Once out of the hospital at Great Lakes I was available for reassignment. The Bureau of Naval personnel began casting about for where to send me. In the meantime, I was temporarily assigned to the staff of Ninth Naval District with headquarters in Chicago. It was a rotten job. During the short time was there I coordinated casualty calls (visits by active navy officers, including a chaplain, to the families of naval personnel who had died while on active duty).. I also signed warrants for the arrest of deserters. That included anyone who had been absent without leave for over 4 weeks. The warrants were aimed at the missing sailors family home town. I also got to exercise my writing talents in composing a letter to the governors of each of the states in the naval district to ask them to donate a state flag for display at district headquarters. As one might have expected, the answers usually came in the form of a question as to why the Navy didn’t just buy a flag commercially. I was delighted when my orders came through assigning me to a new ship that was currently deployed to the Far East.
My new ship was due to be in port in Subic Bay in a day or two. I was to fly out via Hawaii to Clark Air Force Base on the island of Luzon and take a bus to Subic Bay. The part of the journey to Hawaii was routine. The flight from Hawaii was on a chartered plane that was carrying cargo, There were a few seats forward, and I sat there with 4 stewardesses that were assigned because the aircraft usually carried only passengers. There was still some passenger seating aft, but I could not sit there because before take off I was grabbed by a local officer and sworn in as an official courier, The classified material that I was taking was sealed in a separate cargo compartment under my “watchful” eye. I was also issued a .45 caliber pistol as part of being a courier. I was delighted to pass on both the material and the pistol to officer that met the flight at Clark Air Base.
The bus ride to Subic Bay was another adventure. I suspect the road had been created by army engineers during the Second Word War. It felt like there was only one lane (actually, there really were two) and the road curved and coiled through the forested mountains between Manila and Olongapo like a broken slinky, For most of the trip there was a sharp drop on one side and rows of trees on the other. behind the trees there was the side of a mountain that rose steeply upwards. I was very happy when that ride was over.
Wetherhorn 