Memories…

Bill put up a post HERE about ‘marking time’ in our lives…

This is one of the ways the Navy tends to do it, is the inevitable patch collection or picture from your co-workers, crew or bosses…

This particular one is from my VP-24 days, we were Crew 10, the “Pirates”…

And yes, we DID fly that flag out of the overhead hatch for quite a few years! 🙂

24 patches

 

Since I was on this crew both as an enlisted and an officer, some of the patches cross both periods.  The three on the right side are three full squadron deployments in 83/84, 85 and 86/87.  These don’t count the multiple dets we did as a ‘special crew’, but they do reflect the intensity of operations back in the day…

The 85 deployment was interesting for the fact that we had twelve USSR subs in the ‘box’ during our 6 month deployment (e.g. average 2 a month) and no publicity about them stateside… In 86/87 in the Med, the squadron had over 740 contact hours on the bad guys which is a significant amount of time considering all the other stuff going on over there at that time…

And I believe everyone of us that served remember ‘certain’ organizations, squadrons, or crews that just seemed to be better than others… VP-24 was one of ‘those’ squadrons, and even though I left in late 87, I still keep in touch with a large group of folks from that squadron.  Truly friends for life!

Comments

Memories… — 6 Comments

  1. I know what you mean. When you look back, you have to ask yourself – was that really me and did we do all that?

  2. What LL said. Some memories are more intense than others, because the times were more intense. But sometimes, having those memories is more fun than getting them. But you already know that, too.

  3. LL- Oh yeah, and the second question is how the hell did we survive?

    Keads- Thanks!

    Rev/WSF- True!!!

    Opus- Yes they do, the Blue Lagoon is the most famous and they ARE hot!!!