Home for Christmas

Segment Three

John leaned back in his chair and picked up the picture again, then spun it around. Pointing to the two sailors on the right side of the picture, he said, “I want to tell you…why I have PTSD. This was taken the day I took over the thirty-one boat. November nineteen sixty-eight.” Marty and CC both looked at him in wonder as he continued. “I wasn’t supposed to have command. I was only an Ensign. But we were shorthanded.”

Running his hand over his face, he looked up at the ceiling before he continued hesitantly. “We had…crews, six men assigned to a boat. Engineman, Bos’n’s Mate, a Quartermaster, Radioman, and two Gunner’s Mates. Officers were…interchangeable. The crews knew their boats. They did all the maintenance, kept the systems serviced, and…put up with us officers.”

Pointing to the right side of the picture, he added, “Those two men. BM2 Charles and RM3 James could not have been more different. Not that one was black and one white, but their backgrounds. Charles was from deep south Alabama, son of a Gulf fisherman, barely made it through high school. James was…from Compton in LA. Brilliant young man, already had two years of college, majoring in electrical engineering. Both came in the Navy to beat the draft.”