WEBVTT

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Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg
Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is

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John K. Hill. He is
a US Navy veteran of the Vietnam War.

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We spoke with him during a visit
to the USS Midway Museum in San

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Diego, California, and as we
often do, we began the conversation by

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focusing on his younger years, starting
with where he was born and raised.

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I was born in Battle Creek,
Michigan, where all the flakes come from

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Kelloggs. Yes, and Post which
is right across the street from Kelloggs,

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the serial capital of the world.
So did you have a history of military

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service in your family, my dad
and my grandfather and where did they serve?

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And how well? My grandfather was
in the cavalry in World War One?

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My dad was army World War Two
in the Solomon Islands and all of

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MacArthur's Island, hopping throughout the South
Pacific. Did that have a strong impression

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on your desire to serve? No, So what got you into the service.

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Well, if you were a high
school senior in nineteen sixty nine,

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you had two choices. After you
graduated, you were either going to college

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or we're going to Vietnam, and
I knew there wasn't a college in the

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country that would take me, so
I would rather enlist and have a little

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bit of say so in where I
was going and when I was going and

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why did you choose the Navy.
At the time, my dad talked me

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into it, having been in the
Army. They had a real good electronics

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program, which is what I wanted
to get into. But in the beginning

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I wanted to be a helicopter pilot
in the Army. I was all signed

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up and ready to go. Then
my dad, who knew an admiral as

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a friend, took me out to
dinner and they both talked me into not

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Army, You're going in the Navy
because they wanted to see me again.

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I guess they thought your survival chances
were better and better. Yeah, you

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signed the papers and where did you
go? Then? Great Mistakes, Illinois,

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Great Lakes is what he means.
But what did you do there boot

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camp? And what did that consist
of? Well, the usual, you

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know, lots of marching, calisthetics, pt firefight training and stuff like that,

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which was pretty fun. And after
we graduated from that, you went

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to your various technical school. So
for me it was propulsion and engineering still

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at Great Lakes. And was that
an area you'd already had some interest in

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or was that all new to you? No, I was not wanting to

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go into that area at all.
But the military has this little trick up

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their sleeve. They wait until you're
in and you're all sworn in, and

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then they tell you, oh,
you're color blind. You cannot do anything

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on this list, which is everything
you want to do, And they tell

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you, here are the choices you
have, and it's one item something you

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absolutely do not want to do.
So for me it was boilerman. Who

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wants to be a boilerman? Nobody, but that's how they fill the billet.

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Was it something that came fairly easily
to you as you learned it them?

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Yeah? I mean I had a
mechanical background. We all did in

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those days. You know, you
souped up your own cars and worked on

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machinery as a teenager, so it
was all pretty easy. What kind of

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a system did they train you on? I would imagine different ships might have

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different systems. It was a Babcock
and Wilcox boiler plant with a six hundred

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PSI operating pressure for steam driven turbans, which is what almost all the ships

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in the Navy were running on in
those days. And so after you trained,

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where did they send you to San
Diego? Right here? Okay,

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right here? And then what I
was into a destroyer here in San Diego?

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I check in. I made a
huge mistake. When I check in

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at the quarter deck, they call
for somebody from your division, you know,

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the engineering division, who runs up
and they're very friendly, and they

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rip out their little notebook and they
go, hey, when's your birthday?

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Dumb things? Should never tell them
your birthday? Is that only means when

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it comes, you're gonna be hunted
down and tortured. Okay, I have

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to ask that, what did they
do on your birthday? If this is

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a family film, I probably shouldn't
go into it. Okay, I'll take

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your advicement on that one. So
was this the Buck? Yes? Okay,

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so the USS Buck? And when
did you set sail? Well?

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When I first got on the Buck, we went out numerous times to the

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local island out here, San Clemente
for bombing practice, you know, firing

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our guns and stuff. We did
that a lot to get the gun crews

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trained. And up to speed before
we took off for Westpac. And then

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once he did that, what was
your voyage like? Well, I learned

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on my first trip to Hawaii that
I'm subject to seasickness coming from the Midwest.

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Never gave it a thought, didn't
even know it existed, but I

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found out very quickly it's a bad
thing. We stopped in Hawaii for fuel

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and supplies, and they gave us
They think it was a couple of weeks

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of liberty there, which was pretty
neat because coming from the Midwest, you

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know, that's that's a dream.
And for me it was very patriotic because

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as we pull in, we're pulling
in right across from the Arizona Memorial and

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that's where we tied up. And
it happened to be on a weekend,

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so I remember standing watch on my
ship looking across at the Arizona and it

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was just very moving and patriotic to
be in Hawaii right across from the Arizona

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Oriole on a weekend. Just moving. It gets me fired up patriotically.

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From Hawaii, next stop was Midway
Island to get more fuel, which is

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what the BTS are all responsible for, So that means you will not be

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leaving the ship and doing any exploring
like the rest of the crew. You're

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going to be there putting gas in
the ship. The one thing that was

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interesting on our way from Hawaii to
Midway. I'm just nineteen years old.

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I'm down in the boiler room and
over the one MC we get an announcement

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attention all hands, there will be
no fishing well tied up to the pier

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at Midway Island. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. So once

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we got there, I was working
down in the boiler room, I thought

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I'd climb up and take a peek
to see what Midway looked like, at

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least from the pier, and there
must have been a thousand fishing poles over

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the side of the ship. I
mean every possible sailor was fishing, and

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I couldn't believe it. They made
that announcement you're not supposed to be fishing,

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and everybody on the ship was fishing. Turns out the reason was apparently

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there was some poisonous coral that the
fish feed on, which make the fish

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poisonous and dangerous to handle. But
the whole ship was fishing and nobody seemed

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to care. What are you doing
on board as this journey continues into the

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Pacific, working operating the boiler equipment, you know, making the ship goal.

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What does that consist of? It
consists of long, boring hours on

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watch. You've told every high school
dating story there is by the time you

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get to Vietnam, and you shared
that with everybody down in the boiler room

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because there's nothing else to do.
You can only stare at gauges so long.

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What are you looking out for?
What could go wrong that you need

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to be there to observe and respond
to. They're always changing speeds, it

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seems like, and whenever they do, the demand on the boiler changes and

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our pressure could drop quickly or rise
quickly. So there's different jobs, you

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know. So the guy that's actually
operating the boiler is called the burner man,

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and he's operating the burners in the
fuel that's going through them, and

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his job is to keep the pressure
right on the number it's supposed to be

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and not lift safety valves from lack
of attention where the pressure would build up

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over its safety limit, and then
lift a valve that's very loud, and

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no matter where you are on the
ship, you would know that somebody lifted

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safeties. What happens if the pressure
is getting too high and you don't respond,

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or it's getting too low and you
don't If it's getting too high less

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fuel less fuel, you know,
you throttle the thing down if it's not

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high enough to give it more fuel. And our fuel line was one inch

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in diameter under three hundred and fifty
psi, so we're pushing a lot of

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fuel into that nozzle times. However, many burners you have going in the

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boiler, which was typically three or
four to maintain a cruising speed that they

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wanted the rest of us just boring
boiler talk. I mean, so,

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did you commiserate much with the rest
of the crew or was your responsibility to

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be down in the guts of the
ship most of it? Well, that's

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your whole family, that's your life, is the guys you work in the

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boiler room with. And there's lots
of little initiation things that go on in

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engineering to welcome you into the real
world of engineering. One of our favorite

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tricks was up on the upper level
of the boiler room where you're looking through

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the sight glass to see where the
water level is in the boiler. The

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older guys that have been on the
ship a long time would take a brand

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new quarter and stick it on the
sight glass and let it sit there all

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watch. The sight glass is about
eight hundred and fifty degrees, so after

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a couple of hours, that brand
new quarter is right around eight hundred and

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fifty degrees. So then the trick
is they would take a pen and just

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flick that quarter off the sight glass. It would fall down between the grating

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and make a bunch of noise.
It would hit the deck plates at the

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bottom where us new guys were,
and there isn't a sailor in the world

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that won't reach down to pick up
that brand new quarter. It's an instantaneous

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third degree burn on your two fingers
which you can't process fast enough before you

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stick it in your pocket. Then
it burns through the pocket lighter immediately and

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gives you a nice little brand on
the thigh. And we could see the

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guys in the shower who was in
engineering and had just been initiated with their

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quarter brand into the side of their
thigh. Well, after that story,

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I think we ought to trust his
judgment in not sharing what they did to

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him on his birthday. We'll have
much more with US Navy veteran John K.

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Hill in just a moment. I'm
Greg Corumbas. Please stay with us

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on Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans
Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest

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in this edition is John K.
Hill, a US Navy veteran of the

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Vietnam War. He served as a
boilerman on a destroyer, the USS Buck,

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and after describing the voyage to the
waters off of Vietnam, mister k

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Hill described the role the Buck played
during his deployment there. Well, if

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it wasn't on the gun line,
then we spent time behind an aircraft carrier

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what they called plane guarding in case
somebody or a plane got blown off the

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flight deck, we were there to
pick him up. Of course, all

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the carriers have a helicopter airborne during
flight ops, and the idea is you

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would think the helicopter would get their
way before us. But apparently in one

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case it was the plane guard helicopter
that got blown off the flight deck,

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and so there was no airborne helicopter
to pick that crew up. But that's

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just driving behind the carrier about a
quarter mile behind. So from the perspective

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of my job, it was nothing
boring, But one of our more interesting

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jobs was intercepting supply ships going to
Hanois that weren't supposed to be doing that,

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I guess, because you know,
I'm so far down on the totem

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pole of what I need to know. All I got was tenth hand information

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a month afterwards. So anyway,
we might be sitting at the at the

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gun line, you know, in
between rounds, just riding in the surf,

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and all of a sudden we get
a general quarters belt and a flank

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bell to take off at this heading
as fast as we can go and intercept

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this supply ship. And even though
we were an old World War two tin

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can, we had the twin mounts, you know, and we looked very

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menacing if you're if you're not a
combat vessel. So we would come alongside

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these supply ships with all of our
guns aimed at them and our torpedo launchers

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aimed at them, and apparently we're
telling them on the radio that they are

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being escorted to Guam, they need
to follow us, and that they need

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to cooperate. So here we are
taking the supply ship to Guam. They're

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all their crew members are on the
flight deck. Taking pitch of us on

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their main deck, and our whole
crew was on our decks taking pictures of

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them. And whenever we intercepted one
of these ships, we would fly our

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ship's flag, which was a jolly
roger because we were the buccaneers. I

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got my ship's flag right here,
and we had a great, big,

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huge jolly roger that was oh gigantic, and it just filled the whole back

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end of the ship, so that
we felt that was cool. Absolutely.

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Now you're telling me in the break
about the range of the guns and some

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of the things you heard from folks
well after the war about how effective the

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buck had been. Apparently we recalled
the fastest gun in the West as in

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the West Pack. What was the
range of those guns? Well, not

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being a gunner's mate, this is
what they told us, twenty six thousand

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yards. It's a long way,
it is. The interesting thing to me

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was every time we fired around,
you know the shockwave, you don't want

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to be anywhere near the barrel.
You want to be behind it and as

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far away as you can be to
get away from the shockwave of that thing

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going. Sometimes we would take a
break and go up on the deck at

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night and you could see the shell
heading out over land. But the real

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eye opener to me and my shipmates
was we were out there when one of

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the battleships, I believe it was
the New Jersey, was maybe ten or

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twenty miles further east of us,
and I knew that sound travels, you

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know, so fast, so you'd
see this thing fired. Of course,

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they're firing sixteen inch guns, huge, but I never thought about the heat

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traveling at the speed of light.
You would see them fire, and as

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soon as you saw the flash,
you felt the heat on your face instantaneously,

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and you go damn, you know, and you'd hear that show going

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over us as it's on its way
deep into Vietnam. And that's a sixteen

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inch round. That's like a Volkswagen
Beetle being fired inland. And that's a

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long way. That's about fifteen miles. I think they might have gone further

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than our twenty six thousand yards.
I don't know that for fact. I

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mean, I think they had a
longer range. No. One of the

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other things that happened while we were
on this gun line, we would fire

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rounds all night long. And one
of the things that our ship and the

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ships in that era were afraid of
was Charlie coming out and planting depth charges

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or something on the hull to damage
us. So what they would do is

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the boats and mats would walk a
watch all night long with a pail of

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concussion grenades. They would take these
concussion grenades and drop them over the side

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of the ship. That apparently would
kill any living thing within a hundred yards

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of where that grenade was dropped.
Now we're sleeping right below the waterline all

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night long, bang bang, you
know they're doing this, But a sailor

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can sleep through anything, you're so
tired. But all night long, they're

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dropping these every fifteen minutes. And
I remember getting up one morning and walking

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out on the main deck heading to
breakfast. I'm looking out and a whole

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night's worth the dropping these concussion grenades
killed every fish anywhere near the ship.

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And there's all these fish belly up
near the ship. But what scared us

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was look at all the snakes.
Dang, you know, and we're going

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to go on swim call in this
area with all these snakes. I think

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that's what scared us more than sharks, you know, man, Because we

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were told any snake in the ocean, deadly, poisonous. So the thing

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that scared us was all the dead
snakes and jellyfish that we saw the next

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morning. Did you eat the fish? No, that's the last thing we

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wanted. Well, how long were
you there in theater? I would say

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a typical cruise was we're told we're
going to be there nine months. Of

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course, after the ninth month,
we're told we're going to be here longer.

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Of course we knew that was coming. Anyway, I'm sensing a theme

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here of what the military says and
the truthfulness of it might be a little

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bit questionable. What are you most
proud of from your service? I never

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thought of it that way, surviving
doing a good job. I guess well

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it was you got him there and
you got him home, like you said

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before, So you did your job. My last question, as we're aboard

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the US Midway Museum here where you
are a docent. You are one of

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the most pleasant people who we've interviewed, Yet somehow you have the nickname Grumpy.

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How did that happen? That was
a nickname I got years ago when

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I was working at a Christian school
up the coast as their campus engineer.

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And then I started a video editing
and broadcasting class, and the kids realize

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that if I didn't have my McDonald's
coffee first thing in the morning, I

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was not as pleasant as you attuned
to. So they're the ones that gave

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me the nickname. John K.
Hill is a US Navy veteran of the

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Vietnam War, serving as a boilerman
on the destroyer USS Buck. I'm Greg

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Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and

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thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
a presentation of the American Veterans Center.

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00:20:14.920 --> 00:20:18.640
For more information, please visit American
Veterans Center dot org. You can also

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00:20:18.680 --> 00:20:25.160
follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook
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00:20:25.599 --> 00:20:29.799
Subscribe to the American Veteran Center YouTube
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features, and of course, please
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get your podcasts. Thanks again for
listening, and please join us next time

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for Veterans Chronicles