Don Dinsmore:  

LIFE IS GREAT     Upon graduation from high school at 17, I was eager to enlist in the Navy. I had spent every opportunity at the movie theater, while growing up, watching every John Wayne war movie ever made. I only waited to the end of the summer, because it was the year of the Seattle Worlds Fair and I wanted to see it. So after all the excitement, I enlisted on August 26th 1962 and was off to U.S. Navy Boot Camp. Two notable things happened at boot camp. The first was, they weren't going to send me to photo school, because they weren't going to spend that amount of money on a shipmate only to have him get out after 4 short years, and make big money in civilian life on the Navy's dime. My answer to the interviewer was, "I'm in for twenty and will stay for 30 if I like it." My orders, to my complete surprise, arrived for photo school. The second was that the Cuban Missile Crisis hit and sent huge ripples through the boot camp command. Off to Pensacola, Florida and assignment to a squadron designated VT-1, Saufley Field where I painted hangers and became a tow tractor driver for T-34B aircraft, while waiting for my place at Photo School to open. Going to school as an airman, it was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that I began a love affair with the camera. I graduated as an Airman Photo Striker and headed for schooling designated RA5C Vigilanty, in Sanford, Florida. This was "the technology" of the times with cameras that were said to be able to read the movie marquee in LA. from high over NY, city. I ended up in RVAH-9, Sanford, Florida for the rest of my tour, which was the perfect place for me. The RVAH electronic photo system provided the place that put me at the desk in the photo lab next to the radio when the newsperson announced that, "The President has been shot in Dallas, Texas." The system put me on the USS Saratoga for a Med. Cruise. I received great flight deck experience and rewarding feelings of contribution in a new, ground floor, and state of the art Navy Photography program. The system put me in a position to volunteer, from the Med cruise for President Johnson"s request for people to go to Vietnam. My best buddy and I looked forward to hitting the beach in John Wayne fashion with a camera and a side arm and were told we would have a life expectancy of 3 minutes. As the Navy would have it we turned the squadron around in three months from Mediterranean to Pacific Ocean and I spent the rest of my career on Dixie Station and Yankee Station, Vietnam. That took me to a month before my enlistment was to conclude, after getting caught in the Vietnam involuntary extension. My only claims to fame were that I saved the whole camera system of an RA5C aircraft from destruction to the tune of somewhere around $250,000 when the aircraft crashed on a test flight. The dummy module had never fit before, but I was on duty by myself on a beautiful Florida Saturday afternoon. Out of pure spring fever laziness I installed the module for its first and last flight. We lost no photo equipment, but the Navy didn't even thank me. The other claim was, after all the squadron's married shipmates were flown back to the States because of the USS Ranger's very lengthy cruise off of Vietnam, we bombed Haiphong Harbor for the very first time. I, by process of elimination, became the highest-ranking unmarried Petty Officer in the photo department. So I lead the charge over the oil fields, straddling my white Vigilanty photo aircraft, while smoke rising from burning storage tanks blackened the sun, snapped off mega photos as we flew across the land of the rising sun, to further promote the cause of freedom in South East Asia. John Wayne would have been proud. With that, my Navy career was over and I thought never to return, until 20 years later, my Son enlisted in the Marine Corps on his 18th birthday. We were always joined at the hip, so when delivering him to the recruiter he was working for, while waiting for Intelligence School to open, I asked if they took old guys in the Navy Reserves and could I as a reservist catch military hops? They said yes I could catch hops and after subtracting my six years prior service from my age, they made me Seaman Dinsmore at 42 years old. They subtracted the 6 years from my age and made me 36, so that I wouldn't be too old to enlist, the best deal that I've ever made. What a trip. The beginning started rocky, but as I passed my military requirements, became an airman, found my way to the photo lab at Whidbey Island, Washington and made PH3 and PH2 exactly 25 years after the first time I made those rates, it then got a little easier to take orders from 18 year olds. Of course, my goal was always finding ways to see ...Expand for more