LSD-30 USS Plymouth Rock
This is the style of ship that I served on most of the time that I was on a Caribbean or Mediterranean Sea Cruise. It is a Landing Ship Dock that carries additional small crafts that carry assorted military equipment for use in military operations. Most if the times, we had tanks, heavy construction and loading/unloading equipment on these smaller crafts.
The purpose of this ship is to open its ballast tanks and tank on water, which allows the ship to lowwer irself in the water. As the ship is lowering in the water, the back of the ship has a large steel door that opens out. This allows small craft to enter and leave the well of the LSD.
As you can see form the above picture, the back doors are opened and an LCM Craft is entering the well of the LSD after returning from a landing operation. Mot of the equipment that comes on a LCM are that of tanks, cranes and bull dozers, and front end loaders. Most of these vehicles are operated by the Tank Crews, Seabees for the construction equipment and U.S. Marines called Box Handlers. Pretty much like long shoremen for unloading the boats on the beach head.
In 1964, I was assigned to this shp for our next Carribean Sea Cruise, which normally lasts about 3 months. The period of time was in the late summer of 1964 and covered the following locatuions:
06/23/64 to 09/23/64 – U.S.S. Fort Snelling – LSD-30 – Caribbean Cruise: Vieques, Puerto Rico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; Fort de France, Martinique, West Indies; La Guiara, Caracus, Venezuela; Port Au Prince, Haiti (Hurricane Survivors), Cat Island, Bahamas.
As you can see from above, the initial portion of the cruise had us make the normal landing at Vieques, Puerto Rico, which is home to Camp Garcia. The night before the operation, all ships give the standard speech to the troops about safety. Troops are told to use the projectiles properly and safely. The locals are told to remove their cattle from the fileds to avoid any possible accidents. And then the operation goes on as planned.
The outfit that I was with was Shore Party. In the old days, we were 1st Landing Support Company. It eventually was changed to Shore Party Bn. Our sole function was getting everything off the ships, via the beach head, to the troops in the field. Our outfit was composed of boxhandlers, heavy equipment operators and communications, of which, I was a teletype operator.
On Camp Garcia, our living quarters were on the beach, right in these tents. they were old tents and were prone to accidents. One day, after a heavy rain, one on my friends was sleeping in after a night of having a few beers in the local town and was sleeping on his cot. Another Marine tried to wake him up but was not successful but noticed that the rain from the night before was still in a crevice on the tent. There was a loose thread on the tent and he pulled the thread, which opened up and about 20 gallons of water poured down on the sleeping Marine. Did it wake him up? No!
As usual, you'll hear the constant use of heavy weapons on the day of the operations and then it finally quiets downafter the second day of operations. Grunts quietly settle down with their outfits and start to clean their weapons, as do the tanks crews, and the other heavy weapons. Life settles in and then you hear the stories of the fun the boys had during the operation.
You hear the one from the guys with the 105s on the mules who would use the aiming rifle on their mule to sight out the cow grazing on the hillside. That would give them a better shot with the 105s. Everyone would settle in for the next few weeks because that was normal for a Caribbean Cruise while at Camp Garcia. The rest of the time spent when you returned to your ship was cruising around the Caribbean Sea waiting for the ship annoucement for the next port of call. Sometime you spent a lot of time at Camp Garcia and other times. Since there was a lot of hurricane activity may have limited our actiuvity on Camp Garcia.
As usual, you always make a stop at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. This is a standard stop fir any cuises in the Caribbean Sea. It has to piss off the cubans knowing that a full naval armada stops in on their island every so often and they can't do shit about. The bay is well protected with high performance speed boats with machine guns mounted on them, just in case. The above picture is their mess hall (kitchen) which is opened 24/7 due to the political situation with Cuba. It's a perk that the troops get to enjoy.
Another quick story: The surrounding area of the base is mined by both sides. Marines perform sentry duty, 24/7, on the perimeter of the base. The Cuban guards would use a flood light to follow the Marines on guard duty, trying to intimidate the troops. One day, the Marines got a bunch of rocks and placed them on the hill where these Marines performed their sentry duties and painted the rocks white. When the light shined on the Marines, as the Marine passed the rock, the Marine Insignia would illumiunate and the flood was discontinued after a short time.
After we left Guantanamo Naval Base, it was off to Martinique, a small island in the eastern caribben Sea that seemed to be set back in time. We were scheduled to be there for about three to four days. I rememebr the first day of liberty and we walked across a very large open promenade and women were sweeping the promenade with straw brooms that looked like they were from history.
We took the typical cab tour that was provided by the local cabbie to us visiting U.S. Marines. We were driving through the mountain roads and the cabbie was explaining areas to us. The majority of the residents were dark skinned and the cabbie told us to check out the next community that he was taking us through and pointed out that the majority of the residents were white skinned and that the ciommunity was that was for many, many years. As he was saying that, he pulled out a large bottle that was labeled Rhum and it was potent. We uncapped the bottle in the second seat and helped him finish the bottle during the rest of the ride.
If I recall, there was only three hotels on the island and that was the only places that had running electricity. We didn't go to any hotels sut stopped by a small bar to get some real beer. We asked the bar manager for a few Lowenbrau Beer because we saw the cans on the top shelf. What didn't hit us at the time was that the beers were warm. No refrigerator in view , so we asked for any cold beer and he broke out a large section of ice from a box and chopped it up with an ice pick and we had cold beer.
While we were walking around the big promenade, we did pass by one hotel and got into a discussion with the hotel clerk. There very big supporters of DeGaulle, from World War II and the present leader of France, if I believe. the residents were very proud of DeGaulle. I saw his picture on the wall and asked the clerk who that person, I had a few beers at the time. She was not a happy puppy that I didn't know who he was.
At about that time, we were walking out on the promenade and maybe heading back to our ships. It was at that point in time, we heard the ships whistle blowing, which was very unusual for us and didn't know what it meant. We saw a few sailors making a hasty return to the ship and asked what was going on. They responded that it was an emergency whistle and that the ship would be leaving the port in a very short time. Anyone who didn't make it back to the ship would have to make it to the nearest embassy to seek accommodations to get back to the ship or stateside.
These were the hurricanes that were active in 1964. Everytime that we made an attemt to return to our home base to get off the ship, another hurrcane had formed and we were instructed togo eat into the Atlntic ocean until the sea were safe enough for us toretrun to our base. For most of us, it seemed like forever but it took a few weeks before we actually reutned to camp Leeune.
When we boarded our ship, we were told that we would get underway immediately to Port Au Prince, Haiti to help with the hurricane clean up. Our LSD had the heavy equipment and a helicopter and we were dispatched to the Bay of Haiti. Upon arrival, only the heavy equipment was dispatched from the well of the ship, which held the bulldozer and crane. The helicopter was used to observe and help with limited number of people that were assigned the hurricane cleanup.
We had a few Marines on our crew that were part of the helicopter crew and when they came back they told us that the bull dozer was used to make large holes in the ground to bury the massive amount of dead bodies that were the result of the hurricanes. They buried them in the large trenches and covered it with something and then dirt.
After we finished with Martinique, we were off to to La Guira, Venezuela for liberty call. That was another fun port where they told us before we went on liberty call and pointed out a few places that we would be allowed to visit. Most od carcaus, was off lomits because we were the first Americn ships to visit the country in many years. It was not a happy visit for most of us.
That was the end of our Caribbean Cruise.
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