Clarence Craig:  

Maybe I wasn't voted most likely to succeed or even most likely to fail, but I was voted as a most likely not to complete college. It was a struggle, 11 years from start to finish, including 4 years in the Navy with two tours to Vietnam. Those tours weren't a planned vacation either. You can bet your bippy that I tried all avenues to reduce the possibilities of coming home dead. Tried the reserves, coast guard, merchant marines, two year army, air force, marines, not much luck - said I was too educated to qualify for any of those two year programs. So the Navy it was, and I signed up for every available school too!! Actually I was interested in Air Traffic Control School until I passed all exams and was asked to sign for 6 years - goodbye ATCS!! So I settled for IC"A" School in Great Lakes - that's Interior Communications, and for the life of me have no idea what the "A" strands for............oh ya, it stands for "A" School!! Did learn how to operate and repair things like sound powered phones, electrical circuits, transitorized systrems, NC20 tracking device (lots of servers in this thing, and no I am not talking tennis). Having pushed off Vietnam for almost 6 months from date of signing up, I was transferred immediately to the USS Radford DD446 - the second oldest ship afloat stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Now how about that for luck?? Or not?? Within two days we set sail for Vietnam operating offshore near the D'nang (sp) river. Lots of night work, as we maintained brightly lit skies in an effort to minimize night time snipers (that would be Vietnam Snipers) from taking control of the area. At the time we called them "STAR" shells, which exploded high in the night sky and glowed as bright as any fire works that anyone could imagine, with the distinct difference that our "STAR" shells didn't go out - they stayed lit like a star as they floated down to earth. Then boom, another one goes up. We sort of knew that our enemy wasn't liking this event when we picked up the tracers coming in from shore - tracers are the glow from the bullets travelling toward us, we were at war!! Sixty days at sea and ready for a break, a few days off and back to the nightmare of war. Prior to our tour of duty being over (this particular tour) we were requested to float in to the Dnang Port to help out with the "River Runners". These Naval Cadets were awesome, risking their lives every day on missions up and down the Dnang. I doubt if they ever got their names into the deserving credit annuals. I was one of the fornunate ones to be able to meet the crew of one of the boats, they had come out to the USS Radford for some time outs. It was eye opening to listen to their missions and the risks they were asked to take. Anyhow, our Captain turned down the mission, stati...Expand for more