@Dawn Pictures of me are almost non existent, even now, but I will see what I can find.
@Dawn Found one!!! The day I made Chief
To the original question:
Craig6
USN 1985 - 2009
Was a Submarine “Seafarer” when I went in, I was supposed to be a Fire Control Tech but 6 days after I graduated High School I had had enough of my home town and dumped a $1500 signing bonus and school and went in. I put the keys to my 1977 T-Bird in the gas tank door and asked my best friend and her father to take care of it for me. Did boot amp at Great Lakes and Sub School in Groton. My first boat was the USS Baltimore SSN-704 where the COB (Chief of the Boat) tried HARD to get me to go to the Naval Academy. I ended up striking Corpsman which was a ticket off boats but stupid hard to get accepted for coming from the fleet.
Summer of 87’ I did Corps School in Great Lakes and my Senior Advisor refused to let me go Marines and got me into a tech school. Operating Room Technician. Off to Oakland, Ca, ended up working with the Marines down in 29 Palms. Did OR School and back to VA I went. Ended up doing the invasion of Panama in 88 and got picked up for the Navy Rifle Team after working with some folks in Panama (there were some other places but we won’t talk about them).
1990 got stationed on the USS America (CV-66) and got deployed to the Gulf for Desert Storm and somehow got shanghied by the Marines when I flew a patient into Fleet Hospital 5. Did the war on the ground waaaaayyyyy out there somewhere an then went back to the boat (er Ship) when all my Jar Heads got a plane ride home.
Ended up back in Portsmouth for “Shore Duty” in 92’. Got deployed to Somalia, Bosnia, Liberia, Rawanda, Burundi and Haiti (there were some other places but we won’t talk about them). Pretty much decided I wasn’t getting promoted while being deployed forever and people kept shooting at me so I applied for Submarine IDC (Independent Duty Corpsman) School and got picked up in SPITE of the Command Master Chief telling the board “I didn’t have enough experience as a Corpsman because I never worked on a ward”. The President (via the Commandant of the Marine Corps) gave me a very nice little medal for being stupid and living through it so I got in.
Graduated 1st in my class with a 97.114% average after a 58 week school, which is essentially the first 3 years of Medical School with a minor in Radiation Health and multiple rotations at the Harvard and Yale Knife and Gun Club Universities (We worked the ER’s on the weekends). Took a boat (USS Louisville SSN-724) out of Pearl Harbor and was gone, gone, gone and gone and they threw a little war at the end of a 6 month cruise which pushed it out to damn near a year.
Became an instructor at Naval Undersea Medical Institute and ended up back in VA for my final “Shore Duty” which netted me 3 trips to Iraq and 2 to Trashcanistan. Made E-8 in May of 09 but I would have had to go back to Afghanistan for a 1 year boots on the ground tour. I told the detailer I was out of luck and I wasn’t going. I was due to deploy Aug, 01, 2009. I retired July, 01 2009.
The USCCA, I have educated myself about gun laws, self defense laws as well as kept abreast of all things that follow a self defense shooting and it occurred to me that since I was retired and no longer eligible for Military Council I needed to have a few things in place. I usually catch Sean Hannity on the radio in the afternoon and he said something that just clicked and made me do some more research into the USCCA. I liked what I saw.
I got a couple degrees after retiring but they were more about boredom relief than anything else. I have been more out of hand guns than into them for the past few years (decades) and have lived in the long range precision world since the mid 90’s. I am also a military history buff as well as a martial weapons buff, particularly U.S. military firearms. As some of you have noted I also carve on guns as a hobby as well as mid-school heavy metal cars. Due to my youngest son I know more about the inside of an EJ25 Subaru motor than I want to even think about. I do project management for fun and beer money and am pretty happy living in obscurity.
Cheers,
Craig6