home: http://minemen.us/
by Kyle Peterson
copyright 2023
When YNSN Sissoms showed up at the compound in mid-January, 1976, he had this puppy-dog eagerness to learn and excel at his new job. It was about enough to make you sick. So it was our duty to mess with him and screw him over multiple times until he realized that this was the third circle of hell and there was no escape. But first, some background needs to be filled in.
When I arrived in Naha, Okinawa, Prefecture of Japan (whatever the fuck a Prefecture is) in January of 1974, I was running from the rest of the world, and this certainly seemed to be as far as I could go. The office was being driven beyond chaos by a disagreeable 2/c Mineman who couldn’t type or answer phones and hated anyone that could. I think his first words to me were “You’re in for it now, asshole,” or something like that. Anyway, we got along great, except that I didn’t know how to drive. Well, I knew how to drive, I just couldn’t do it. But I had dealt with plenty of jackasses before, and I knew how to deal with them: ignore them. I guess some background needs to be filled in.
My mother was a bitch. It’s too bad, but there’s just no way around it. Angry, resentful, insecure about everything, she took it out on her kids. It came to where she threatened to hit me once and before I realized it, I told her that she’d better not try, and when she took a step towards me to smack me, I got ready to hit her and she backed down. She never hit me again, though there were several times afterwards she backed me into a corner and screamed in my face that I was stupid and would never amount to anything.
Those incidents predated my entry to high school, because I had quit talking to her by then. I’d get up and eat breakfast and leave without saying anything to her and after school let out, if I wasn’t playing football or something, the school librarian would let me stay in the library after she went home, or I would go to the gymnasium to lift weights for a couple of hours until I had to walk home. It was a pretty miserable existence, just waiting until I could go to the recruiter and in the fine fashion of kids who had to exit their families at the first opportunity, sign up to go wherever the ruling powers decreed. It was the waning days of the Vietnam War, perhaps Fortune cut me a break or perhaps Fortune decided that the first lesson I needed to learn is that the world is a really screwy place, where everybody makes it up as they go along.
After all, I had nothing to lose by applying for a nomination to the U. S. Naval Academy. I didn’t think that I’d get it, it just seemed like something to do, and I might learn something useful by doing the application. My dad, who was a World War II Navy veteran and now a Master Chief Gunner’s Mate in the Naval Reserve, wasn’t much interested in what I did and as for giving me any encouragement or advice, there wasn’t anything there to begin with.
Annapolis was a disaster. I hate to say it, but the little games and secret codes made up by the little shits were too much like my mother, screaming inanities in my face. After two years, I would say that I felt like the man who fell to earth. I spent about a week at home and then went down to the recruiter and enlisted. Boot camp was actually a lot of fun and then I did “A” school in San Diego and was posted to a Mines Detachment somewhere on Okinawa.
I know that I spent several weekends clearing out the paper mess that I inherited. It isn’t like I had any idea of what I was doing, my filing system was a kind of “hmm, I think it’s over here somewhere.” Despite some obligatory kidding, people largely left me alone, because no one cared about what I did and I had a chip on my shoulder as big as the causeway that connected our little island with the mainland island. Barracks life was pretty subdued, now that no one came in to scream that you had ten seconds to grab an armful of your clothes and run into the hallway and throw them on the floor and stand at attention in your underwear.
So we got drunk and did stupid stuff and I crashed the truck one morning because I fell asleep at the wheel and another time I bent the front bumper because I had to back down the causeway and ran into the wall. But gradually I got comfortable and developed some capability and it was a little pat on the back to advance to YN3. Hooray. I extended for another year because this was the first place I had ever been where I felt I had some value and there was a little operation I got side tracked on and I had a girlfriend in Taiwan and I wasn’t in that much of a hurry to go back home, anyway.
But life goes on, and so we must roll with it. I thought about taking my discharge on Okinawa and going to Taiwan to teach English because I was in love, though I was incapable of expressing it. But wait, I digress... this was supposed to be about YNSN Sissoms and his appearance on the world stage.
When he showed up, I only had enough energy to show him the file cabinets and where the truck keys were. Aaron wanted to get along with me, which I’ll grant wasn’t the easiest thing to do. The problem is, he seemed to want to be friends, which wasn’t something I could do – I did not need one more reason to feel conflicted about leaving Naha after two fricking years there. I couldn’t help but take advantage of any opportunity to mess with him.
I had this receiver/amplifier unit that I kept on my rack in the barracks. I’d use it as a radio at nighttime when AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio/Television Service, or A-FARTS) broadcast Wolfman Jack at midnight. I had a pair of earphones that I would lock in my locker each morning, but the amplifier wouldn’t fit, so it stayed on my rack all day. And someone left a pair of ear protectors in the room, so that Sissoms, being a better typist than an electrician, assumed that these ear protectors were my earphones, and he put them on and turned on the amplifier and couldn’t understand why he couldn’t hear the daily broadcast. When he very apologetically confessed to me that he had been using my amplifier, but couldn’t hear the music on these ear protectors; I thought I was going to hurt myself, trying to keep a straight face. I told him that it was obviously just a problem with reception – here, put on the earphones and stretch out your hands, which he did. I said, maybe the reception isn’t strong enough on the floor, go stand on your rack and hold your arms out, so he did. I said, lift up one leg and hold it out over the floor, and he did, and to keep from laughing, I told him to hold it, I was going to get Bad Bob Mullins, since he knew more about electricity. I ran down the hall and got Bob out of the bathroom and we came back with Sissoms trying to move around his rack, wearing these ear protectors and not understanding why he couldn’t hear “Stairway to Heaven” or something. I said, “Well, let’s put him in the shower and see if getting his skin wet will improve the reception,” but by then, Sissoms was done with the experiment and wouldn’t do any more flopping around on his bed. The next day someone finally ruined the fun by telling him, “Hey, numbnuts, these are ear protectors for the workshop, look in the ears and you might see that there are no speakers.” The next morning he told someone else in the room that he was going to get me back by pretending that he could hear the music now, not realizing that I was awake. I had to lie in my rack for another 15 minutes, pretending to be asleep, just so he wouldn’t realize that I’d heard him. So I played along for a little while, pretending that I could hear the music, too, until I told him that I had heard him openly plotting with someone else in the room. He was mad that I ruined his fun, but now I started calling him The Human Antenna and told him that now he could get a job with AC/Delco whenever he left the Navy.
So that amused me for a day or two, and then Aaron was driving the truck around on our daily errands, and just as we were getting into the truck, the base school bus came by, and just on impulse, I snapped to attention and saluted. “What did you do that for?” asked Sissoms.
“Do what?”
“Salute! Why did you salute that bus?”
“I didn’t salute the bus, I saluted the bus driver.”
“What for?”
“Didn’t you see who that was? Didn’t you hear?” I was biting my tongue to keep from laughing.
“No.”
“That was the base commander!”
“No, no, no.” Sissoms was shaking his head, determined not to fall for another one. I shrugged and told him that I thought he had heard by now, that Captain What’s-His-Name drove the school bus on Thursday afternoons. Sissoms initially refused to believe it, but I just shrugged and said; well, check with Bad Bob or somebody who has been here a while, and they’ll tell you that when Captain What’s-His-Name took over command and told everyone that he wanted to drive the bus one afternoon each week and settled on Thursday, and yeah, it’s kind of unusual, but he’s the Base Commander and can do anything he wants, so nobody really says anything, but if you see him out there one afternoon, don’t point and laugh, just give him a salute and say; hey, sir, good for you, because it’s a good thing and he’s a good guy, and well, why not?
This was a lot to process and YNSN Sissoms was shaking his head from time to time, but by the time we had driven the five-or-six miles back to the compound, he was telling me that he believed me. I just shrugged and said, well, Bad Bob knows and most of the old-timers know, the transfers from Subic might not (we had four or five guys from the Mines Detachment in the Philippines working with us), but I know that Bad Bob does. I grabbed the Mail Bag while Aaron parked the truck, and as soon as I got in the door, I threw the Mail Bag on my desk and ran back into the Supply Area to find Bad Bob. He wasn’t there, but Iverson and a Philippine transfer named Homer were there, and I said:
“I haven’t got time to explain, but if Sissoms comes back here, just remember that Captain What’s-His-Name drive the school bus around the base on Thursday afternoon.”
I got back to my desk just as Sissoms came in and you could see that the wheels were turning, but he said, “I don’t have to ask anybody, Pete, I believe you.”
“Well, okay.” He started helping me sort the mail, and Homer walked into the office area to see if he got any mail from his wife in Tennesee, and Sissoms blurted out, “Hey, does the Base Commander drive the bus?”
Homer laughed a little and said in his Tennessee drawl, “Oh, yeah, I heard about that. I guess he does.” Sissoms acted like I’d just given him a birthday present, so delighted to be in on the secret.
“I thought you were shittin’ me, Pete! I don’t believe it! Captain What’s-His-Name drives a bus! That’s so unbelievable!” Lieutenant Dunn came walking out of his office. “Did you know that, sir?”
Lt Dunn made a face, irritated that I was back up to another stupid shenanigan. “I don’t know,” he groused and walked on to the coffee room. Aaron gave me a very suspicious look.
“Shhh.” I put my finger to my lips. “Now you embarrassed him, don’t go blurting it out to everyone. It’s okay, just kind of keep it under your hat.”
“Does he know about it?”
“Oh, of course he knows, everybody knows. But he’s a fellow officer, and you don’t want to throw this around, just be cool about it.”
So Aaron promised to be cool and not tell any other officers about their Captain driving the school bus on Thursday afternoon, and that lesson was learned. Then MN2 Bombard came into the office to light up a cigarette, and Sissoms blurts out, “Hey, did you know that the Base Commander drives the school bus?” And Bomber turns around with this what-the-fuck look on his face, and I leaned around Sissoms to catch Bomber’s eye and nod the affirmative, but Aaron caught me, and I leaned against the file cabinet and laughed and laughed. Oh, my goodness, I was so glad to be prepared for the Russians or Chinese or Huk Guerillas or anybody that thought they might come over the seas to fuck with us, whether they were determined to drive the bus or not.
I vaguely remember another incident that happened when we took the classified material that had gone through the shredder to burn. There was this little brick oven, looking like a homemade outdoor pizza oven that stood behind the radio transmission center, where we had to burn the stuff. You had to start a fire with some paper, then drop it in the center tub, then hold more shredded material over the fire until it burned up, and grab more shredded stuff before the fire went out. It was kind of an interesting process that would burn all of the hair off my hands and lower arms. So we were doing this fun routine one day, and some paper stuck to my hands or something, maybe I jerked my hands out of the live fire because I was about to lose a digit or two, and burning paper landed on the dry grass and set it alight. We could have burned down the whole base and by that time, I wouldn’t have said much more than “oops,” but I think it took both of us to stomp the fire out. At least the great secrets of the United States Navy were saved that day by our brave actions and fancy dance moves.
Jesus said he who seeks to save his life must give it up, and so I gave up my life to return to the US, and I had a habit of saying outlandish statements and doing crazy things and I was incomprehensible to anyone who had any kind of a normal life until I was able to extrude most of the poison out of my system. Sometimes I feel like that life on the island of Okinawa happened to someone else, other times I remember incidents that seemed implausible then and have remained so.
Arron Sissom went on to retire as a YNC after 20 years. He earned a pair of college degrees. He then went on to amuse himself amused with a very profitable second career...as VP of an import firm in Nashville, TN. I visited him on a motorcycle trip circa 2005 or thereabouts. Since our time on Okinawa, he then aged 19 and I aged 20, Aaron had gained quite a few inches to now tower over me in height.
My own memory of Kyle Peterson as yeoman at MMD 7 (later MOMAG Det 10) is very much as the prankster described above. One incident which comes to mind his novel use of a portable cassette tape recorder with microphone onto which he had recorded a tape's worth of static. Waving the microphone around like the wand of a Geiger counter, he'd point it toward me then thumb up the volume. Then he'd point it away, thumbing the volume back down. He called his device a Bullshit Detector.
Ĝan Ŭesli Starling
2023-11-25