by: Bill Lanahan

I joined the Navy for a couple reasons. First off, it was 1971 and I didn't want to be drafted into the Army. Second, and probably the main reason was because my old man was a Marine and I (a typical teenager) knew it would really piss him off if I were a "sailor" instead of a "leatherneck"!

I remember only mentioning the Navy once to my dad as a kid. "Damn kid!” he said, “Don't you know nothing good ever came out of the Navy! Hell, it only takes one look at your Uncle Jim to realize that! Now look at the rest of our “Fightin’ Irish” family and follow in THEIR footsteps. Be a man, be a Marine!”

Now Uncle Jim (who I grew up worshiping due to his rebellious attitude highlighted by his unquenchable thirst for beer) joined the Navy during WWII. I remember as a kid sneaking into my grandma Lanahan's garage where, in a dark cluttered corner under a pile of empty beer bottles, was my Uncle Jim’s personal Navy footlocker. What a treasure! Little did I know at the time, but that wooden chest with black stenciled block lettering that read “Lanahan, James E. - Carpenters Mate 3rd Class” was to be the root cause of most of my delinquent behavior for the next few years.

Once when I was ten years old I remember finding buried within the depths of that trunk (under Japanese memorabilia such as a "Rising Sun" flag and a couple packs of true to life REAL Japanese CIGARETTES and many more treasures too numerous to mention) a pile of match book covers with "Naked Women" on them! Oh boy, I thought to myself, was I EVER going to be the hit of the 5th grade class at St. Peter and Paul Catholic School or what! (that’s another story)

Now you put yourself in my shoes. In one hand you have my dad and the rest of my "Death Before Dishonor" family having nothing more to offer than "Dress Blue" uniforms and stories of how "Tough" Marines are. Then, in the other hand you have a trunk full of "goodies" that were sure to spark an interest in any young blooded American boy. To me that’s kinda like trying to convince a little kid in search of a sugar high that a bowl of broccoli is better than a bowl of jelly beans!

Now that I think about it, I'm certain that my Uncle Jim knew all along that I was sneaking into his trunk of goodies, and probably had it planned that way to begin with. Kind of his own way of making sure that a son he could never have would end up “following in his footsteps”. Either way, it did prove effective, and in his own way Uncle Jim managed to "Get back" at those "Damn Piss-cuttin' Jarheads" by using yours truly as his weapon of choice!

The day I decided to actually join the Navy happened to be the same day my Senior class was scheduled to take placement exams. Results of the tests were used to rate our school by comparison against other schools within the State of Illinois. Now I never admitted to being anything more than an under average student when it came to book learnin’. Especially when “English” and “Literature” were involved so I believe I did my high school and my graduating class a favor by not being present during those exams. No need to un-necessarily “lower the bar” because of a student who had his mind set on places where the English language was better spoken and fully understood using “Greenbacks” over “proper” sentence structure!

I tell you, those “silver tongued” Navy Salesmen (I mean Recruiters) saw me coming a mile away when I walked into that recruiter’s station in Belleville, Illinois. In no time at all, they had me totally convinced that I was going to be nothing less a Navy Dental Technician or a Hospital Corpsman as soon as I finished Basic Training!

“In writing? Come on kid, you don’t need anything in writing! Hells bells, if you can’t trust a future ‘Shipmate’ then who can you trust?” (Wasn’t long after that I realized the word ‘shipmate’ was synonymous with the phrase “bend over an grab your ankles”. (By the way, In Lanny’s book of proper Naval terminology, “Crewmembers” ARE NOT the same as “Shipmates”)

So, why did I join the Navy? Honestly? Because it’s what I always dreamed of doing as a kid growing up in Southern Illinois. From the minute I opened that wooden trunk of my late Uncle Jim’s, to the time I stepped foot off of the bus that dropped me and a bunch of other worms off inside the barbed wire barriers of the Naval Recruit Training Center in San Diego. ……… It WAS EXACTLY what I wanted to do!

BACK to Archives | Back to AB Stories