I have had a few ask "What did you do in the Navy?"
Well, it's a long story. I went through Boot Camp, then Yeoman School, and I was sent to the Eleventh Naval District, Discipline Office, and was given the "Discharge Desk." That meant I handeled the General, Bad Conduct and Undesirable Discharges for the Eleventh Naval District. That was in late 1952. The world was different then. Interesting duty, to say the least.
I discharged some really hard cases. Some where the Brig Chaser (guard) would stand by the prisoner while I interviewed him. As I recall a few General Discharges, that was the worst. Each GD necessitated the charges being read before the assembled base, throughout the Navy. I remember after the Brinks Robbery, the FBI came on base and questioned some of our "inmates" in the Brig, to see if they had any information on who might have done it. One man had sold arms to the enemy in Korea, a lot of AWOL's and in general, just some really bad a...guys. On more than one occasion, there would be a robbery or a murder, somewhere and we would be visited by some agency, to question someone in our custody.
I basically did nothing but type up the discharge papers, all the preliminary work was done, the court martial or whatever prompted the discharge. Then they were sent to our Brig to await the completion of all the paperwork. We had Brig Chasers, guards who would bring the prisoners over, do the interview, type up the DD-214 and everything necessary to complete the discharge, because once they were handed those papers, escorted off the base, they were out of our jurisdiction.
We "graduated" on Wednesday and Friday. Paperwork done the two days before discharge, a visit to the San Diego Police Station by the "class." The SPD would check to see of there were any outstanding warrants or tickets on any of the prisoners. Each prisoner discharged would get transportion furnished to his place of enlistment, or his home at the time of enlistment, so as far as the SDPD was concerned, that was their last chance to nail them.
I'm not going to get into the UD's they were issued for a variety of reasons, some, today quite controversial, so will leave that subject alone. We discharged some, in those days, that would not be discharged today. One kid was allergic to salt water, the Navy was not a good place to be. He was from Iowa and had never been away from home so when he got to San Diego, that's when his problem began.
Before going aboard ship, the USS William T. Mitchell TAP-114, I did a month or so of Shore Patrol Duty at the Mexican Border in Tijuana, but that is another whole story, as you can imagine.
