In the Navy
I entered the Navy on the “Delayed Entry Program” so I didn’t actually head to boot camp until November 1970. When I took my induction physical and assessment tests in Little Rock, I was pulled aside into a room for an interview with a petty officer. He tried to talk me into extending my enlistment in the Navy to six years for a billet in the nuclear program and an instant advancement to petty officer 3rd class after completing “A” school. I told him there was no way I wanted to spend 2 extra years in the Navy. While awaiting my flight from Little Rock, Arkansas to Orlando, Florida I picked up a newspaper that was lying on a seat. There I saw an article about Admiral Zumwalt, Chief of Naval Operations, who said he was going to allow long hair on sailors and beer machines in the barracks. No crew cut in boot camp? The Navy was looking better all the time.
This would be the first airplane flight in my life. It was a puddle jumper. The first stop would be Shreveport, Louisiana. The weather was very stormy and the plane was bounced around pretty violently. Through the window I could see the wings bending and flopping like a bird taking flight. Our approach to Shreveport was delayed due to a tornado in the area. When we did land, there were leaves and limbs littering the field around the runway. We headed on to Pensacola, Florida without indecent. Orlando, Florida would be the next stop but we were told we couldn’t land there due to a dense ground fog. We went on to the the last stop for the flight at Miami, Florida. We got in around midnight and me and another young man from Arkansas were told we would have to wait in the terminal for a flight back to Orlando. The airport was almost completely closed and it was an uncomfortable, cold and a miserably long wait until dawn when crew members started showing up and man the plane at the gate. Before long we were on our way to boot camp.
I started boot camp at the Naval Training Center (NTC), Orlando, Florida on 12 November 1970 just after company 198 had formed up and began their training. I had to wait two weeks for company 199 to form up. I celebrated Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas and New Years Day in boot camp, away from home for the first time. I was definitely home sick. The companies that had formed up before ours had earned enough time to rate Christmas leave, but we were stuck in limbo for two additional weeks while everybody else was gone. That’s four weeks of dead time in boot camp; it seemed a lifetime. My choices for a rating classification after boot camp were (1) Navy Construction Battalion, builder, (2) Commissaryman (cook) and (3) Communications Technician Radio. Fortunately I was granted my last choice. I graduated on 5 February 1971, just over 12 weeks in an 8 week course, and headed home for a couple weeks leave.
I arrive at the Naval Communications Training Center (NCTC), Pensacola, Florida on 22 February 1971 and chipped paint on lawn mowers for the First Lieutenant’s office for a couple of weeks while waiting for my “A” school class to form up. We were the first class to be taught on a new computer system nicknamed “Ralph”. Everyone was surprised to see some of us closing out basic speeds in two or three weeks so they put us on tapes of actual over-the-air manual Morse transmissions. The sound and cadence of it was nothing like the computer generated code so it turns out we had learned very little. I spent many evenings in remedial code class trying to catch up. My good friend closed out of basic and was sent to gate guard duty waiting for his interim security clearance to start the advance portion of our training. I decided I’d stall in basic and not join him in such crummy duty. The instructor came to me a couple weeks later and said: “Martfeld, your clearance is in. If you close out today you can start advanced next Monday”. I closed out and was fortunate that my friend’s clearance came through as well so we were in the same advanced class.
We graduated “A” school in July 1971 where I finished in the middle of my class. My friend finished in first place and got his choice of duty. He picked Germany, Bremerhaven I believe. I had requested duty stations in Scotland, Germany and another site in Europe but was ordered to the Philippines. I thought I was being sent to hell. The only image I had of the Philippines was an ox drawn cart on my travel motif lunch pail from the 5th grade. After a couple of weeks leave at home in Arkansas I traveled to San Francisco and caught a Grey Hound bus up to my sister’s place in Petaluma, CA. and spent a day or two with her. She dropped me off at Travis AFB where I would catch my TWA charter flight to the Philippines.