One of my readers sent me an email that Sunday was the 51st anniversary of his discharge from the Army. That reminded me that today, Oct 14, is the 50th anniversary of the end of my four years of active duty from the Navy. It wasn’t my discharge, that came two years later.

Back then, there was a six year commitment which came in various forms. There was six months of active duty followed by 5.5 years of active reserve. That was next to impossible to get. There was two years of active duty followed by two years active reserve and two years of inactive reserve. There was four years of active duty followed by two years of inactive reserve which is what I enlisted for. And there was six years of active duty.

I joined the Navy to get out of the draft and to get an electronics school. I was guaranteed one prior to enlisting either Electronics Technician, Fire Control Technician, or Aviation Electronics Technician. ET was my first choice and I got it.

Some of my classmates had enlisted for six years to get additional schooling, For example, if you wanted to be a Nuclear Power ET, you had to enlist for six years. That’s what the classmate who wound up marrying my ex-wife did. Data Systems ET was a six year enlistment.

Immediately after we started ET School they started pitching sumpin’ called SET (Selective Electronics Training). Commit to six years and get another few weeks of Electronics School and some equipment schools known as C schools. They used to do that with a four year enlistment but changed it shortly before I enlisted. They wanted to get us four year guys out to the fleet as soon as possible because of the war going on.

Another thing they started pushing was after SET, you could reenlist and go for STAR (Selective Training and Retention). They would send you to a B school which was like and engineering electronics program. The nice thing about that was you got an automatic bump in rank on graduation without having to take the test. So, If you were an E4, when you graduated, you would be an E5 without having to take the E5 test.

Back then they had variable reenlistment bonuses. Some ratings were more critical than others. The Navy had more Bos’n’s Mates than they needed, but were short on ETs. As a result, ETs were one of the handful of rates with the highest reenlistment bonuses. If I remember correctly, if I had reenlisted when I got out, I would have gotten $12K. Since I would have been in a war zone at that time it would have been tax free. Back in 1969 $12K tax free was a lot of money.

Ron, my Wednesday poster, was an ET, and reenlisted under the STAR program. There was also an officer program that they pitched to us, NESEP (Navy Enlisted Scientific Education Program). Ron wound up in that and finished up his Navy career as an officer.

As for me, I was not the military type and was four and out. I did however go from inactive to active reserve to earn some additional money while attending college. I would go to meetings on Wednesday nights at the Naval Reserve Center near the St. Louis airport. Two other guys and I would sneak out after muster and spend a couple of hours at the enlisted men’s club drinking beer and make it back to muster out. Every now and then, they would notice us missing and come and collect us at the club and chew us out. Then we would have to behave for a few weeks.

When I dropped out of college, I dropped out of the Naval Reserve.

Fifty Years ago today, I left Treasure Island, which was a Naval base in San Francisco Bay. Among other things it was a training center. I went to an UHC transceiver school there. While I was waiting for my separation, I was in the cafeteria drinking coffee and heard Led Zeppelin for the very first time on the jukebox. They were playing Communications Breakdown.

1969.

Fifty years ago.

Click to enlarge.