It's Only 5 Miles to the Camp Site SYS048
if we were not on a Med Cruise, the Carribbean Sea was always on our doorsteps in North Carolina. I was able to go on a few Carribbean Cruises while stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. On this particular Carribbean Cruise, we were doing a normal float around in the Carribbean Sea and sitting in out Communication Section of out LSD-14. it was about 1 o'clock in the morning and the ship was unusually quiet as we were listening to Cousin Brucie on our long distance radios, compliments of the ship for U.S. Marines, the Communications Section, that was us, to use.
All of a sudden, sailors were running back and forth, through our little Communication Section, and it took a few minutes to find out what was happening. While the sailors were running, the ship took an severe turn and we were literally knocked off our chairs from the force of the turn that the ship had made. Apparently, the ship's in the Task Force, were aware of a situation in Panama and stayed close to the immediate area because on the next morning we were off tjhe coast of Panama.
In a short period of time we were offloaded and put on the road to an area in the Panama jungle. The distance to the area where we were going to set up camp was only five miles away but the temperature was already 105 degrees. I took this picture on our third stop and we were only half way to our camp site in the jungle. Notice, the Marine with his back to the camera and the one dry spot on his fatigues. I had two canteens of water and at this point my second canteen was nearly emplty.
In about an hour's time we were at our camp site and told to prepare out sleeping quarters for the night. We were told to make sure that were off the ground because the jungle had an assortment of bugs, snakes and spiders. The next morning, my friend Hofer was banging his boots on the ground because a large spider had crawled into his boots while he slept.
And that was a short memory of So You Served. Enjoy,
Marty Dougherty