Reflections III
Copyright© 2025 by Gunny Green
Chapter 5
True Story Sex Story: Chapter 5 - Continuing story of Carl, going to Japan.
Caution: This True Story Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual True Story
A couple days later we pulled into and docked at Subic Bay Naval Station. The US Navy presence in the area was huge; this was the main support base for the entire 7th Fleet; a Naval Air Station was across the bay, just a couple miles away. We all got to watch an old military training film on the closed-circuit TV about the dangers of VD, complete with some pretty disgusting pictures. It was almost enough to start thinking about the priesthood; and I wasn’t religious at all.
I watched as the ship pulled alongside the dock, with one of the sailors from the shop that I had started to make friends with, PO3 Peter Childs from Nebraska. I had asked him how a guy from Nebraska, about as far as you could get away from the ocean in America, ended up in the Navy; he just shrugged. He was a farm boy from a little town well outside of Lincoln, a little heavy and a bit taller than me; also, not a handsome man; plain at best.
Because there was still a bit of a backlog of boxes to work on, our shop was divided into 4 duty sections; one section had to stay aboard every day to work while we were there. The rest of us were given liberty; once we were docked, Pete couldn’t get us off the ship quickly enough. We watched the officers get off first; then the civilian engineers made their way down the gangplank, got in a car, and were driven away with all their luggage; then the Chiefs got off. ‘Rank has its privileges’, I was told. When it was our turn, we hustled off the ship; then the dock,
Still in uniform, we headed to the exchange; I bought a couple pillows and pillow cases, then got a haircut; the one time I had tried to get one on ship, I waited for an hour before giving up. I also bought a dozen postcards featuring the Subic Bay Naval Station; to send to everyone back in the States. I was a little disturbed that I couldn’t send Allison or Akiko one; I probably could have sent one to Lt. Allison Martin, care of the MCAS Iwakuni Hospital, but decided not to for several reasons. I hoped they weren’t worried when I suddenly just disappeared.
Meanwhile, Pete has spent more than $50 on candy and snacks; this when most candy bars cost less than a quarter; I have mentioned he was a little heavy. It was early afternoon, we went back to the ship and changed into civilian clothes; then Pete took me to Olongapo, the little town right outside the base; over a bridge and across a small river.
It was crazy. The main streets were roughly paved; all the side roads were mostly dirt; most of the vehicles I saw were converted WWII military vehicles of all sizes; brightly painted and heavily decorated. The smaller ones were called Jeepneys, and were based on the old Jeeps. Dozens and dozens of bars and trinket shops, trying to get you to spend your money; I thought the gauntlet in Iwakuni was bad, this was 10 times worse. American music blaring from the mostly open bars, Filipino woman in bikinis and heels dancing outside, trying to entice you inside. The exchange rate was officially 7 Philippine pesos for 1 American dollar; but Pete told me that if you had big bills, fifties and hundreds, you could get as much as 10 pesos per dollar. Pete said that the black market was huge here, you could get pretty much anything you wanted; and you wanted to keep your wallet and money in your front pocket, so the pick-pockets wouldn’t get it. The streets and bars were packed, vendors hawking their wares, all the different music from the bars; it was incredibly noisy.
Pete allowed us to be dragged into a couple of the bars; the same thing was going on in them that happened in Iwakuni, drink-wise; but the girls in the bars were in see-through lingerie and heels; and were not bashful about groping you, and urging you to grope them. Pete quickly got us out of there after a couple beers; then hustled us down to see if his girl-friend was still working at Pizza Hut.
It wasn’t a real Pizza Hut, but the hand-painted signs and décor were spot on. It was good pizza, and Pete’s ‘girlfriend’ was there; she even remembered his name. A little heavier than Pete, and not as tall as me; she was at best cute, but very animated. She and Pete talked every time they could; we spent a couple hours in there before he arranged to come back in a couple hours to take her home. We talked about it on the way back to base; Pete said it was true love, I wasn’t that sure, but what did I know? We got back to base and went to the base movie theater and saw “Jaws”; I pretty sure I didn’t want to go back out to sea.
We got back aboard; I was dragging, already not used to being up during the day. Pete and I separated, he was going to get ready for going back out in town; I took a nap, then got back off the ship to check out the enlisted club. Live music, I was told because the ‘big boat’ was in port; the Filippino band was very good and I stayed until the club closed, then went back to the Midway to try to get some sleep; being in port was messing with my new sleep patterns.
I got up the next morning and found out how our laundry was handled. The PO1 had one of the guys gather all our linens in a sack and take them away; he came back 20 minutes later with a stack of clean ones, nicely folded. Our work uniforms were a different matter; they were all gathered up and put in a couple big bags; our socks, underwear and t-shirts put in individual nylon mesh bags; I had to run to the little ship’s store and quickly buy one, then magic-marker my name on it. This was all then bundled up and carried to the ship’s laundry; I volunteered to help take the stuff to the laundry; I figured I’d get to see a different part of the ship. I did; the laundry was well below the waterline, the washing machines and dryers were huge; we dropped off our bag, got a receipt for them; then told to come back the next day to get the clean clothes. They didn’t handle civilian clothes; we were on our own for that.
I headed back to the shop to see what was going on; the guys were still working on the backlog, one tech to one box; slow but dependable, I thought. The PO1 asked me what I thought about Olongapo; when I said that it was worse than the town outside of MCAS Iwakuni, he just smiled. He told me to be careful; the girls would love to marry an American serviceman, that was why they were working in the bars. Most came from small villages nearby, and if you married one; she was pretty much expected to send some of your money home to help her family. He said that most of them seemed to make good wives, but there was a lot of baggage involved. Marrying one wasn’t easy; you had to get permission from the Navy, and that wasn’t easy to get; starting with trying to get a birth certificate for her.
He also told me there was a rigid curfew in town that went into effect at 10 pm; everyone had to be off the streets by then. You didn’t have to come back to the ship, or even be on base; but you had to be inside, somewhere. Like one of the bars; which would obligingly stay open until 6 am, when everyone started stirring. Or you could go to one of the many whore houses for the night; and most of the bar girls would love to take you home with them. I asked about Pete, he hadn’t made it back to the ship until early this morning; he was in love, the petty officer smiled and told me.
We chatted a couple hours, I decided to take advantage of being docked and went for a long run ashore. I found the base gym and played some basketball for a while; when I got back to the ship, I discovered my laundry, balled up on my rack. Really balled up; no effort had been to fold them, or even shake them out. I smoothed my work uniforms out the best I could; then laid them flat under my mattress; hoping the worst of the wrinkles would relax. It worked pretty well, but I was never going to pass a Marine Corps inspection. I didn’t “hit the ‘ville” that night; I discovered the ship’s library, and spent a couple hours reading. I gave up, trying stay up; I went to bed that night and figured I’d re-adjust when we went back out to sea.
The next day, I explored the base a little more during another extended run; then went back to the ship and filled out postcards. The Military Postal Service would handle outgoing mail for free; you wrote “Free” in place of the stamp, put your name, rank, and branch of service where the return address went, then addressed it normally; I wish I had known about this while in Japan. I was told the Military Postal Service got the mail to California, then the US Postal Service took over. I didn’t bother to write any letters yet; I could do that when we were back at sea.
I was shown where the ship’s education office was; I got checked in and given the materials for the shop supervisor course, five decent-sized books. I glanced through the first one that afternoon; it didn’t look that hard. I quickly realized each chapter was trying to make 4-5 points, there was a short quiz at the end of each chapter to make sure we got them. When I finished each book, I was supposed to return to the education office to take an exam. Five exams later and I would be theoretically ready to run a shop.
One of my other shop mates talked me into going out to the town that night; one of the party animals. I thought it was crazy during the daytime; the evening was much worse. We hit several bars; I nursed one beer at each; at a couple of the bars, the ladies were down to panties and heels. The sailor got into a game called ‘smile’; several guys stood around a tall bar table, took their dicks out, then tried to guess who was getting a blowjob from a woman under the table. If you guessed right, the other guy bought the next round; if you guessed wrong, you bought. I think the woman got $10 for getting on her knees under the table. And that wasn’t the most outrageous thing I saw that night; I headed back to the base well before curfew.
The only other thing of significance was payday came around, the day we left. All the sailors got a check from the Chief; nothing for me, of course. I finally found the Marine squadron’s admin office, no paycheck there either. I was sent to the Navy disbursing office, and was told they didn’t have my pay record; it hadn’t made the trip. They could make a temporary record, like medical had done, and give me a partial payment; but that could really screw things up. No explanation about how; but if I had enough money with me to get by; it was better to just let it ride. “If I really needed some money before we got back to Japan, just come back, and they would give me a partial payment.” I still had almost all of the money I had brought with me; I thought it would be a really nice paycheck at the end of the deployment; 2+ months’ worth. While we were talking about this, I could sense the ship moving; on to the next stop.
Our next port was Singapore; but first a small detour, and a traditional party. We had crossed the Tropic of Cancer when we had sailed past Taiwan on our way to the Philippines. Daytime temperature was in the 80s and 90s and humid; the working uniform for the troops, which was everyone except the Chiefs and Officers; became trousers and t-shirts. The ship was mostly air-conditioned, including my shop; but it wasn’t working properly there, just turned on. It was 80+ degrees outside the door, inside it was close to 50; the Chief submitted a work order about it, requesting repair. It would be a while, he was told; they were still working on the closed berthing compartments. I asked about that; the Chief told me the Midway had been heavily involved in the evacuation of Saigon, back in April and May.
He told me that they had ended up with over 3000 Vietnamese civilians and military refugees aboard. The Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) pilots that had access to helicopters; loaded their families and anyone else they could find, and flew out to sea; following the military helicopters that were evacuating Saigon. Those were allowed to land; when emptied of people, the helicopters were simply pushed over the side, into the sea. One tiny 2-seat airplane had appeared with a family of 7, including five children, and requested an emergency landing; the Midway got them aboard, but several Huey helicopters that had also been recovered were pushed overboard. The sailors had emptied several berthing compartments for the civilians to use; then the overflow ended up on cots on the hanger deck. It took a few weeks to get them all to safety and off the ship; and the compartments had to be completely gutted and refurbished.
We put up with the a/c for a couple days, manually turning the air conditioning on and off using the thermostat switch every hour or so; wearing coats in the shop and t-shirts everywhere else. I asked if I could look at it; I promised I wouldn’t mess it up any further. I took the thermostat off the wall, opened it up, and discovered a broken wire at a connector. I fixed that and put it all back together; it worked! My PO told the chief what I had done, it was reported to the OIC and he canceled the work order. That was the last of that, I thought.
A day later, the ship prepared for crossing the equator; again, I was clueless. It’s big deal in the navy; actually an excuse for a party; if you had crossed the equator in a Navy ship, you were a shellback; and considered a seasoned mariner. If you hadn’t, you were a pollywog; just above pond scum. The day before ‘Crossing the Line’, all flight operations ceased, everyone was shifted to day crew; and the pollywogs ruled the shellbacks. Mostly gags, stunts and minor harassment of the shellbacks; think of a college fraternity initiation. The initiation was voluntary, I agreed to participate; for the most point I just watched the fun. Some of the pollywogs knew what was coming the next day and the harassment got a little carried away, I thought. Rank did not matter; if a PO3 pollywog told a PO1 to go get his toothbrush and scrub the floor, the PO1 did it.
My shipmates and I were in and out of the shop many times that day, I came back one time and found the shop empty, except for a PO2 shellback wrapped head to toe in bubble wrap, and hanging from a ceiling stanchion. He was standing on a chair but I could tell he was stressed; I quickly cut him down, he thanked me and disappeared. A couple minutes later some of my shipmates came back with a small bucket of grease and asked where their prisoner was. I professed ignorance, I got a couple suspicious looks; they took off to find their victim. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but a month later ... All day the shenanigans continued; that night we were told on the ship’s news program on the TV, that King Neptune and his court would be arriving at 7 the next morning.