Webmaster: http://starling.us/gan/
by Ĝan Ŭesli Starling
copyright 2002 — 2023
Pictures and stories by minemen of the US Navy. If anyone else has stories or pictures for inclusion at this site, please email me at gan@starling.us
Here are some random shots (mostly taken by me, Ĝan Starling) from 1974-1978. Some are scanned from Kodak Instamatic prints, others from old Polaroids. Discovery that the latter had become brittle and were even cracking from age was the motive for scanning them. Then I thought, why not put a website? Others contributed some pics and stories after that. And so it grows. Have you any pics or stories? Contribute them!
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Truth to tell, as a mineman, I never really went to sea. The reason for this is that other sailors quite prefer some occupations to be perfomed, not on the pitching, rolling deck of the ship where they too abide, but rather on some other less-valued real estate: like an Air Force base. And for their part, the Air Force prefers that it be done well toward its furthest extreme: at the end of a mile-long causeway; on an island just abreast of their furthest runway landing light; the seaward side of said island. Or, as in another case, out in a swamp, again near the furthest runway light. Someplace no one much cares about...
So for my part, during the whole of four years and a day in the navy, I set foot on ships just three times, and for a total of less than a day all summed together. But sea story has a wider meaning. Which is to say that these are filtered through the fog of memory. Sailors will know to take them with just the proper grain of salt. These are true, every one, just as I have recounted them here. At least they are recorded thus in my memory. Should any others recall the chronology differently, well...mine is the way it should have been. That’s my version and I’m sticking to it.
I invite contributions for this page. Email your own stories to me at gan@starling.us in either plain ASCII (*.txt), or HTML or XHTML (*.htm, *.html), or MSWord (*.doc). Thanks to Bob Mullins, Joe Beetar, Mo Radke, Alfred Bauer and Cliff Bartyzal for being the first. Any others?
Here is where to find about whatever became of that mineman you knew back when. And for others to learn what happened to you. Contribute your own post-MN biography soon!
