ron:...... Well the country was umm if you ahh ever watched ahh the movie ahh with Tom Hanks ,um I'm trying to think of that name of it off hand ahh it was ahh forest gump and he was talking about going out into the bush and it started raining and it didn't stop raining for three months and that was probably the most vivid thing that I was there with. Umm the other incident was we had the opportunity we, we went into Danang. Uhh are ship went into danang to offload some marines and it was uhh christmas day, so we ended up christmas day we were told that if we got this whole company of marines off our vessel
03:43 Logan: Mhm
03:45 Ron: umm then we could you know some of us could go see the Bob Hope show. Well we accomplished in four hours what would normally take about a week to do. I mean we were putting stuff over the side and into vessels and getting it off. And the ahh upper ashel line saw that if we did such a wonderful job, they said ok now we got another company of marines to bring back on board ship so we were stuck loading them up. So uhh we never got to see the movie.You know get to see the program. Uhh i ended up 6 months later after i got back into the world, uhh i got to see it on tv. and one of the umm times that Bob Hope was standing up on stage, he had the cameras panned through the harbor. and he saw this vessel out there working, loading taking equipment off and putting equipment on the vessel and he says some guys just don't get a break on a holiday and that was us!
04:53 Logan: hmm
04:53 Ron: So i saw a picture of us on camera footage.of us working. Umm so that was one incident. Uhh another incident we were sitting in Danang harbor, waiting for a cargo ship from the United States. To bring us a load, ahh several pallets of rice cuz we ran out of rice. And uhh i went to the supply officer I ran into him one day and i says how come we're sitting here? And he said were waiting for uh rice to come from the United States I looked at him and said what are you crazy! I says, were on a place that does nothing but rice!
05:39 Logan:(laughs)
05:39 Brendan:(laughs)
05:39 Ron: The next thing i know is i'm in a boat going to shore, and were loading pallets of rice.
05:45 Logan:(laughs)
05:45 Ron: Into one of our landing craft and were taking it over so we're putting rice Vietnamese rice, umm ahh putting it on board ship ahh i'll tell ya the vietnamese rice tasted a whole lot better than the ahh American rice.
06:00 Logan:(laughs)
6:00 Ron: And even to this day i really don't like american rice.
06:40 Logan:(laughs)
06:04 Brendan:(laughs)
06:05 Ron: I like the jasmine rice, it’s better tasting.
06:08 Logan: Nice!
06:11 Brendan: Alright umm so what was the um describe the most difficult mission you had during the war? That you went on.
06:19 Ron: we umm we were the amphibious command vessel for all amphibious operations, umm when quavet got overrun by the north Vietnamese we put 400 marines over the side. We were amphibious support and anything that needed to go to shore came through us ahh it had to be cleared through our captain and everything like that. And uhh we basically, worked around the clock ahh at that particular time I don’t think i saw my rack for about a week, if i wasn’t doing some work aboard ship we were in general quarters for pretty much most of the week. Umm i'll tell ya if you needed to get a couple hours of sleep, you couldn't even go down to your rack, you had to stay on station. So ahh i'll tell ya a battle helmet, a coil of rope, and a life jacket you could get some quality sleep.
07:23 Logan:(laughs)
07:23 Brendan:(laughs)
07:24 Ron: And there have been times where i actually have fallen asleep standing up....Uh so when the operation was over ahh we went to bring our marines back and we only had 200 hundred of them left. Then what we had to do was go through all the umm cargo areas. Uhh and find the sea bags, and personal effects of the marines that didn’t make it, and we had to bring it out to the fantail of our vessel, and they would have a helicopter hover, over the fantail. Umm basically umm a couple feet from the gun tubs. It was the rotorblades and were in ahh you know heavy seas, pitching seas, so the um helicopter had to rise and fall with the um vessel itself so it had to be in sync the rise and fall of the back end of the vessel. So that got to be pretty hairy. But umm it was pretty interesting, that was one of the um aspects that we had to do.
08:25 Logan: Umm how did you think the military affected your post war life? Like when you got back home?
08:32 Ron: In the beginning It wasn’t exactly pleasant, because the vietnam war was not a popular war. People said that we were baby killers, you know burnt villages and killed woman and stuff like that. Uhh I being on board ship did not have too much personal effect with that. Umm it did give me a sense of ahh discipline and tenacity to work through you know difficult situations. Uhh and sometimes even to this day i still rely on that training and that ability. It definitely heightens your awareness on what is going on around you. Umm you know normal john Q public nowadays thats never been in the military, never had to see combat never had to be in a situation where your life was at stake.
09:25 Logan: Right
09:25 Ron: Umm it really don’t understand and try to talk to a person who’s never been in the military and has never seen combat uhh to try to explain to them you know what your experiences are is like talking to a brick wall, you know you might as well just talk to the brick wall the brick wall knows, will listen to you more than the person. They just don’t understand, there’s no way to explain it.
09:56 Logan: Hm
09:56 Brendan: um what was the most graphic combat that you like ever witnessed?
10:02 Ron: I had to kill two swimmers that put a mine on our vessel i was guard duty. uh world war two vessel, we had world war two weapons, so i had a choice of the m1 carbine, or the m1 garand and since i used the m1 garand as uh a younger kid in the gun club i belonged to and i shoot military weapons up at camp perry at the national matches. uh i always had the m1 garand so i was most familiar with it. So, plus it also has a little bit of you know its pretty accurate shoot to about 600 yards. So i was on guard duty, um sentry duty uh one night and umm.. i noticed that we had two swimmers come up and i did the appropriate signals to the um officer of deck on the bridge, um to let them know that we had some unwanted guests coming up along side of our vessel. And they notified the captain, the captain come out there, mmm i ended up going up to the open bridge uh to you know talk to the captain about it. And they brought a signalman up, they took a signal lamp and spotted out in the water and spotted the two swimmers. We tried to get bay security to come out and uh grab em and bay security like the normal police department here in the united states takes forever to show up. Well they didn’t show up, they well we tried three of four times to get them out there and they just didn’t show. So the captain turned around to me he says, “I want em dead”. So I had to take my M1 garand and take aim on em, I tried to bench it but the movement of the ship oh uh couldn’t give me any good steady point, so I had to use what they call a standing position, and get in sync with the vessel and then uh I had to take my shoots, and I the first one I missed by about a foot, uh my second shoot hit the first swimmer in the head, and the third shoot put the second swimmer in the head and took care of em.(Laughs) When i Started shooting thats when bay security decided to show up
12:19 Brendan:(Laughs)
12:17 Logan:(Laughs)
12:18 Ron: So they brought a guy from the underwater demolition team to take a search of our vessel and they found two Limpet mines just about where we, one of the hold areas where we had all the ammo for the ah marines, so if that thing went off uh I probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking to ya
12:36 Brendan: Wow
12:37 Logan: Hmm, So um you were saying the other day how you didn’t want join the navy seals. Why did you not want to make that decision?
12:46 Ron: Uhhh I would have had to go back to vietnam.......
12:52 Logan: And you didn’t want to go back
12:53 Ron: Hell no
12:54 Logan: (Laugh)
12:55 Ron: (Laughs) Once was enough
12:57 Logan: Yeah
12:59 Brendan: Umm what uhh uhh..... Would you go back to vietnam today like just to visit it?
13:08 Ron: I thought of it, I thought about it umm... probably I would... but I'm in no hurry, I got other things I rather do first.
13:21 Logan: Yeah
13:23 Logan: Umm What was your happiest memory of the uh?
13:27 Brendan: Yeah lets put all this bad stuff behind us
13:29 Logan: Yeah your happiest memory of the war like with your friends and stuff
13:32 Ron: When i was well the happiest memories I had in uh in the military was when uh I was on board a troop transport it was the uss Navarro Apa 215, after we got back to the states in uhh uhh 69, the ship was uh decommissioned so we had to take it apart in yards and basically decommissioned the ship. So and as people were not needed on board the vessel, they were given orders to go to another duty station, i was one of the last people off that vessel, and i ended up getting transferred down to uh coronados amphib base with a unit called salt craft unit 1, and uh that was good duty I enjoyed it.
14:19 Logan: Hm
14:20 Ron: I really enjoyed it being down there, and by that time i made radioman 3rd class and i was a radioman. I also learned how to use the radar and learned learned how to uh handle the signal lamp by morse code so i was I was radioman, radioman, signalman on a landing craft utility LCU. Um there about 165 feet long, and the well deck can hold two sherman tanks. And the one thing I always say about them is that there’s not much living space but they got one heck of a patio
14:52 Logan: (Laughs)
14:52 Brendan:(Laughs)
14:53 Ron:(Laughs) But uh the you know they're there a good vessel, you can so all kinds of things with em. But I enjoyed the duty with them
15:02 Logan: Cool
15:02 Ron: It was very relaxed.
15:05 Brendan: Um wahhh, I just lost it, um, described a typical day um as a navy seal, i mean um uh on the ship.
15:17 Ron: On the ship. Uh, Revelry would go down which was waking you up, Revelry would go down at uh 6AM, uh so you got up got yourselves showered cleaned up and what have ya, and then uh, by 8 O’clock uh, about 6, no 7:00, 7:30. We would go up to the mess decks and have breakfast. Uh and after that you would uh, sometimes before breakfast what we would do is go up and swab the deck down, clean it up and uh take the brassel and polished brass and all this, all the bright work and you know, get it all up and going. And then ah muster, so they would see if everybody was there. And.. at about 8 O’clock, uh they pipe down turn two, which means its time to go to work. Now a lot of things working on the vessel during the day, a lot of maintenance work uh sometimes what we would do is uhh umm do some maintenance on the running gear the block and tackle and stuff like that. And umm you know make sure that things were working well. Uhh Sometimes we did a lot of painting. What happened was allot of times what we would do was, they had these things called a deck crawler, it was like, a loud machine with like a rotary type thing and it would just chip paint. So what we would would is, we would take this thing and run it down the deck and take all the paint off right down to the bear minimum. Then we would swab the deck down and get all the dust off of it. Then we had a prymer called red lead, and we would prime down, prime it down, and then you know mark it off so nobody would walk on it. And then the next morning we’d get up there, we’d wipe it down, you know swab the deck, clean it up and do that. Then what we would do was put down a coat of umm ah deck gray. Which was a dark gray color. Uhh if you were using a bulkheads which, that was a wall, then that would go with haze gray but we still used ahh the red lead. If you were doing railings, which were usually white, umm they were kinda of an aluminum. You used something with a yellow primer called zinc oxide. But you would be doin that all day long, and then ahh around noon time they’d pipe down for lunch, then you would go to the mess deck and have lunch. Uhhhh...
17:56 Brendan: What was the lunch usually like?
17:59 Ron: Well it was pretty good food.
18:00 Brendan: It was?
18:01 Ron: Yeah yeah, breakfast you had allot of bacon and eggs and ham and occra cream chip beef on toast. And there was a concoction which i'm not gonna repeat what we called it.
18:13 Brendan: (laughs)
18:13 Logan:(laughs)
18:14 Ron: Uhh but it was like a ground beef and uhh a tomato sauce and what have ya. but it wasn’t It was kind of nasty lookin stuff. It took me about a year before I could even look at it. And it took me another year before I could even try it.
18:28 Logan: (laughs)
18:29 Ron: But after a while umm umm you got used to it. You know it was pretty good. Uhh lunch umm soups sandwiches sometimes umm things of that nature. And then umm dinner was usually a good meal, you know, sometimes you’d have steak, sometimes you’d have roast beef, sometimes you’d have chicken with vegetables, and you’d have a choice with stuff like that. Mash potatoes rice, you know it was a good hearty meal. And uhh then that would be the end of the day, and after that time was pretty much much you own, unless you had to stand watch.
19:05 Brendan: And you you did that allot?
19:07 Ron: Oh yeah everybody had to stand watch, umm
19:12 Logan: Was there ever a ,moment where you didn’t wanna be there, like you didn’t wanna stand watch?
19:15 Ron: Oh there was allot of times where I didn't even wanna be on the ship. You know and every chance I could get, when I got back to the states, every chance I could get, I would come off the ship. You know spend weekends you know on land, off the base umm. But uhh if you stand watch, if you listen to oceans radio, then they'd have the ships bells. You know they'd always ring the ships bell. Two bells is like, if you started at midnight, two bells would be 1 o'clock. Uhh 4 bells would be 2 o'clock uhh 6 bells would be 3 o'clock and uhh 8 bells is 4 o'clock so it’s they usually add 8 bells every 4 hours. So it just keeps going around, like that’s how ya do it, and how you learned to tell time. And uhh I understand, Wellfleet is the only town in the world, that chimes their church bells chime out, in a
20:17 Brendan: Oh yeah
20:17 Logan: Oh yeah.
20:17 Ron: In Ships bells.
20:18 Logan: Really?
20:18 Ron: yeah! So when you hear 3 bells, you know it’s about uhh 3 O’clock in the afternoon, uhh three bells is like, 1:30. You know
20:32 Logan: Yeah
20:34 Ron: You know 4; 6 bells would be uhh like 3 O'clock in the afternoon. 8 bells would be 4 o'clock in the afternoon. So you know, you just gotta look at what time of the day it is, and you can tell what time it is by the ships bells.
20:51 Logan: Cool
20:52 Brendan: Um what was I gonna say? Ahh.... you ask one I just lost it.
21:04 Logan: Umm, what were the living conditions like aboard the ship?
21:08 Ron: Tight!
21:09 Logan: Yeah?
21:10 Ron: very tight. You would have a umm, you would have a metal framework, that was about the size, of a coffin. And had canvas in it, and ahh you know some line in there, and then you would have a thin mattress, you’d have a couple of sheets, and a blanket or two and a pillow. And they usually stack you about 6 high, and down to the deck, all the way up to the overhead.
21:43 Logan: Woah!
21:44 Ron: Yeah so you were cramped in there pretty tight. So that was you sleeping conditions.
21:50 Logan: Did it ever get like really hot and stuff?
21:52 Ron: Yeah, once or twice the air conditioning unit went out, we had air conditioning in there. And once or twice it got hot.
22:01 Logan: Hmm
22:02 Brendan: Uhh so did you umm ever encounter, umm did you ever have a best friend during the war?
22:08 Ron: I had a few we got to know each other.
22:10 Brendan: Do you still like keep in touch with them, or?
22:14 Ron: The only person that i've recently kept in touch with was, umm my old division officer uhh umm right now I think he’s a retired commander. Umm uhh Steve Bibin, he somewhere down in Oklahoma or someplace like that. I contact him once in awhile.
22:34 Brendan: Um so what was your closest uh near death experience? If you had any?
22:42 Ron: General quarters, when a couple of Russian megs come flying in our direction, they sad that this is general quarters this is not a drill.
22:52 Brendan: So like what happened?
22:54 Ron: well they kinda flew by us a couple times, and by time we had a couple of fame minner ships, interceptor show up and chase em off.
23:05 Brendan: Um, its to you
23:06 Logan: Um lets see, um what was the attitude of like most of the people on the ship.
23:15 Ron: In relation to what
23:19 Logan: In relation to i don’t know like being there, that kinda had the same feeling as you like i don’t want to be here
23:23 Ron: A Lot of us were like that.
23:25 Logan: Yeah
23:26 Ron: Yeah, and um the whole thing was as far as the general attitude everybody uh considers themselves as, pardon my language, as a bad ass
23:35 Brendan: (Laughs)
23:35 Logan: (Laughs)
23:36 Ron: You always had, everybody had this bad ass attitude.
23:39 Logan: Yeah
23:40 Ron: You know everybody was meaner than anybody else. But everybody got along for the most part.
23:47 Logan: What was your family's reaction to you going to the war?
23:52 Ron: um they realized that it was inevitable, so they you know,
23:59 Logan: They supported you
24:00 Ron: They really didn’t uh, they were kinda proud, I would say
24:07 Logan: hm, Brendan
24:09 Brendan: uh, Describe your commander what was his attitude,
24:15 Ron: My commander, you mean
24:17 Logan: your chief officer.
24:19 Ron: Pardon
Logan: like your chief officer
24:21 Ron: uh on board ship captain Whitmore was a pretty, uh pretty even keeled guy, uh very very for the enlistment people, and he uh, and there was one time that, but our executive officer he was a total jerk
24:42 Brendan:(Laughs)
24:42 Logan: (Laughs)
24:42 Ron: No one really liked him that much.
24:46 Brendan: Why not
24:48 Ron: He was, lets just leave it as a jerk this is something, a public thing
24:52 Logan: (Laughs)
24:52Brendan: (Laughs)
24:53 Ron: I’d call him other things but you know
24:55 Brendan:(Laughs)
24:55 Logan:(Laughs)
24:55 Ron:(Laughs)
24:56 Logan: Yeah
24:57 Ron: Uhm lets just say that even the marines hated him, you know and uh, when i was centuary duty, uh he kinda got in my face and i locked and loaded on him, um and um, i was about ready to pull the trigger and the captain stopped me. The captain told him to go to his quarters and stay there.
25:21 Brendan: Wait so what happened?
25:22 Ron: Well the captain looked at me that was the time that we were working Twenty four seven. And we’d been at it for about three weeks. So I When was the last time you saw a guy get any sleep, saw your rack. I said captain I don’t even remember. So uh at that point the captain had 3rd division stand down and go into holiday routine for about three or four days, and the 1st division had to pick up the slack in our area, and they were able to get some sleep. We were working 24/7. Fortunately the third division was his favorite division on board ship.
25:58 Brendan: Were you in that?
25:59 Ron: I was in 3rd division. But our commanding officer uh um, captain whitmore, he was a pretty even guy. I remember just getting on board ship, and they had me go under the hatch coaming and uh to chip paint, and i was down there and i'm chipping the paint and i’m grumbling about it and you know, really grousing about it like this, and then i heard somebody crawling, it was a small area. I heard someone crawling up behind me you know talking to me, he said you have one of the most important jobs on board this vessel. And i says, chipping paint you gotta be kidding me.
26:37 Brendan: (Laughs)
26:37 Logan: (Laughs)
26:38 Ron: He says No you're taking the rust off here if you start letting the rust go it starts eating away at the vessel, and we end up swimming so he you know kinda gave me some confidence to let me know that you know no matter how menial the job is, its extremely important to the overall picture of things. So i didn’t know who it was because i couldn’t turn around and see so the person back out from under the hatch command he starts walking in an area, i kinda stuck my head out of the whole and looked up there. and all i saw was all there scrambled eggs across what they call scrambled across um what they call scrambled eggs across what they call the bill of his cap. I turned around and I says, oh my god, i says that was the captain
27:25 Brendan: (Laughs)
27:25 Logan: (Laughs)
27:27 Ron: And I says I’m screwed
27:28 Ron: (Laughs)
27:28 Brendan: (Laughs)
27:28 Logan: (Laughs)
27:29 Ron: But uh a couple hours later he uh, he um saw me on deck and he you know he came over to me and started talking to me, he says how’d you make out, he says hope you got all that rust off, I says yes sir i did, you know, And i says good
27:47 Logan: Yes captain (Laughs)
27:50 Ron: So you know uh he was a pretty good guy. And the other captains, i you know, we had a couple other captains they were, um they were um. ironically when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, we were in the middle of a change of command ceremonies, and they stopped the change in command ceremonies to put the whole thing on the one MC, which was the loud speaker system on board ship so we were able to hear this.
28:13 Logan: Wow
28:15 Ron: So, and uh admiral Zumwah was a pretty cool guy too, and we got a chance, we had to stand admiral's inspection a couple times, it was admiral Zumwah. And he was a pretty decent guy, a really down to earth guy.
28:31 Logan: So how was basic training, like you had basic training
28:33 Ron: Oh yeah!
28:35 Logan: Describe how that was like?
28:37 Ron: uhhhhhhh, it was tough. It was....... what it was, was it was was in basic training, what they do is they take you whole attitude. First of all, you get in there, and they take all your clothes away from ya. Everything! They issue you, everything, well you go in there, with whatevers on your back. And you, and then you bring a, some sort of suit case with you. And then you take your civilian clothes and you pack it in your suitcase. You put it into a cardboard box you put it in there and they mail it back to you, back to your home. So now you're in your military clothes. Umm they issue you a set of dog tags. Umm the dog tags go on, and they stay on until you’re out of the service. You gotta wear um 24/7. There’s a couple of guys that used to hang their dog tags on the side of their rack at night. And umm, one of the officers came through and saw that, and they put um on report and the guy had to go before the captain's mast, and ahh was reprimanded for not wearing his dog tags.
29:46 Logan: Hmm
29:46 Ron: soo, and I still have them to this day. And at that time, you were issued a service number, nowadays, it’s your social security number. So, my service number was b425532 and I still remember it 40 years later.
30:03 Logan: Wow
30:03 Ron: You know
30:06 Logan: What about gun training and stuff, did you have to do that too?
30:09 Ron: Uhhh they umm took us down to boot camp they took us down to the rifle range and we shoot various types of military weapons and uh also the 45. the model 1911 45. And we shot with that and had to qualify. Um we learned to use some of the bigger weapons on board ship and as you kind of like a you learned as went uh poach 18 on job training. Um so you know it comes in handy you know you learn as you go, they in boot camp they taught us how to use the sound powered telephones, which was a unit type of thing, you could use it throughout the ship, and no electricity involved, it was just, you talk into it and it would send a signal
31:10 Logan: Like echo through the ship
31:10 Ron: Well its like two tin cans and a string type a thing
31:14 Logan: Oh
Ron: but a little more sophisticated. Uh if your connection got wiped out or something all you had to do was hook it to the metal part of the ship, and you could still communicate so it was pretty versatile
31:29 Logan: Wow
31:32 Ron: The funny thing about that particular training was that the guy that was teaching us how to use a sound powered telephone was kinda like that one section in uh alices restaurant where he was talking and the sergeant comes in and starts explaining that he comes in and starts talking real fast and everything like that, thats what the guy was like he couldn’t understand a word he said.
31:54 Logan: (Laughs)
31:55 Ron: So we did that, we had to go through damage control where they would put us in a compartment, and, first of all they would go through various methods of what you could use, and on board ship if you had to patch a whole everything is fair game. And being creative really helps alot. So everything buckets, mattresses, pillows, uh coils of rope, lifejackets, anything and everything you could lay your hands on, wood and what have ya. Um everything was fair game, you just had to patch the holes. So what they would do is they would put you in these compartments after you’ve gone through your class room training, they would put you in a compartment, and they would start flooding the compartment with sea water. And you were locked in there, and you had to plug these holes. Uh when you didn’t quite get with the program they would stop the water flowing when there was about an inch of water from the overhead. So you would be up there with your nose trying to get air
33:00 Logan: (Laughs)
33:02 Ron: Doing that. A couple times ug i got close to that, the platoon I was on got close to that. After we got our act together uh they got mad at us because we were in like the lower compartment, and they would have you three compartments up and they would flood each compartment. Oh yeah. And this one time we stopped the water, and we were only about knee deep, and it was like an 8 foot 10 foot compartment, and so they got kind of upset about that they thought we were a bunch a wise guys you know.
33:36 Logan: (Laughs)
33:36 Ron: So what they did was, they got the guys from the compartment above us, out, they had to go they had to open up a hatchway from the flood compartment above, and while the waters pouring down from the hatchway, you had to shove the guy in. Two guys would get there on the later, and they would shove this guy through the port, through the hatchway and two guys above would grab a hold of them, and they’d have like two guys somewhere over by the bulked, to catch them. Because they'd pick em up. you know throw them out of there, because you know you’d have to get six, seven guys out of the compartment and like real fast in the meantime you got like sea water pouring down on top of you. You know it was ambient temperature seawater. Down in San Diego it was 42 degrees, so you were inclosed and you were wet and cold. Uh of course the adrenaline is running through your veins and so that keeps you kind of warm.
34:35 Logan: (Laughs)
34:36 Ron: But uh they uh took the guys from the compartment above us into the next compartment up, and then they flooded that compartment you know where the water flooded from the one above it and then what they did was they had us come up that way. So we had two compartments of water coming up on top of us, and we had to go up, and the guy coming up like this had to come up the next hole going up, in the meantime all this water is coming down, and it was like five of us, we had to get out of there before the whole compartment flooded out
35:10 Logan: Yeah
35:11 Ron: So that was damage control. The other thing was firefighting. Uh When you're on board ship, you can’t call the fire department, you are the fire department. And the fires they would do, is here again its a compartment but it was also set up like an engine room. They would use diesel fuel, ok. And um what you end up doing is um they would go in and they would teach you the methods of fire, and in firefighting you need three components for a fire. You need you need uh, fuel, you need heat, and you need air, oxygen. You take one of those elements away and you don’t have a fire anymore, all you gotta do is remove one and your fire is done. Um so what they did was they taught about using the different fire hoses and we usually had the solid string and the uh and the spray, which the you know uh uh spray unit. So uh you know when you're using fight fuel oil fires you have to use a spray unit because if you use solid stream all your doing is oxygenating it you know you're just fueling it.
36:29 Logan: Wait did you become a firefighter before or after the war, because you said you were?
36:33 Ron: After
36:33 Logan: After
36:34 Ron: After I got out of the military
36:35 Brendan: Is that when you went to sandy hook or?
36:37 Ron: Yeah, thats when I was with Sandy Hook Fire Company. I joined the volunteer fire company, and they sent me to different firefighter schools and what have ya, but that that was kind of like a refresher course for me. Fighting fires, because I had already fought a few fires. Now back to boot camp and firefighting school what they would do is they would teach you that if you could get water on the fire within the first five minutes, you can knock this thing down, quickly
37:09 Logan: Mhm
37:10 Ron: If you wait a period of time, then you’d have your work cut out for you. So what they would do is they would start this fire and they would say ok go get it. So we would go in there, now when they did this they had these long rods with something that looked like a hand grenade on the end of it. It was called high velocity fog unit, and that went into the solid stream section like a bayonet you put it in like this and lock it into place, so what they would do is uh if you went into a compartment they would have a couple of those there, and a unit, uh a team would be outside with that fog unit, and they would put it in over the top of ya, and create a fog area. So that when the firefighters actually go in there you would go in there and pull up a certain length of hose, and then to gooseneck it, then you would go like this back and forth, uh with the uh spray part you know. And uh one of the things I’ve learned is one of the coolest seats in the house is the nozzle man. He’s got the coolest seat in the house.
38:16 Logan: Yeah
38:17 Ron: Third man back he’s cooking
38:18 Logan: (Laughs)
38:19 Ron: And You better pray that that guy with the fog, the fog unit is maybe six inches above your head. So we go in there and within a few minutes you know after they got it going let's say five minutes, we go in there we fight the fire down, and we would be done in 10, 15 minutes. We would be done with it, it was out, then what they would do is they would sit there and they would start the fire again, and they would sit there and talk to you for a half an hour, now you had to go in and fight this fire. You were in there for at least an hour and a half two hours trying to put this thing out. Trying to put this thing out, and it was not fun. But we had to take the training for damage control and firefighting every six months, you had to re-qualify, you really had to know your stuff. This had to be in a situation that had to be so second nature that you could do it in your sleep, because you know you may be woken up out of a sound sleep to go fight a fire or patch a hole in the vessel. So, of course if you hit that water temperature, you would be awake in a heartbeat anyway.
39:27 Logan: (Laughs) Always sleep with one eye open
39:30 Ron: Kinda
30:31 Brendan: Well um were actually, uh were good on time so uh
39:35 Logan: I think we're all set
39:36 Brendan: So yeah, thanks for doing the interview Ron
39:38 Ron: Yeah thank you your welcome, no problem
39:39 Logan: That was good I learned a lot of stuff so that’s good
39:42 Ron: Ok great
39:44 Logan: And i’m sure everybody else did
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