Peter Leibert's Page

During the early part of 1948, Harry S. Truman and his crew in Washington, started debating the reestablishment of a draft for us younger fellows. I had been too young to get caught in the WWII draft, so now at age 18, I would probably be one of the prime candidates if they ever started up this method for increasing our serviceman numbers.

Here on the home front, the draft became a subject that was being talked about quite a lot around Riverside Junior College campus. I personally had resigned myself to wait for the draft. I didn’t like the idea of getting drafted, but I didn’t like the idea of enlisting in one of the other services either. A number of guys were getting itchy and started to look into joining the navy, the air force or the marines.

In the spring of ‘48, a fellow student, Frank, and I were sitting in the Quad taking in the sunshine during a break between classes. Another student came by and asked, “Want to ride along to San Bernardino with me? I am going to pick up some info about joining the navy.” This recruit-candidate told us that he had to go to San Bernardino because their wasn’t any Navy Recruiter in Riverside. Frank and I agreed to ride along and so we went. We sat in the car while the recruit-candidate went into the SB recruiting office to get his information. A minute later he was back telling us that there is a recruiting office in Riverside and that he would have to pick up his information there.

By the title of this chapter, I am sure that you have already figured out what happened. When we got to Riverside, the three of us went inside the recruiting office and after 15 or 20 minutes of listening to the recruiters spiel we came out with our own personal sets of information. You are absolutely correct. Frank and I each ended up enlisting in the navy, and the guy who wanted someone to just ride along, never did go into the service.

Frank and I had made that big decision. Frank liked the idea of becoming a radioman, and since I was very involved in photography, I had decided to become an aviation photographer. I would have to be in the “aviation branch” because the surface photography school had recently closed. Based on this official navy recruiter’s promise that we would attend specific navy schools, we each enlisted for three years of service in the U.S. Navy. We had contracts, right?

So, on July 1, 1948, a month or so after taking a medical physical, some written test, and signing the enlistment papers, Seaman Recruit Frank and Airman Recruit Peter found themselves heading toward downtown Los Angeles in order to catch a train - our very first real train ride - to San Diego.

At the train station in Los Angeles, we soon found out that there was a lot of other guys that had enlisted. There was almost two full car loads of enlistees - perhaps 100, and they came in all forms and shapes and with all kinds of suitcases. Soon we were anxiously on our way straining to see every new sight that appeared ahead. For Frank and I, this was our first real train ride, and the others on this train had a unique appearance which made me sure that it was their first ride for most of them as well.

It was a whirl of activity in San Diego. We boarded buses and quickly found ourselves being lined up in six rows at the our new home - boot camp. In very short order, a chief petty officer “marched” a number of us to a barracks building. The chief introduced himself as our Company Commander. He would be with us during the 12 weeks of boot camp. His name was Boson Mate Chief E. J. Koza.

After bunk assignments had been made, we were marched to an area where we got a mattress and pillow, and then marched back to barracks. Then we were marched to a place where they shaved our hair off, then went next door and were loaded up with uniforms. They at least let us walk at our own pace back to the barracks carrying a sea bag full of new clothes. We soon got instructed on how to mark and store our clothing. Then we spent some time doing the marking and storing. We took a shower and put on a set of our new uniforms, and then lined up and were marched to dinner in our new uniforms. Then we marched back and were given all kinds of instructions about other things.

By the end of the first day, I had concluded that we were going to be doing a lot of marching here. And I was right. The next morning we were lined up out in front where roll call was taken. Then we were marched to breakfast, marched to a place where we got some shots, then marched back to the barracks.

Somewhere during this process, they called the names of some of the new recruits, including mine. It turned out that each of us had taken ROTC during high school, so we had been selected to be the Recruit Petty Officers. One of these recruits was assigned to be the Recruit Company Commander, another was to be the Recruit Assistant Company Commander, and the most of the rest of us would be Squad Leaders - three for each platoon.

I had been assigned to be squad leader of the second squad, first platoon. Whenever we marched, another ROTC guy would be in the right front of the front platoon carrying a blue flag with our company number on it - 227. I guess he was our Company Flag Bearer.

We certainly became masters of marching. Some days we would spend two or three hours drilling on a grinder. Forward Harch! Left flank, Harch! Right flank, Harch! To the rear, Harch! Platoon, Halt! At least once a week we had a “parade” where all the companies in boot camp would be individually inspected and then paraded around the grinder.

Almost every day we would be subjected to a barracks inspection. Bunks must be made up correctly and neatly. No, we did not have be able to bounce a quarter off the sheet. That is only for marines (known lovingly as jarheads by sailors) in the movies. However, there must not be any wrinkles in the mattress or pillow covers, and the blankets must be exactly folded. That was actually very easy to achieve, but some guys just did not take enough care to do it well.

We had two brown blankets (not white ones nor blues ones like they show in the movies). We also wore brown leggings whenever we wore dungarees in boot camp. We were issued two sets of white uniforms, two sets of undress blues, and one set of dress blues, plus a heavy pea coat. I don’t remember how many dungarees were in our original issue, probably two. Then you had a pair of dress shoes, and a pair of high-top work shoes. You also received some under shorts, tee shirts, and appropriate socks, a tie, two sailor hats and a formal hat of some type.

It was an art just to stow that minimal quantity and type of clothes within a standard sea bag. During later times I learned that you needed more dungarees and more white uniforms, depending upon where you served and that made stowage in a sea bag almost impossible, especially if you had a camera. As an Airman Recruit heading for Aviation Photography school, I always kept my precious Argus C-3 under my pillow or at least near at hand. Where are those pictures today?

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. During my navy schooling era, I was always being given a very small compartment into which I would have to stow every item of my clothes and all of my other belongings. It makes some sense because if you get assigned to a small ship, then space would be quite limited, but I was to become an “air dale” whose assignment was certainly to be a large ship or to a shore base where space was not such a big deal.

But this was a training program and they must train you for worse cases. Do you realize that you can roll your clothes items and tie them with string ties and save a lot of space? Do you realize that you can store a lot of your loose items within your shoes, including your camera and film? If you put them inside a pair of socks, they won’t catch you on this.

There were a number of special training situations that I remember, a larger number that I have total wiped out of my mind. Fire fighting was one event that was actually exciting. They showed you a number of different scenarios, and then they started teaming you up and exposing you to real fire fighting situations. They put together a dozen of you and have you carry a fire hose down two decks into a burning fire and put it out. You were put face-to-face with a very hot fire with and without a fog nozzle in place. What a difference!

But I do remember that we marched, and marched. We would stop periodically in order to get another shot for measles, or mumps, or whooping cough, or small pox, or polio, or something they had not invented yet. Then we would march to our next class.

One class we did not march to was target shooting. We were thrilled to be loaded aboard some buses and driven up north on highway 101 to somewhere near were Miramar Air Station currently is located. As we were off loaded we soon realized that we were at a Marine operated shooting range. This was more my style. I had become a pretty good shot with the rifle during my high school ROTC days.

But this know-it-all was very quickly pulled up short by one of the marine instructors and told bluntly that what I had learned in ROTC was WWI techniques and I was to do it his way. Since I had already been demonstrating my supreme knowledge to other recruits, he made an example of me by having me demonstrate his way. I learned a lot that day.

During ROTC, I had been taught to wrap the rifle sling around my wrist and somehow support the rifle on my elbow “in order to give me more control.” This young jarhead told me bluntly, by the time you do that you would likely be dead. “You have to be ready to drop and shoot immediately. And so he showed us all a couple of ways to do that. The key thing that I remember of all that was to hold the rifle with my hand wrapped around the upper sling attachment. When we dropped were to be lying prone and with that hand in a position to be support for the rifle. Use you hand to elevate the rifle by squeezing or relaxing it.

That description is not really exact, but as a result of his personally putting me under his eyeball-to-eyeball scrutiny, I fired 20 out of 20 bulls-eyes on my first series. I also surprisingly did very well in my other firing positions. My Mom later told me that there was an article in the Riverside Press about my being awarded some type of shooting medal. I had never been told that by the navy and it not listed in my navy records.

We did a lot more marching, attended a lot more classes, and had a lot more inspections, and then we came to a time when another interesting situation arose. It all happened on a weekend, this was a time when our chief Boson was home, and the real people in charge took over. Our instructions were that we were to always march to our meals, even on weekends.

But on Sundays it is very difficult to get everyone out of the barracks to line up to go to chow. This one Sunday, things were really slow and only about half of our platoon was lined up and neither of the two top-dog recruits were there yet. So as a recruit squad leader, I took the ball into my own hands and those of us there “marched” off to the mess hall.

This did not go over so swell with our Assistant Recruit Company Commander. Remember, he thought that he was in charge. When I returned from dinner, he was there at the top of the barracks stairs to confront me. (I wonder if he ever had dinner.) Words were exchanged, soon fists were displayed, and the natural thing did occur. Well, after the exchange of five or six near misses, he landed a hard one which broke off one of my front teeth - the third one to the left on the top side. This was no big deal during its time, but did play a big part in a future encounter with another person who made the mistake of disagreeing with one of my actions.

During boot camp, what else do you learn about. Well, if you are to be on boats, there must be a lot attention given to how to survive if your ship ever gets into a situation where it might sink. So how do you train you for that. First you must march to a place where there is water. Well, no, that could be the second thing. The first may just be to march to a place where they have a plywood ship sitting on land where they talk and talk and talk about what the environment is like when you are aboard a real “steel” ship.

Okay, we got that over with and next we march over to a big swimming pool. Now you are on a ship and there is an emergency, and so you have to jump into the water. First, how do you jump in - head first? The answer was No! Now you have to decide to do when the ship is on fire and surrounded by a lot of oil which is also on fire. Well, let us learn from lesson one and give an answer that you jump in feet first.

Well, they have a different answer. They increased the risk by adding that the oil fire is now surrounding the ship and if you surfaced within the area of that fire you would die instantly. So how do you survive. Thank goodness that we did not have to demonstrate our ability to do that process in a real fire, but we did have to show that we understood their concepts. We had to jump feet first off the side of the pool (the side of the boat), swim underwater to the other side of the pool. Then we had to jump off the side of the pool feet first and then swim underwater for at least 25 feet, splash your hands over your head upon the surface, stick you head out, get a breath, and then duck under and swim at least 25 feet further away and repeat the process.

All of this may not be totally accurate, but it is the type of things that I remember from those times so long ago. On September 20, 1948 our Boot Camp Company 227 graduated and then somewhat surprisingly each of us were given 12 days of home leave before we were to return to the Recruit Training Center and then sent to our next duty assignments. Some of these assignments would be to some future training site where we would continue our education.