Mark doesn't talk about the service. He's not ashamed or anything silly like that. In fact, it's the exact opposite. He's proud. He did the right thing at a time in his life when the right thing was hard for him to do. He signed up with a friend of his by the name of Randy Christmas. They joined up on the "buddy system". He was guaranteed to serve with Randy and he was also guaranteed to serve on the West Coast. He was stationed in Virginia (East Coast) and Randy was on the West Coast. So much for promises.
We got married and off he went to Virginia without me. I followed a few months later with everything we owned packed in the back of a mustang. We set up home and off he went on a cruise. It was a time of no cell phones, no personal computers with email and internet. We had no house phone. It wasn't as though he could call from a pile of tin floating in the Atlantic ocean, anyway. I wrote him every single day. I sometimes wrote him two or three times a day. It was hard.
Mark was gone when I found out I was pregnant with Tyson. He was gone on birthdays, anniversary's, holidays. He wasn't there when someone threw a rock through my kitchen window in the middle of the night. He couldn't come to my rescue when some weird-o followed me home from the beach (we lived across the street from the beach) and tried to break into the apartment and I had to grab a shot gun and snuck out my bedroom window to run to the pay phone to call the cops.
Two hurricanes struck in the time we lived there. When I was evacuated with the first one, I had no car and didn't know where to go. We didn't have a phone and I didn't know anyone in Virginia to call anyhow. So I promptly hid under the bed. Don't ask me how I thought that would help. But, that's what I did. I cried all night. The waters flooded up to the edge of my windows, but didn't come into my apartment. The second hurricane he was home. We got a knock on the door from one of his shipmates. He had to go to the ship. When a hurricane is eminent, the ships pull out of port so they don't bang against the docks and cause damage to either the ship or the dock. We had Tyson, and this time I followed the evacuation orders. We were put in a gymnasium of a school. There was no food. No water. It was terrifying. I watched the skies turn black and watched winds whip trees into formations that aren't natural.
Mark was a boiler technician on the U.S.S. Canisteo. He worked in unbelievable heat. He worked hard. When you are in the service, there isn't "thinking for yourself". He was told when he could sleep, eat, work. There wasn't much free time. He was told when he had to cut his hair and how short it was to be. He was told how to dress, when he was allowed to have facial hair, and how to make his bed. He slept on a bunk in a room filled with other sailors (gross). He had to strap himself in the bunk to keep from being thrown out by the pitch of the ship. The price of our freedom came at the cost of his freedom.
It wasn't all gloom and doom. He saw places that he would have never been able to see. He had experiences that will be told for years. He fished off the end of the boat and caught sharks. He passed the equator and crossed the North Pole.
We were so lucky to serve in peace time. He experienced a few times when the ship went to battle status, but they did not engage. He served his country and was prepared to go to war or follow the steps commanded by the "powers that be".
The slogan for the ship was "If freedom were easy we wouldn't be here." Our service members give their all to our country. And in turn, they serve each of us and I'm grateful that my husband is a part of this group of men who gave their all.
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