Excerpts

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Dave Sekol - United States Navy

The cab driver stopped in front of the USS Oklahoma, a destroyer.  Once again, I told him I was looking for the LST, Vernon County, but playing the inscrutable Japanese, he pretended he didn’t understand. 

A nice day and plenty to look at, I didn’t press the issue.  I paid him, tossed my duffel bag over my shoulder and started walking.  For fifteen minutes, I passed massive piers dwarfed by the U.S. Navy’s great ships, the pride of Pacific fleet, tied alongside.  Although as roughhewn and cynical as a young man could be, even I was awestruck by the sheer might of the world’s most powerful and sophisticated navy. 

I reached the end of the last pier, turned the corner, beheld the Vernon County and stopped in my tracks.  Compared to the boats I’d just passed, that LST was a sick joke.  A big, ugly rust bucket, to me it looked like a Mickey Mouse boat.  It occurred to me a prankish colony of cartoon elves had tacked a superstructure onto a river barge and called it Vernon County.  At dockside, grim-faced, sweat-soaked sailors scraped and painted the hull, losing their battle against decades of corrosion and decay.  I looked at that tub and thought, oh, my God.  That’s my home for the next three years.

  Excerpts:

1. The Vernon County
2. "Fine, I’ll join the army."
3. Rewarding conformity
4. The LST
5. Freedom tax
6. Interrogating VC
7. Zombie-like
8. Yolanda
9. Dog therapy
10. Anger rush
11. EDMR therapy
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