Armed Forces Police

I was in the Navy a long time ago. The Navy is where I learned computers & electronics, which is what I did to make a living after I go out. When you go into the Navy you are initially trained in a specific rating or "job" and like most I assumed that that would be the work that I would be doing. This was not necessarily so.

When the repair ship I was on pulled into Subic Bay in the Philippines in late 1971 we had been at sea for a couple of weeks and everyone who could, got off the ship as soon as possible. I chose not to as I had heard about "amateur night" and seen it’s effects in Yokosuka Japan so I was bundling up my cloths and heading for the laundry mat an hour after everyone else had headed for town.

The flaw in my logic was that sometimes the Navy assigns you to work that you are not trained for. I was just about to head out for wash-ex when my boss catches me and tell me to go back and get into uniform as I was drafted.

I was sent on a "Temporary Assignment" to Armed Forces Police duty, my penelty for being the slowest man in my division off the ship. By training I was a Data Processing Technician and by edict I was a cop.

What I didn’t know at the time was how this little side trip on the road of life would potentially change my life… forever. For the next several weeks I learned how to keep sailors and marines on liberty from doing things that would change their lives, forever, and how to stay alive while doing so. I was surprised to find I really enjoyed it.

I got a lot of interesting stories from this period of my life and I will try to pass some of them along through this Blog. But for now, consider this a start.

Uncle Dave