[Interview Begins]

SPRAGUE: Today is December 22nd. This is an interview with Joseph R. Guastella, who served in the United States Navy from July 1st, 1964 to June 21st, 1968. This interview is being conducted by Luke Sprague at the Veterans Home in Madison, Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. No one else is present in the room. Okay, Joe, tell me about where you grew up.

GUASTELLA: Well, I grew up in Madison, basically on the south side of Madison Gilson Street. And I went to Franco's school, which is still in existence, and then Madison Central, which is not in existence anymore. I can't think of what it just happened to drive by yesterday, but there's a hole in the ground, so I think they're going to put something there. I don't know what it is, but, um. So. And after graduation, I worked for a year. Uh, well, actually, after graduation, I went to MTC to be a draftsman. But after three months, it seemed so much like high school that I decided I didn't want to do that. So at that point, I did find I had a part I had a job at the University Medical Center where I would record medical records from individuals and all that stuff. That was a career that I wanted to have. So a guy that used to live next to the name is Duane Hummel. Um, we decided that we were going to go to the Navy.

SPRAGUE: So.

GUASTELLA: Duane Hamel Oh, yes. Okay. And so that was it. So we graduate when I graduated in 63. So it was. Yeah. So, but in June, I don't know why he decided to, to he, he didn't have a good very good home ways. I think he, he thought going in the Navy would be a change of pace and all that stuff because his parents were kind of drinkers you might say. And so we went in on the buddy system supposedly with with the understanding that we were going to be together in boot camp. And well, that's a fallacy because it doesn't work out that way. He's what what it boils down to is when we were in boot camp, he was in the sister company. So yeah, we were close by, but we weren't in the same company, which is what I thought the, um, the guy, the recruiter said that what would happen, you know, because here we were green, you know, leaving home and all this kind of stuff without having somebody that, you know, with you would make it a little bit easier. Well, it didn't turn out that way, so, um, so I, I can go on. That's how my career. So I ended up in Great Lakes.

SPRAGUE: Um, well, let me interrupt you, Joe. So, what did your family say when you said you wanted to join?

GUASTELLA: Well, actually, how that worked out is I enlisted first and then told them afterwards, which my mom didn't appreciate. But my dad says, Well, you ain't going to like it. I could tell you age our meaning, I guess, knowing my character or how I am. How would you say it? In other words, him and I? Or is that? And so going into the service where you have somebody that's telling you what to do all the time is not going to sit very well with you. And not that he didn't want me to have some kind of structure like that, because I think that's. Yeah, but, but the mere fact that I went did it, him being in World War Two, you know, he knew what it was like being in the military and, you know, me being a teenager and knowing everything and all that stuff, um, you know, didn't sit well at all. So, yeah, that was, that was a little different. So.

SPRAGUE: Okay, um, let's take a break right there.

GUASTELLA: Okay.

SPRAGUE: This is segment two with Luke Sprague and Joe Costello. We're going to pick up again. Joe and I were just talking about growing up and, uh, talking to his parents and entering the Navy. Mm hmm. Um, tell us a little bit more about that, if you could.

GUASTELLA: As far as training or, uh. What do you mean? My parents?

SPRAGUE: Yeah, your parents. And then their background also with the service.

GUASTELLA: Well, my dad, Russell, he was in World War two. I think it was then for like, three years. And my mom was raised in Beloit. Wisconsin. When he got out, he told him he must have been. But not now. I'm kind of confused and I think because. I was born when he was still in the Army. Because he waited and I met him out in Connecticut one time without leave or something like that. It like I mentioned earlier, he didn't talk too much about his background as far as in the military and all that stuff. The only thing I could say is that my my mother lived in Beloit with us, and my grandparents were immigrants from Sicily, actually. So their education wise, they were limited to back then. And then my my dad's family also was from Sicily. Immigrants, too, as well. And. So it makes me a full blooded Sicilian. You might say. And limit my dad after he got out. Yeah, that's. You know, this doesn't make sense because. I can't. Anthony Menem, my wife, my mom when he was working down there. But that can't be the case because I know I was born when he was still in in the in the army. You know. I guess I never asked them that much about what was going on back in their day. It's this the first time I've ever had a question. So now it's making me really think and I'm confused. So in 1945, the war wasn't over yet, and in January of 45, I think it was, Germany went first and then the Japanese was all the way back into August. I think it was so. And I know he didn't get out before the war ended because there was still, you know, technically at war. So. Somehow there was. He worked at a carpenter shop that might have been after he got out. And I was already born because then he lived down there. That's what it was. Because my one grandparents lived in South Beloit, which was right across the river into Illinois there. And that's where I'm getting confused, is that he was down there working as well as, you know, being what about but me and my mom down there. So, um, and then I think. I have a sister. I think she was born down there, too. And then being my dad, being from Madison, he came up here to work and he worked for the Board of Education for me. And just she's been about 32, 23. I mean, he retired when he was 61. He is 40 some years at the Board of Education in Madison. My mom was a stay at home mom. That was one thing I could tell you about growing up back in the day, is that when I when we lived in Gill Street, very good school, it was probably half a mile away or something like that. If I wanted to, I could go home for lunch and or if I got secularized back in the day, you get sick, you could go home because mom was there. She wasn't working someplace. They had to call someplace else. Mom was home. Then the other thing is, is every time when we come home from school at 3:00 in the afternoon, Mom had made chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies or pie or chocolate cake. So I had all these kinds of things, you know, when I was in grade school, which was really, really nice and all that and yeah. So and then to make ends meet back in the day, we had a two story house and cutting bringing light. They were starting to work out of a two storey house and they rented out a room to another little lady for probably two years. I think it was. Then I can't remember if she passed on or if she had to go to like an assisted living, places like that. So in the meantime, then my mom. You should take in sewing. You like it? All I can remember is this one guy. He was a businessman. I can't remember if he was a lawyer or something like that. He'd bring shirts over to my mom, and he wore them so much that the collar would be threadbare. She'd take the collar out and reverse it so that if it looked new again, you know what I mean? So they would probably get $0.10 a share to something like that to fix them and all that stuff. And then that she learned how to start making drapes and that she did for like 20 some years. And she got to be really a good seamstress as making drapes and stuff, I guess. And that really put them over the edge as far as financially and all that then. So we went from I was 16 when we left Gilson Street and we went to, uh, used to be a barracks go off in that gulf. Yeah. Golf course up there and the Park Street. And then they turned it into a housing development. So we lived at Square Trailer Trail. They did for numerous years. I graduated from there when I was 18, so that would have been, uh, I came out here to try to do the math.

SPRAGUE: No, that's okay.

GUASTELLA: Uh, well, if I graduated from there, that had been 63. What am I thinking?

SPRAGUE: Yeah, and that would've been your high school graduation.

GUASTELLA: High school graduation from there? Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So you were able to enlist in 64? Yes. And because you were 18 at the time.

GUASTELLA: Oh, yeah, I was. I was actually 19. 19, because I graduate when I graduated, I was 18. Yeah, Cause you know that that cut off. Well, you had to be five years old before November 1st or something like that. And my birthday's in January, so I cycle over so I could actually, I had some friends that were already graduated. I could go out and drink beer with them because back then, 18, if you go to a beer bar, which would be Rusty's out in Middletown, which was a popular place, and the bunny bunny hop, and then there was one out out here and I can't remember the name of that one, so which didn't make my dad happy either, that I could go out drinking beer. So probably that's one reason why I didn't have a career at a high school and up in the services because, you know, partying too much and that kind of stuff, so.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. And, uh, where did you go to boot camp again? You said Great.

GUASTELLA: Lakes.

SPRAGUE: Great Lakes. How did you get there?

GUASTELLA: So I forget how we met up town with the recruiter. Dwayne and I. I can't remember. Does anybody else? There had to be, because we took a bus to Milwaukee and then we get to Milwaukee, and there's, uh. And I could tell already at that point that I did I'm not going to like this because we met some sailors there, actually, our company commander, who was going to be our company commander, he was a first class. Um, I can't even think about what billet he was, but he was first class. And then we got a train and then we went down to Great Lakes. And, you know, the first thing they do is anything civilian you get rid of, you know, we're not smoking anymore. None of this. What about Barbara? And then I don't think that happened on that same day, but the next day, then we go get a haircut and then we get our uniforms and shoes and all this kind of stuff. And then, you know, where the barracks that we're going to stay in. And the barracks down there were World War Two barracks. I mean, they were antiquated, so. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So yeah.

GUASTELLA: Well that that book I give you there has pictures of basically what boot camp, what I think is 12 weeks log. Cause I think I got out in September and September and all that stuff. And at that point. They give you a week's leave? I think it was that I come back to Madison at the end of your graduation. They would. They'd ask you what you want to do as far as career in the Navy. And they had quite a few different, you know, opportunities for you. So for one, and I don't know, remember why, but I took electronics technician. So back then, electronic technician, anything that that required, you know, tubes because back then we didn't have all this other fancy stuff. Tubes or whatever you, you would work on. It was a 30 some week course, 30 to 34 or something like that right there at Great Lakes. So I got out of boot camp and come home for a week to go right back to Great Lakes and then start of course as well. At that point, I you know, I'm I'm responsible for myself now. I'm a sailor. Okay? So that means that I have to be there at reveille and all this other kind of stuff. But on the weekends we were free so you could stay on base or go into town in Great Lakes there. Waukegan, Illinois. That's right. That's where it's located, I think. So As a result, having the weekends, I could take a train back to Madison, visit with my friends, say party, go back Monday morning. Well, what they did and then and this guy that was teaching us, he'd give us homework. On the weekends that we'd have to do, you know, by Monday or whatever and all that stuff. Well, I think it was either 12 or 14 weeks. I flunked out. They said, You ain't doing your job. So they made their promise, you know, And I went to school. And now, because I didn't succeed, I'm at their mercy. So I go into a holding company, I think. Like maybe two weeks, two or three weeks. And I remember where we used to go to chow when I was in boot camp and in a school. We'd get in lines and all this kind of stuff and you ate pretty much whatever they they put out for you, right? But in them two weeks that I was in that holding company. We'd go to the cafeteria in the morning and ordered two or three eggs, hash browns, cup of coffee, orange juice, whatever. And now we could have hamburgers, whatever, you know, that we were used to eating hotdog, you name it. Cook to order. Same thing. Any, any like. So I'm doing this for two weeks. I'm going like, holy cow, this is so bad in the Navy anymore, you know, it's all so I don't know. Do you want me to just keep continuing?

SPRAGUE: Just a couple of questions. So you. When you went in initially, you went into a school for electronics technician, Correct.

GUASTELLA: Okay.

SPRAGUE: Of any other particular people you remember from that first a school or other memorable experiences?

GUASTELLA: Uh. I did not read it. It was you learned all the basic things in there. You know, you had to go there to learn how to swim. Or if you did not know how to swim, then you're in pretty bad shape. I didn't know how to swim. And there's where they didn't show you that if you went in the water off a ship, you could use your trousers or your shirt or your head for life preserving things. Then we had to go through a building that they had smoking and whatever, and and we had to wear a face facemask. That's one thing I didn't know about the Navy at the time, is that of course, afterwards, if I figured it out. But ships can burn and you would think mean metal that they would. But I guess with all the paint, all that stuff on there, that they're very susceptible to burning. And then every morning we'd have and we'd have to get maybe it wasn't every morning, but at least once or twice a week we'd have a locker inspection, we'd have all our clothes fold a certain way and all that kind of stuff. Then we also have to be, uh, clean. So in other words, they wanted your all your undies and whatever clean. And I remember this one every morning. It might not be every moment because I don't have a white t shirt on, but we'd have to pop the t shirt out to make sure there's no yellow line under there. Big meaning that you didn't wash it so and so. I made it through that part of boot camp really easy. But I remember one guy, he didn't they call them scrunchies, of course, back in the day. Um, and because of him. And actually he was like a fortune leader, but he was a recruit so that when the actual was thinking of it. You know, this is really frustrating as I get older here, forgetting, uh, the company commander. That's what I've done. Yeah. So the company commander isn't there. 24 seven. He's got away from himself, you know, So that and, and that's, that's the bad thing is they pick these guys that really don't want to be a company commander. So sometimes they take it out on us, say, well, is this the kid who's supposed to do these things after the fact and all that? But he turned out to be one of them, scrunchies and all that. And because he failed, then we got extra duty, whatever you might say, just call called grinders. And then July, you'd be out in these cement is like a parking lot and be marching out there and it'd be had her in hell and because of him. So one day a bunch of guys took him out of the rig, brought him into the shower area, and they scrubbed him up with. The kind of soap that you use on the floor and the brushes that you. I mean, this guy, was he. I felt bad for him, but I mean, he didn't he didn't listen. So a couple of senators took him and, you know, under their control or whatever you want to say. And I said to him, you know, this is going to be really because we don't want to be doing this extra stuff because of you. And so things worked out. He didn't. Then you didn't get to be the lead recruit anymore. You picked somebody else. The the governor commander picked somebody else. This guy that we had for a company commander, he looked like Pierre or whatever. He had this little fine mustache, fine features on him, and he. The way he walked there, that he had control of himself. And I now the company that my buddy went into, he looked their their company commander. He looked like Popeye, but he was like six foot three. His shirt. You know, all the big bulges and all that stuff. And he was Andre. And he. I feel bad for those guys. His beer drinker. So every night he'd be out. He'd have to be up at five or 430 because we had to be ready to go at 530 in the morning. And I remember one time, I don't know what that somebody did something, but he he actually had a guy, one of the recruits die and his and his commander. Towards the end of my 12 weeks or whatever. But anyway, I remember one time he had all the guys in his company and unless they called it a grinder and the two men were having their ears in their elbows and the like, like so and in a proud position, you know. And, you know, the guys come back with his elbows are bleeding. And, you know, he was an animal and obviously he didn't like doing he was doing. And well, I think when the kid committed suicide because, I mean, the depression was that bad. And of course, you hear that through the grapevine because all of a sudden, that guy there no more the company commander and, you know, like whatever was happening to him and all that stuff. And we were all glad even our company was all glad that because it being a sister company, things could rub off. So when he left, we were all happy as well. So.

SPRAGUE: Do you remember the name of the unit? The training unit.

GUASTELLA: So it should be in there in that book.

SPRAGUE: Okay. In the.

GUASTELLA: Yearbooks. In the yearbook? Yeah. Yeah. It's going to have a picture of our company commander. It won't have a picture of the other guy, I don't think, because, Well, he's in the sister company. I think the other one was either 296 hours is to 97. So it'll be either before or after the company numbers. I don't know if you could look it up that way if you wanted to, but Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So let's keep let's keep going on here. So what happens? You spent your two weeks in the holding company. Mm. Move me ahead. Where do we go from there?

GUASTELLA: So I get orders to go to the USS Essex, CBS nine. And of course, at that time, it didn't mean nothing to me but the Essex. I was in World War Two and the Essex was after the other carriers got. I can't take this, you know. This is where I get history in there. But anyways, Essexville was the first of nine other aircraft carriers built identical to it after during World War Two. So anyway, I go I go out to the Essex. This is kind of interesting because I get sent to a company. It's called Fire Control Now fire control. The terminology sounds like what we do is control fires, right? Well, that's not what it does. Fire control is the radar that controls the guns. So in other words, the fire control we that we're in is a radar that would lock onto an airplane or boat or whatever it may be, send a signal to the gunman and the gunman would follow whatever that director was doing. He could use the gunman could be shot manually. You know, somebody there's four guys inside. I can't believe that they could exist in there, but they could get elevation and training on that thing. You know, somebody says to them they are trained to such a such a degree and elevated such that they could do that separately than from the from the fire control. So this is an interesting part of their career. So they get on the Essex and when you normally go on a new ship, especially if you're a recruit right out of boot camp, basically they give you wherever you go. The guys that have been in for ten, 20 years or even through three, you know, the established guys. The. How would you say it? Um, well, anyways, one one, one thing, it would be like, go get a bucket of steam. And, you know, being a recruit, a bucket of steam. Okay. And so you'd walk around and ask it for a bucket or we need a skyhook. That'd be another one grabbing a skyhook. Well, you know, you go to these places and then guys, well, you have to go over to this company over here. I think the last time we had a scale because, you know, and then they'd be kind of giggling and all that. So after they did a couple, they had me like this. Um, they sent me up to one of the directors and, uh, they started giving me, I can't remember the details of the thing, but I was up there. They're giving me some details and I had something to do, and I recognized the voices that were. Telling me these things and all that stuff. So I don't know. I can't remember how long I was up in the director, but so I come back down to in our company where we had our. I'll call it a break room, but it's basic. Well, I guess it was. That's where we meet in the morning and from where our bunk area. And we'd. And then the chief would give us directions as to what do we do for work for the day and all that kind of stuff. So anyways, I didn't participate in this thing the way they wanted. So I come down into the company and into the break room area and all that stuff, you know. And I guess I had kind of an attitude. And pretty soon the door opens up and there's two Marines because an aircraft carrier. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe 20, 30 Marines. I know because. And I can't remember if we had nuclear weapons down there or not. But anyways, all the ordinance and that kind of stuff and the captain and Marines for protection and, you know, they did guard duty on it. And the Marines are part of the Navy anyways. So two Marines come in there and, you know, I come into the rec room and I'm sitting down on the benches or whatever, and all the guys are in there, you know, and. The guys. One of the Marines is. Is there a city named in here? Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. So come with us. So I go with them, you know, And of course, they're behind me in the aircraft carrier. There's a very. For whatever reason, I guess for bad guys in where we were, our uh, uh, break room and sleeping area was right below the flight deck. So an aircraft carrier, you got probably nine or ten decks to go down. So I'm marching down there, going down the, you know, the ladders and all that stuff. And then we're going down into the hull of the ship. And it's and of course, you're talking to me in the back. And keep your head straight, sailor does that in a way. We can't wait till we get you down into the, you know, into the brig and all that. And we had some things we're going to do and so on and so forth, you know, And I'm getting to think this is pretty serious. You know, these guys are pretty convincing that I was in. I was going to be in the brig. They actually marched me right down to the door. In all the time that I've gone down there going down from the ladder and all that stuff, they keep on telling me, stay straight, keep quiet. But but I don't know all these guys. I get to the actual door. And they say, Turn around, Sailor. And all the other guys that were in my company, in that company were on the ladder looking up, you know, clapping and laughing and all that stuff. And I tell you what, that was a big relief. So after that point, when you go every time you go on board a ship is your need to recruit more or less come right out of boot camp. You either got to go to the mess hall and cook. You're not an actual cook, but you don't have potatoes, all this kind of stuff. Early morning, all that stuff. Or they have a painting crew. Now this. This doesn't make sense, but this is the Navy for you. So when I got to when I went on this painting crew every time we were in port. We string these nets and all that stuff when we get any nets and we've paid the side of the ship, the waterline, which would be black and and gray and all that kind of stuff. And you're kind of curious. It was 893 feet long and quite a few feet off the ground, an off the water. And so there's a lot of paint you could you could do in it. The thing is, when we pull it apart, if you pulled in the opposite side, which I think we'd always pull its starboard side, which it did about being in because we had tugs that would pull us away. Now, like the ships nowadays, it got this size first and all that stuff, but they pulled us away. We pulled in some part that didn't have that arrangement, the other side to be all rusty because we'd only paint one side, the one side that was visible to everybody that walked by the ship. So they didn't care. But the other side looked like so. And I did that for like two or three months, and that'd be like the only time I'd be doing that is when we're in port, because you're not going to paint when you're out to sea, of course, you know. And so after that little tour of duty that I, I, I went into that to being one of the regular guys in the fire control unit and I'd get assigned to a with a petty officer, second class or first class or whatever and whatever maintenance we'd be doing or practices and all that kind of stuff and. A little bit. Not for myself. I must have listened to a little bit in electronic school because I learned I mean, I was able to do some of the stuff that if I can talk a technician was doing from whatever, however absorbed that knowledge at at Great Lakes. And so I was on their 1st of September, maybe, as you know, I had some of this stuff written down on here. So here's I don't know if you want any of this stuff to, too. We didn't have jets on the ethics. We have these anti submarines.

SPRAGUE: So the camera can see it.

GUASTELLA: Okay.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

GUASTELLA: Okay. So it's this one right here. So that's, uh. So this is me right here and this is working. And we had a computer on there.

SPRAGUE: What kind of computer was that? Well.

GUASTELLA: It's. It's. It's a monster. It's mechanical. And back in the day, that was probably state of the art. But it would that that computer would figure out years for the director, you know, distance it all these kinds of things. And it would also help um, the issue of for shooting and so on. Now, um, see, like this, this guy, he was a second class and he was, he was a of course we call him life or he doesn't like didn't like to be called lifers, but he was just very knowledgeable. He was very Navy oriented, but he was also a very fair guy as far as, um.

SPRAGUE: Q So you were working on the controllers even though you hadn't gone to air school yet for them?

GUASTELLA: Correct.

SPRAGUE: And you were using the schools that you had learned in that first 14 weeks of taking.

GUASTELLA: Okay. Right.

SPRAGUE: And so I have to ask, so what what guns did you control with that.

GUASTELLA: Fighter controller, The five inch 38.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So the question then is, is how, um, how does that work with the aircraft carrier? Because I'm thinking five inch guns. Okay, great. How often are you going to get engaged that close in if you're in 1964, 65, 66.

GUASTELLA: And being a World War two aircraft carrier back in the day, they had they had more guns out there than than than we had. We had four corners of five as 38th single barrel back in back in the day. I'm sure they had a lot. But, you know, I really have to investigate what it looked like back in the day. But I'm assuming well, I know there was there was more firepower on a modern aircraft carrier. Doesn't even have guns on there anymore. They have something that, uh, they got these little Gatling guns and all that stuff for self-defense. But they they depend on the airplanes more than anything. And and their escorts of the destroyers than they do on guns anymore. So being 1964 or 65, I mean, that's 20 years removed from World War Two. So they went through a I don't know if they call it a frame on an aircraft carrier. They call it a frame redoing of it on a tin can. Anyways, that thing's probably been in drydock one or two times. Matter of fact, I know one time anyways because prior to me being on there is that aircraft carriers initially were all straight. Then at some point and I can't move towards the end of World War Two or maybe towards the Korean War. They call it the annual duck. So in other words, an airplane can land while two airplanes take off from the bow. You know, because they have your back in the day. I can't remember what they used if it was steam. Probably was steam catapult up in front. So. Oh. Where was I going with that? Oh, the gun thing. So that was. In some in some respects it was antiquated for that for the era that the ship was on, you know, because the newer ones I know didn't have guns put on there and stuff like that. So, yeah, but that was a World War Two at that point when I was on there, it wasn't even considered a combat carrier as a anti-submarine carrier. If you see the place the planes are these things. They drag on a cable, a wall through the water and, you know, sent out of like sonar or whatever and bounce back. And then, you know, they do this in a big circle around around the ship, maybe 15, 20 miles out. And we go up and down the and that's why they got a little boring is because we just go up and down the coastline of the East Coast, you know. So from when we were stationed in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and so when we'd go out for two weeks, that's all we did. And then there was another aircraft carrier. I can't remember the name of the other, but they'd kind of like do the same thing, you know, a lot of them, uh, on there.

SPRAGUE: So let me ask you a couple dumb questions here. Was there ever an intent if a submarine was attacked by missiles or sonobuoys with torpedoes dropped, was there ever could you ever depress those five inch guns to target a sub, the flow to the surface level? You know.

GUASTELLA: At that point, if these and excuse me at that point, if these guys were to detect a submarine out there because every time aircraft carrier goes out, they always got to escort tin cans. Okay. The Compton, Canada destroyer, they would be the ones that probably would pursue the submarine, chased them out or they figured out it was something that needed to be taken care of. They could drop the depth, depth charges at it. So, no, we had in when I was on there, we had in Harvey, no offense, I mean, other than them four, four guns down there and that was it. I mean, and then the airplanes that were on there, I suppose they could have armed them with some bombs or something like that, but I don't remember them doing that, you know.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Did you you said you were in the Atlantic. Yes. Did you do any other cruises to any areas while you were on the Essex.

GUASTELLA: So here's, so here's a. But I don't know how you would do this, but this is kind of the information that you would get on the ship and stuff like that if you wanted to take this stuff. These are I'd want to back off because, uh, but it gives you it gives you the information of what the ship we were in. Actually, I think this is I think we were in New York at that time. They had a World World's Fair in New York.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah, It's like, uh, July 2nd to sixth of 1965. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: But this thing gives you a better explanation of the ship itself and all that. And I do have some things, you know, like at Thanksgiving time, they, uh.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about Thanksgiving on the ship.

GUASTELLA: Huh? That can be a hard one to remember. The holidays. If you were on board. They did. They did their best to give you a a rifle kind of meal. You know, it wasn't going to be one of these canned jobs. I don't like that. It was. You know, we had turkey, the whole the whole ball of wax on there. So being an aircraft carrier is, um, a different kind of navy because you get you got room to walk, you got room to get lost in, you know, things like that. So, uh, I was on there only from, I want to say, October of 64 to May of 66 and what happened at that time. So, like I tell you, I, I learned enough at school that I was able to do some of the stuff that the fire, the guys that were fire control trained were able to do so one day. Well, I know. So in January of 67, we went into dry dock in Boston. And in drydock, that's when they start, you know, repair this. I remember there was a crew that used to call it. It was called Knuckleball Busters because the hammer would have four foot protrusions that come out like this air operated in the paint. And the side was that thick. That's how many times I think I painted when I was even older, you know, And all that fall into the into the dry dock area and all that stuff. So, you know, and I can't remember how many pounds that that weighed. I was a ridiculous amount of all the paint that was on that board that ship.

SPRAGUE: You know, it was called a knuckle buster.

GUASTELLA: This was. Yes.

SPRAGUE: And that's what you were breaking the paint up with?

GUASTELLA: Yeah, I, I, uh. How would you say, uh, advanced from that point? So I didn't have to do it that time. So the new guys did that, and some of the shipyard workers did that. So I wasn't doing that at the time when we were in drydock in drydock. It's you're limited to what you can do because the ship isn't in the water. It's pretty much it's you do a little bit of minimal maintenance and stuff like that. And at that time in Boston, Boston was at that time was really big in the naval shipyard. That's where I met my wife. But we were only. I think we only see each other. Maybe, I don't know, half a dozen times at all. Uh, when I was in the carrier at that time. And I thought I wrote that down, too. But so around them. Well, we tried. Our chief comes up to me one day, says, Would you like to go to a school again? He says, Fire, fire control a school. And I go, Yeah, I think I would. So I go to. So he writes up whatever orders and all that stuff, and they get sent to Bainbridge, Maryland, for a school there. And I think that was. 14 or 16 weeks ago. It wasn't a lot of school because, like I went in, must have been longer in it because I went there in May and got out in September.

SPRAGUE: Maybe 16 weeks.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds really is half is almost half of what I would have done through electronics school.

SPRAGUE: I assure you. Going in and about July of 66.

GUASTELLA: To 2.

SPRAGUE: Eight, that secondary school.

GUASTELLA: Til I. Yeah, yeah, probably because.

SPRAGUE: Then you would have been January would have been when you were in dry dock in Boston.

GUASTELLA: Harbor, January.

SPRAGUE: 65.

GUASTELLA: Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Okay. It's like I said, I thought I had these things in order and all that, but I guess I don't too is just the weather. So anyways, I end up in a school in 66.

SPRAGUE: We know that.

GUASTELLA: No, 67. 67.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

GUASTELLA: Can I have the picture? Come graduate. Here's here's the one thing that. Seriously.

SPRAGUE: That's okay.

GUASTELLA: But maybe I'll find it after. No worries. All right, So anyways, I graduated from there. And for the guys. When we graduated from the air school, I left as a third class because I was able to take the test and I already knew enough from working in the field there as well as going to electronics school, you know, beforehand. So when I graduated from that school, I was in my class. I was only third class because I got to take the I had enough time in service. And then I well, they said, you can take the test. I took the test to pass and I made third class, which had been easy for you, I guess. So do I make a school? But that when there was really an easy school to go to because I remember they didn't have any weekend studies. We did everything during the week day. And, uh, there was, uh, what would we call the Navy girls? She has come out. Uh. At a boot camp for the Navy girls. Why can't think of the name of. Anyways. There was enough of them that every weekend they would have they'd ever get together like a band or whatever. So us sailors could go over there and, uh, for a weekend and think of the name of them. Uh, anyways, let's dance and stuff like. Like that, you know. So, um, but one of the guys in the class had a car, and they. Plymouth, Roadrunner. And I don't know where he get his information from, but so we ended up sometimes on the weekends going into Pennsylvania, other parts of Maryland, and there'll be these bars that we could go into and all that kind of stuff back in the day, because I think at that time I must have been close to 21, maybe I was 21 anyway. And I still remember one time we went, it must have been 50 or 60 miles away. And there was. Four or five of us in the car and we party and all that. And I was the only one that didn't get drunk. So the guy says, You got to drive back. I said, I get up in the morning. Oh, we are. He says, go, I don't know, five or ten miles on this way and then take a right. So by when I get to where I thought it wasn't all that I'd hit him, I said, What if he'd wake up a little bit? Yeah, yeah, this way. So we did that way for, I don't know, an hour, an hour and a half. We didn't get back to the base until like 330 in the morning in Beverly Hills. 530. It was like you shut your eyes and you woke him up. Woke up just, like, instantaneously, you know, as I was and says, I don't want to do that again. That was that was brutal. So that's about all I remember it as far as Bainbridge, Maryland. I mean, because it was quick.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. Um, do you remember which controller you trained on?

GUASTELLA: Well, that would be in that information. And that was one of the I think this one here. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, the thing is, here's a little fact. When I left the Navy in 64, the 68, I didn't want no part of it. And so I was married and we had kids and all this kind of stuff. And one guy. That was on board ship with me. This was on a destroyer, not an aircraft carrier. We went to a school together. We were. He was fire control to it. We kept in contact. As a result, he found out about a reunion. And at that point, they were going to the reunion and not on the Essex was on the destroyer USS Dias. So at that point, then I got more interested in, you know, what would happen. And when I was in my career in the Navy, might say it more this year was other than I'm surprised my mom saved these these few things for me because this is what gives me some of the memories back on that aircraft carrier. But most of my memories are on the side of the USS Dyess, which so.

SPRAGUE: Okay, we can go.

GUASTELLA: There. When I graduated from a school. The fire control. His name was Richard Wroblewski. And then there's Wayne Hurd and one other guy. I can't think of his name. Anyways, four of us from that class got sent over to the Dallas USS Dallas, DADT, and that's where most of my memories of the Navy are partaken. Because. Well. An aircraft carrier that was. I think we had the least 27 or 2800 guys and yet never I never went below deck. So I didn't know what the engine room was in that thing, the flight deck, you know, you could walk around there, but that was restricted to certain certain areas too. And that was I wish I meant the hangar bay. If you go on the flight deck whenever there wasn't any flags going on, I plane's going, I don't know. So we had a minimal amount of exposure to other sailors. We just you know, I think there was like 20 guys in there. And then we didn't even I don't remember the gun gunner's mates on the carrier. They had someplace else, you know, And then they had the air tails, which were the guys that took care of the airplanes. And they were totally like a separate navy because all they took did is take care of the airplanes. It had nothing to do with the ship itself. So when I got on the when we graduated and we all all four of us got sent to the dais, that's only 272 during the 90 guys out there. So in the ship was only 370 feet long or 380 feet low, 40 feet wide. I mean, yeah, it's smaller, it's a lot more compact, you know what I mean? Yeah. So you get to know the individuals a little bit more now so that I went on board there as a third class fire control technician.

SPRAGUE: As a petty officer. Third class.

GUASTELLA: Yes. Petty Officer.

SPRAGUE: 3:00 And that one would have that been about.

GUASTELLA: So that would have been in, uh, I want to say September, October of 68. I got on 6460, so. 66. Because I wasn't under two years. I wasn't it wasn't one or two years quite. I got into fall. I had one whole year and then I got out and in 68. So yeah, and then 66 I.

SPRAGUE: Got on it. Where did you get on the diet?

GUASTELLA: So I go from the the Port Rhode Island is one of the influences that I picked the Navy because I had an uncle, my Uncle Charlie, that years ago. You know, I have a picture of his in the Navy for four years and he was on the West Coast. He went to Japan above harbor, all these nice places and all that stuff. So I go to Bainbridge, Maryland, graduated from there, and I get to go to Newport, Rhode Island, which is eight miles away from Quonset Point, Rhode Island. So I'm back to the same spot. Basically, I started it, you know, when I first got on the Essex and all that stuff. And there there's about I think there's about eight destroyers at the time. Uh, we'd be all tied up under Purisima, so we'd go out two at a time with whatever carrier it was going out at the time. And we'd and that's basically what that today has to do with anti-submarine. Uh, there is. So, um, yeah, and being a third class and a small ship, I had limited this is, this is probably one of the reasons why I couldn't wait to get out is because I was kind of bored because the gunners mates and the guys are ee threes or seamen or whatever, and, uh. Burger joint. They'd have to go do duty on the bridge, in other words. And that's what you call the steering wheel. And it's not a steering wheel, but, uh, anyways. And then they have to be doing lookouts and all that. And any time you're able to see, these guys would be up there. You know, they're there for our duties. And I didn't have to do that kind of stuff. Well, they're out there doing that. Well, we're about to see up playing cards in the machine shop with the Machinist guys over there because they didn't have nothing to do when a ship is under way, either because they're limited, which you can fix if if the ship is moving. You know what I mean? So the time unload and the S6 and the dice was kind of, uh, I don't know whether it was a thrilling or whatever. And then we did get to go overseas. So. God, I thought I had this all memorized.

SPRAGUE: Where was the Dallas headquartered? Out of word. It was based out of.

GUASTELLA: Newport, Rhode Island. And that place doesn't exist anymore either. So anyway, I know what happened. So when I got out of school, actually when I was down there, I guess I got engaged to a woman down there. I thought we were in love and all that kind of stuff. But towards the end, I decided I wasn't. But I had kept my wife's address, mailing address. So I got back to the diocese down there, and she's up in Boston. It's, what, 75 miles and a hundred miles between the two. I wrote her. I sent it back to, you know, back and whatever, back in the area. And, uh, you know, let's, let's get together whenever. So obviously she agreed. So we started dating. And. We were. We kind of got serious just about the time of May of 67. And at that point we went on a mad cruise. Now, these are things to you, you. I would like back, but you can use them if you want them. So this would be like, uh, every day we just the plan of the day and this is what it's like. Would you end up with the ship we're supposed to be doing for the day?

SPRAGUE: I'm just going to hold them up to the camera here so they can get an idea of what we're talking about. These are called.

GUASTELLA: The Plan of the.

SPRAGUE: Day. Plan of the Day. They're pretty straightforward. Yeah. Looks like there's even some handwritten instructions on the back of here. Huh? That's interesting.

GUASTELLA: See? Like this. This one here is Monday, August 21st, 1967.

SPRAGUE: Looks like they were made on a mimeograph machine.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, I don't think it was that sophisticated.

SPRAGUE: Or even less sophisticated than a mimeograph machine.

GUASTELLA: Well, I don't know. I mean.

SPRAGUE: They've got quite a few of them there.

GUASTELLA: Well, this is the first day I couldn't believe my mom save some of these things because she had a habit of cleaning out. But I did she did save enough of these so that I have some kind of idea of what, you know, what it was like and all that back in the day. Yeah. I don't know if you.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So you agree? Yeah, we'll talk about that afterwards.

GUASTELLA: Okay. Um, so anyways, then we did. We did. Amid a mid Mediterranean cruise and the comedy Summit.

Unidentified That, that cruise and all that stuff. So. Oops.

GUASTELLA: Sorry. Go ahead. That's right. So we left Newport May 2nd of 67.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

GUASTELLA: And you could. You could hold that up to it. Good.

SPRAGUE: So you hadn't gone out on any cruises before then? Okay, that's important. That's interesting. Okay. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: So as as as the my I keep in contact with. I see Jim in Minneapolis, Richard in Ohio, Whitey in Maryland, McCue in Florida, and Greg in Chicago. These five guys I've kept in contact with when we were aboard ships 1350 years ago. Yeah. And. And we have an annual reunion. I'll tell you about that, too, after. Anyway, so. And my my friend, my shipmate up in, uh, up in Minneapolis. He made that for me when we went on our, uh. Um. On our flight there.

SPRAGUE: Part of the ice. It was good of him to do. Yeah. Wow. That really helped you out, right?

GUASTELLA: So it took us a quite a this it took us ten days across the the Atlantic, but I don't think we were in a hurry anyway, so we stopped in Gibraltar, but I don't remember anything in there. And I don't know if we even had liberty in Gibraltar, but so we had ended up in Naples, Italy. And the reason being is that on a ship you have to have water to drink. You have their water for steam, cooking, showers and all that. So they have what you call evaporator. And I don't know why they never fixed this one, but we had evaporative trouble, so we ended up staying a lot quieter. This is our ten days. We stayed in Naples because we did have a military or a naval base there. That's a real sophisticated one. But in other words, they were able to work on the evaporators to get it so we could be underway again. Did we go to Turkey in Izmir, Turkey? And I can't pronounce the other one here, but we were there six days in there and I don't know if that was we had trouble again there. But these places back in the day, Turkey, I think we were still friends and all that kind of stuff. And, uh, the original cruise was supposed to go this place, as I said. Then we were going to go through the Suez Canal and eventually come back through the Suez Canal and go back over the Atlantic. It is so Suez Canal due June 3rd or fourth. We go through that, and I thought I had a better picture than.

SPRAGUE: You did down somewhere here. I saw it.

GUASTELLA: You know, there right through the last American ship or fighting ship to go through the Suez Canal. And then the Israelis, uh, bombed, sunk a couple of ships in there. So this this is what my mom had saved. I don't know why I even got these here, because.

SPRAGUE: Wow, there's the dice right there.

GUASTELLA: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Well, and what newspaper is this, by chance?

GUASTELLA: Scott Fitzgerald.

SPRAGUE: Wisconsin State General, June 4th, 1967, in a plane crash. Wow. So tell me about that. I mean, so yeah, I mean, you can tell us about the scene, obviously, in some way.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. So we're, um, we're on deck and we're not in general quarters, but we're we're the captain kind of told us, you know, be prepared. And the Egyptians at that time we were friends with, well, they were fighting the Israelis and all that stuff anyway, so they were coming out on small boats and all that's shooting rifles in the air and this kind of thing, you know, they they'd come out and this small craft, I don't think there's six inches between the top of their boat in the water. That's us. How many guys would have it? And they're crazy. They're like, you know, bad Americans and all this kind of stuff. But the Americans and as we're going through the canal, they had, uh, weaponry and guns. I don't know how big they were, but they're enough to the tip of us. And as we're going along, these things they're aiming right, is, you know, because we're just crawling through the water and they go following us along and then there'd be another one doing the same thing. So. So the captain tells us, tell them not me particular, but man to fire hoses. If these guys get too close, let them have blast them with the fire hoses. And I'm thinking myself, we get a fire hose and they got real guns. I saw. I mean, how is this going to work out? You know, but we didn't we didn't have use of the fire hoses and nothing really developed. And we made it through the canal. And then we ended up going to.

SPRAGUE: Uh oh, let's let's stop right there. Okay. Quick question, sir. What? I mean, what was it like for you? Well.

GUASTELLA: In some respects, I guess you're a little scared. But then again, it's a situation where the way the way you can see what is happening. Uh, if they decided to shoot at us, there wasn't much for everyone to do because we didn't we didn't arm our guns on the ship. We didn't really know and we didn't aiming at them so that, you know, there would be that, that conflict. Or that feeling like these guys instigated it. You know, they they pointed their guns at us, so we thought we would have to shoot back in L.A. You know, we had the fire hoses out there. Well, that just didn't seem to be adequate at the time. But, um, I don't know, the atmosphere, everybody out there didn't seem to be there. Um. I don't know. Scared of what you might say or whatever it was like. And I can't remember how long it took us to get through the thing. I think it was probably most of the day to go through the canal because you can only go probably four or five knots.

SPRAGUE: But. And were you headed north towards the matter? To the south, towards the threat called the bunker?

GUASTELLA: We were headed towards Iran. And so that would have been east would have been underneath the canal. Okay. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Were there any other, uh, demonstrations, uh, that you saw at that time, at that other than that aiming their rifles at, you.

GUASTELLA: Know, pretty much after that seemed like a short period of time. I'm sure it was more than a half an hour or something like that. But, you know, I'm not mistaken. I don't think there was that much where the confrontation was. In other words, a lot of the canal we went through without any, you know, conflict or anybody around for some reason other than this one spot with that might have been the city of Suez or something like that right there. I don't I don't remember exactly this. If it wasn't for this, I probably you can see these guys. Well that is a this a.

SPRAGUE: In second boat here yet.

GUASTELLA: Those are the ones more or less you can see that are.

SPRAGUE: Pointing to a second boat here it was Were the guys aiming their rifles at you or.

GUASTELLA: Yeah well there's the shooting up in air. They weren't but the the cannons and the short of them were the ones that are aiming at us. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. Guns. Not so. In other words, those on the shore would have done more damage than these guys could have ever done. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Well, it is interesting that the captain didn't have to lock and load and prepare to return fire.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's. I guess that was our thoughts afterwards as well. You know, what is the fire hose going to do when these guys got cannons on the shore? You know, as far as, um, I don't even remember any of us being armed with the actual bullets, you know, guns or whatever like that. I mean, I don't I don't recollect that that's being that concerned. I don't know why, but we ended up being the last ship to go through there because, uh, the next day I think it was the three day, six day War or something like that, the Israelis saying a couple of ships. Then we couldn't go back through the Suez Canal and more. So we had to do all our our the remainder of our cruise. Through Turkey and all that kind of stuff. The only other the only other event in Turkey, we stopped there. We went liberty. But, um, there's. Islam is no longer an Islamic terror, I think. I think that so we went through a couple of bars there. But, you know, it was nowhere near like being in Europe or the United States as it was. We weren't. You weren't you weren't welcome there because their culture's altogether different than there's a lot that you know.

SPRAGUE: And when you were coming out of the Suez before you got there, did you notice did you observe any of the Israeli attacks or.

GUASTELLA: Any of the.

SPRAGUE: Explosions or burning or smoke? Okay.

GUASTELLA: Those are all done after we were already gone. Okay.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So so okay. Going on. Sorry.

GUASTELLA: So there must have been another part. I thought this was beforehand by Iran, but we stopped. I think we stopped in Ethiopia, which is on the top of Africa there. Just Osama. Ethiopia. There you talk about a dirt bike. I mean, uh, sand, sand, sand. And the reason we had to stop there is because of our evaporators again. And the French had a naval base there. So I don't know if we get the friends to help us or whatever, but we are able to stay there for three or four days and work on the evaporator storage and underway again and all that stuff. Then we went to buy Arena Halo, which is trying to get these things in order to secure the year we have. Oh, well, why they do this? This is how this is how we.

SPRAGUE: Know, okay.

GUASTELLA: How the crews actually win.

SPRAGUE: I'm going to hold this up to the camera so we can and I'm going to start you with the world image here and you talking about the way you went around. Make sure we get it all on camera. Okay. No, I understand.

GUASTELLA: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Thank you.

GUASTELLA: So, you know, maybe I'll understand. Better to. Yeah. So, yeah, we went to Turkey and then Port said that that was instilled in that they could. Mhm.

SPRAGUE: Yep. Uh the Suez at the North end. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: She hit, he missed a couple of. When I hear it is right here. Uh. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, when we got out of there, it wasn't what you call a paradise. Yeah, You hear that, Massawa? That one there. I don't remember so much in there, but Djibouti. Oh, my God. Uh, that was a very impoverished area. I mean, the the people around there didn't hear nothing in the middle of sand. There's a cement building. It could have been a bigger than my house. And if you sell electronics. So guys are buying cameras and. And back in that day tape, the tape recorder, the big real ones can't, you know, cause they're like 40 bucks in back in the States. They're like 150 bucks. You know, everybody's got one of these things. Yeah, my my closest friend and all that stuff bought one of them and. Yeah, there was nothing there. I mean, uh, I remember some people, and I don't know why I was off of the ship, but there's all the railroad cars came by the by the pier.

SPRAGUE: And that was in Djibouti.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, that was in Djibouti. Okay. And these guys were sweeping up corn off the off the tracks and all that. Because when the the trains went by, some would spell out cause that was going to be dinner for these guys, you know, And I mean it. That stuff off the ground. It was very, very eye opening you might say. Mhm. You know, um, you know, I hate to backtrack, but I remember one time we were on the aircraft carrier and I can't remember where we pulled into, but we couldn't pull into port. Can I backtrack?

SPRAGUE: Yeah, of course.

GUASTELLA: So, cause this, this just jumps in my. So when you're feeding almost 3000 guys, there's a lot of food. Right. Right. So we're in port. This is one thing that I hope they don't do anymore, and I don't think they do. But back in the day, garbage used to go off the fantail into the ocean. It is like the ocean could take everything and you never could fill it up. Right or wrong, you can't. So anyways, so we're in port and I think it was down in the Caribbean, it might have been in Puerto Rico. So we're in port. And when you go into port with a big ship like that, you know, they hired these little boats to come out and take your trash away and cause you you got to be respectable. I remember this couple boats coming through, a couple ladies and them and all that stuff. And the night before, we had pork chops. Well, the guy that cooked these things, he didn't bother draining the fat or anything like that. So they had trays of pork chops and there's, like, soaked in oil, you know, nobody ate two things. So the next day, the crew from the, the, uh, galley and all that stuff, they bring these big barrels up. They're in it for the pork chops and they're they're lowering it down off the side to these boats. Initially, you can see there there some garbage and all that stuff. And they just kind of push it up to where they lowered the those barrels of pork chops. These people were nuts, but I don't think they ever seen me before. They instead of just dumping it over, they were taking them and stacking them. And these little whatever you call these little bozo. And they they were and I'm looking at it going like, man, oh, man, you know, we turned it down because it had oil in it or whatever. They weren't appetizing looking. And these people down there thinking they just got it, you know, the best meal of their whole life. And it was so I don't know why. They just I think because of the Djibouti. It there were those people didn't have nothing to eat there. You know, that was pretty, pretty scary place. So anyways, get back to the dice. I guess. So we're, uh, when we got done with that back in the day, we were still, I guess, friends with Iran, the the Shah, whatever. So we go over there and we get a bunch of their dignitaries out there are like on the dais, and we stayed there for, I don't know how many messages. A long time. Two weeks. Why are we. We had to go around. We patrol this one area right here between Iran and. And I don't know what the other country is there anyways.

SPRAGUE: Now, if you were doing anti-submarine operations, you were probably no Soviet, sir. No.

GUASTELLA: You know, it was like. No, there was no military. There's a military attached to this cruise. It's like a friendship thing, you know? Fly the flag and that kind of stuff. Cause we didn't have nobody else with us.

SPRAGUE: Oh, yeah? Then what would you do even if you detected somebody?

GUASTELLA: Yeah, we. You know, we're on our own. Yeah. And why we patrol this one area? It could have been because of the maybe the oil back in the day, even at that time. But we had we were. We were still friends with Iran at the time, the Shah. And I remember one day we had the dignitaries there, mostly military guys. We had put a big screen over the back end of it. The captain of the ship. And then they had tables set up. I don't know where and how they got these tables with their table set up. And then these these guys come aboard and we fed them pretty good to their last maybe an afternoon or something like that. One of those B friends and all that kind of stuff. And then the rest of the time we cruised around this fellow here.

SPRAGUE: Came Persian Gulf.

GUASTELLA: And every morning when you go out after, you know, sunrise and all that, we go outside for a roll call to be a very fine, like talcum powder all over the ship. That's what's in the air all the time. Wow. I mean, you know, that sandstorm stuff, you know, And of course, then they the both of them had to get out the hoses and and wash the ship down and all that stuff. And then they'd be the same thing, you know, And that it's a miracle that anything could work because that stuff is can get into, you know, it's so fine. I mean, it is almost like powder is what it was. So, yeah. And then we when we were in the wind, you just had the Persian Gulf. Persian Gulf? Yeah. So we stopped in Byron Island for a day. It was like liberty, cause we hadn't been doing anything for the last two or three weeks. I don't know where they got the Pabst Blue Ribbon, but they get passes over there and just started on the ship. We played a game, softball game, and I had pictures of this I want to show you too. And I didn't have it in order, I guess, but we had one day in the swimming pool and drinking beer and they had beer and big containers. Uh.

SPRAGUE: This was in Bahrain.

GUASTELLA: You know, they ran that. But every now and then I here, here's what it looked like. And when we had them aboard those we had see the canopy out there. Mhm. And that's Amanda's Iranians on there.

SPRAGUE: That was a it looks like you were on another ship like you went over. One was a destroyer and then once an aircraft carrier you went, you went over.

GUASTELLA: To my pictures. Oh God, no. Not in.

SPRAGUE: Order. Okay, no problem. Just curious. Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out that.

GUASTELLA: They're not in order. Sorry.

SPRAGUE: No worries. Well, thanks. Thank you for sharing that with us. Okay.

GUASTELLA: Let's see if there's anything on the island to our great, great, great distances that this is some of the work when we're underway. How the ship would react to some of the.

SPRAGUE: Knots on the dias. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: The dias.

SPRAGUE: Is this you on the lower left here? So somebody else? This guy in the corner?

GUASTELLA: No, that's me. And I had a beard on. This is. This is Larry. Hell. So he's. I haven't seen him in 50 years, but we get to contact that. But people can see it. Okay.

SPRAGUE: There you go. Like you were saying, Larry.

GUASTELLA: His name is Larry. And also he a gun, his mate on there. But this kind of gives you an indication of how much room ahead of the.

SPRAGUE: It's pretty tight to me.

GUASTELLA: Well, there's three hai. The little passageway there was like where I. I slept on the top bunk, but three, six SNCF, you know, six, 12. There's like 20, 24 guys in a span of maybe four. I'm here to the wall.

SPRAGUE: Wow.

GUASTELLA: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: That's maybe 25 feet or 20. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. Wow. Stacked high, you know. So, yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of room in that. That's just like the aircraft carrier. I got it. So I thought I had pictures of us when we were in Bahrain. I do have some pictures I'll be talking about.

SPRAGUE: Okay, too. It's okay.

GUASTELLA: Oh, here. Here's the deal. Other than the two guys on the bottom, the top four guys I keep in contact with. I forgot to go from Boston. Jim Brady to. Oh, okay. So there we are. Very, very see, we got no shirts on and we're playing softball. That's where we had the south of the river. And, you know, that was a big treat because you.

SPRAGUE: Hit that on the ship somewhere.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. Then I don't know where they had a hidden, but they had it. It, you know, and they, they even had a cool pool that we would.

SPRAGUE: Wow. Yeah. Looks pretty nice, actually.

GUASTELLA: It was for a day, and, you know, it wasn't. I was just. You know, I forgot to tell you when I was in Naples that we went to I went to the Vatican and, oh, uh, was with Pompei, and we got to do a couple of day trips off the ship. Here's one thing again. I'm not proud of it either, but so for me, the first class was a lot like you when you come back. And one of the one of the sailors, we went into town and we got hassled by I was a little kid, you know, they got around us and all that, you know, whatever they're talking. Anyways, so afterwards we ended up going to a restaurant. They have dinner in town there, and Walter got his wallet and he didn't have any money in it. They were able to take this wallet off his shirt pocket. Take the cash back and hit it. Hit any or not? I mean, because it hit us, you know, they're running around and all that stuff. That's how good they were at that. But anyway, so that was I forgot about that, uh, one incident there. But so we're where we thought everybody they were in Ireland for a day. And I don't remember going to the bush here and I ran but, and found out about it. But I don't know. I don't think we actually stopped in as well as the shows on here that we did. But of.

SPRAGUE: Tell me you had talked about in the pre-interview phone call about crossing the equator.

GUASTELLA: That's coming up. Okay. So once we got done, we ended up going back to Djibouti again, I think, because of our evaporators. Now, we were going to head home after that point because we couldn't go through the Suez Canal anymore. We had to go around Africa. So then they said, you know, we're going to do some liberties as we go along the West Coast. So after we leave Djibouti, we're coming down the coast of Africa. And we're getting to the equator. So if you've never been to cross the equator before, you're probably one. If you've been across the equator before, your show back. Big deal. So I would say 75% of the show was about Iraq, but. And of course, the ones that had been across. That kind of journey for the next two or three days beforehand. What's going to happen better than out of that? But the population are able to do some initiation or whatever and the. Shell backs. But we don't really know what's going that. So we get to the equator. And it's actually happened as Libyan Day is calm day, which is unfortunate. Nice, calm day. They we go through mustered in the morning, you know, roll call and then. We start going through the initiation and the initiative. Initiation takes them all day long. Yeah, it's. Well, you figure out of 270 guys or so, but two and a quarter, two other guys have to go through the initiation and then sell the remaining. The shell backs are the ones that run the thing. So and I don't know where they find these things to or what they're able to do, but they have these big tunnels or what do you want to call their chutes? There were chutes and I'd say they're 15, 20 feet low and they'd put garbage in these things, fill in all the leftover food and vegetables, invertebrates, and you'd have to crawl through this thing, right? And when you come out, there'd be a guy who did this. It was a grizzly used on the shafts of the propellers. This stuff was so sticky, is sticky, and then the rubbing on your head and your hair had to come out. Then there'd be a guy with a hose and he'd be watching you down and all that stuff. And you keep you had to follow this path that they had all around the ship and. How they got away with doing this. They got some fire hoses and they cut them up into maybe two or three feet things. So when you nice and soaking wet and you walk by these guys and they whipping you in the butt.

SPRAGUE: Ouch.

GUASTELLA: It hurts. It hurts best. I mean, your cheeks are red. Cause they're the good time in this one thing. After they had King Neptune, they put Jack on his belly. And everybody has to roll around your face and King Neptune's belly and all that kind of stuff. But they did have one thing, and I don't, um. I'm not proud of it, but it's part of the routine. They have what you call a.

Unidentified And what's in here.

GUASTELLA: Was King Neptune instead of a queen. So for me, it's a division somebody has to send. It person to the queen. That's me. Oh, okay. You know, and he didn't nominate because there's like eight of us, but, uh, they picked somebody else. So if you're in it, I think this start this. This is how it starts out. Because if you're picked to be the queen, then you don't have to go through all this stuff. You sit next to King Neptune. Okay.

SPRAGUE: Oh, because you were picked as the queen. You didn't have to go through the initiation ceremony, correct?

GUASTELLA: Correct. Yeah. Here's a good picture of a destroyer going out to sea. A lot of times we're underwater. Wow. It's not a smooth ride.

Unidentified And it helps.

SPRAGUE: So that's the. Is that called the show back ceremony or what is that called? Is there a particular name to it where the holy logs become showbags? Or maybe not?

Unidentified There isn't a name to it. No, no, it's.

GUASTELLA: It's just the initiation of a trend going from a follow on to a.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

GUASTELLA: Now, I. I thought I was going to bring it down. Of course I forgot. But I have a plaque upstairs on my wall that shows you how we did it.

SPRAGUE: No, that's okay. Okay.

GUASTELLA: Okay. Yeah. You know, they got the date on there, you know? There is a saying. Uh. You could take a picture of it if you wanted to, but.

SPRAGUE: You can do that later.

GUASTELLA: Here. Okay. Now reminder, too. Yeah. And yeah, so on there, I think it does have some it does say something about a cross across the equator and then, you know, something into Neptune. And that is all that cutesy stuff that they have in. Oh, I don't know.

SPRAGUE: And do the show back. Initiations follow basically the same format or are they different?

GUASTELLA: Okay. And the reason being so much is that there's always some it is it's career and career type of sailor on board. So he might have been on a tin can eight years ago that when it crossed the equator. So he's a shellback forever and I'm a shellback forever. So if I was on a if I was on a ship right now, they went across the equator and we went through the ceremony. I would be a shellback and you know, anybody that hadn't would be a pilot. So once you're initiated, you're you're good for like whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Oh, sure. This just might be the.

Unidentified To. Oh, wow.

SPRAGUE: That almost looks like an official tag.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They make it like a big deal.

Unidentified Wow. Oh, wow.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, I got like I said, I got a plaque upstairs. It's no, it's not bigger than this thing, but that that that kind of tells you what it's all about. And, uh, I know I'm forgetting a lot of stuff in between time, but, uh. So we're. We're already. We're at, uh, crossing the equator. So once we did that, we went to, uh, we did for Liberty in Mombasa, Kenya. So we were in there. I got to go to an a safari. And in the town. And what's a big mountain down there in Kenya? Anyways, we're running it on a safari and. You could swear that thing was right there. But yet the farther we went, it still never moved. It's just like it was forever gone. I mean, still, it was. It was far away. Anyway, um, I do have. I do have some pictures of that to it in here. So it is a better picture now.

SPRAGUE: Is the show back?

GUASTELLA: Yeah. I was the queen trying to be the queen. I guess I'm talking a lot more than I thought I was going to. And I'm sorry. I'm not using up your time.

SPRAGUE: No, you're good. Okay.

GUASTELLA: Okay, So here's a safari. Believe it or not, this is me. And I got my hand in the rhinoceros. Oh, wow. Is there a woman in one of the pictures that, um, maybe some of the others.

SPRAGUE: Maybe not seen it.

GUASTELLA: But maybe. Maybe they say anyway.

SPRAGUE: Be here. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. So she's I don't know how she trained them or whatever, but. Wow. Yeah. You can go up and touch them and all this kind of stuff. So that was our safari. And, you know, we've seen other animals and all that stuff on there and, and even the elephants and so on and so forth. They're one of those places where kind of a like a break area where you could get soda and crackers. So I like those Cheez-Its. So I bought a box of cheeses and. It's backward and so opened it up is full of retards. Huh. So none of the stuff that they had there was was either out of fresh or was it sealed enough because. Here's a Rain Rhino two, another one up there. But, um. Okay. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So it sounds almost kind of like. I mean, you're here taking corn and every place you get, I mean. Well.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, because, you know, we were promised to go back through the canal again initially and probably go to, um. There's France on the Mediterranean there. I think we have a part there again, and there's some other places we're going to go to and stay for a couple of days and all that, you know. So it was supposed to be somewhat good for us as well. But but the canal being closed and all our stuff changed everything. So then we went to Madagascar. That's an island. Diego So it is, you know, I don't remember anything about that place. And, and Lorenzo Marc, Mozambique, There was a quick one day stop as well before we headed back home. We were supposed to stop at South Africa. So. Mm. What's the big Is there a big city in the US?

SPRAGUE: In Cape Town?

GUASTELLA: Something like that, anyway. South Africa. So as we're heading down. The coaster. The USS Forrestal had a fire on board.

SPRAGUE: She's traveling alongside you or, you know.

GUASTELLA: She was already down there. So we had to instead of stopping in South Africa, we had to escort her back to the United States. Oh, so we got screwed out of a couple extremities? Yeah. Now, if you really want to know some Navy stuff, I mean, I imagine you got some rough stuff to think about as it is the sequence that started. And I seen this down in Pensacola with the Naval Air Station at the naval base. Is there the sequence of how the ship caught on fire is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, so many sequences had to happen and it took almost 15 years. And this one guy pursued it to figure out how the how the fire started. And one of the one of the planes that was on there was the guy who's running for president with McCain. One of his planes was the one who shot the rocket across the other airplane and so on and so on. And so and all the while, this thing caught on fire and turned into a disaster that can't happen anymore because, you know, they've changed naval procedures and things. So anyways, the Forrestal. Aircraft carrier has to have, you know, escort. There was a couple other tin cans with them. But we got we got orders to to escort her home. So we go across the Atlantic from South Africa to Jacksonville, Florida, is where we dropped her first off. And then we continued on up towards the coast of the United States.

SPRAGUE: Sort of in fall of 67.

GUASTELLA: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Looks like maybe September or.

GUASTELLA: Well, we didn't get to September until the 13th. They took, you know. They don't go as fast as you think you do. I mean, you know, and the other thing is it's it's a lot of miles of the ocean there, you know. So we're headed up the coast to go home, back to Newport. We get up to the Carolinas. And there's a hurricane. So we're maybe like 50 miles off the coast of the United States going up there and a hurricane's coming in. It's going to go into one of the famous areas of the Carolinas there. I can't think of the name of it, but. They've been here before with the hurricane. So the captain says. We're going to go out out to sea. And then come back in and miss the hurricane. Okay, So. We make our turn, head out to sea. And the hurricane changes its direction. We spent two days in that hurricane. Now, that was a little. Well, there's another situation where you're scared, but you can't really be scared because there's not much. There's nothing they can do. I did go up to the bridge when because basically they shut everything down. They turned the gun mount around up and opened the ball so that, you know, I wouldn't ruin the gun mount. Uh. You're pretty much assigned to your bunk because the ship is doing this. Matter of fact, we slept in the aft end. And what would happen is that the waves are so big is that the bow would come out and you could see the sky in the water in front of you. And then the bar would come down and go dig into the water. And I got I can't remember where I got the pictures, but on the bridge, the water is up to the windows. And the screws come out of the water. So the ship goes like this because now they're not they're not grabbing any water. They're just vibrating and up and down. And you have to keep the ship into the waves. You go sideways. They go over, it goes and they get they got em and they get this one guy that they want everybody that he remembers everything. They got some kind of a deal where there's, uh, over the bridge, where it's a needle that goes back and forth. You can tell where where you're at as far as the horizontal. And, uh, he said that the boat, the ship was almost to the point where, in other words, another couple of degrees and been upside down. Of course, you don't know all that because you're not right there seeing it all the time. But so there's two days of that stuff.

SPRAGUE: Do you remember the name of the hurricane?

GUASTELLA: No. Okay. Uh.

SPRAGUE: That would have been in late 67, August.

GUASTELLA: I would say been September of 67, the first part of September. That kind of, uh. Yeah, that was. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Off the Carolinas.

GUASTELLA: In the Atlantic and the Carolinas. There's a certain area that sticks out in my mind. I mean, I can't remember the name of it, of course, but Cape Hatteras. Okay. I think that's what it was. So that's where it was headed for the hurricane. But we ended up meeting it outside. So now we head back to Newport, Rhode Island.

SPRAGUE: Right. Tell me what happens after they get back to Newport.

GUASTELLA: Well, my future wife is waiting for me on the pier. Wow. Yeah. So. And seen her in four or five months have been writing letters and all that kind of stuff. And so we get together. We did get liberty. Most of the ships did it for, I don't know, two or three days. So I went up to Boston with her, stay with her parents there. And then. It wasn't, but maybe a couple, three weeks later, she goes off to England. Her and her mother and the aunt that had decided that they had made this plan prior to to be coming back. And I was like, I haven't seen you in five months. I said, You're going to England. And. So I made a long distance call to her. And while she was in England and I asked her to be engaged. So. Wow. Because. So sometime in September or maybe first October, we got engaged. Then it was pretty much uneventful until January of 68. We go back in the diet course in the drydock. This is the second time I've been in a trade. I was out of drydock with Essex for four months or whatever, and then as well, I ended up leaving the ship. Uh, from that, from the dry dock in Boston in June of 64. But the reason why I didn't have to go back out to see it again is when we went into dry dock, they did a real big they call it a Fram or did they update some of the radar and all this big, quite extensive sort of like a rebuild of an engine or whatever you might say. And they drove us handkerchiefs anyways. I don't know how you look at it. So anyway, so after a ship has been in for a period of time and we think we've been in there for like four months, maybe three or four months. Anyways, you have to go out to see details to see it. So you go out for three days and see if everything is operational before they actually cut you loose and put you back into the fleet, because at that point you're not in the fleet anymore. You're here, but you're in drydock. You're not. Ready to do any kind of weaponry stuff because you're you're not floating, you know. But after they do all these things, they want to know if everything is working. So you go off for three days and all that stuff. So on the way and then after after under normal conditions, you come back in there, everything is cool. Then you go down to Puerto Rico and you do gunnery shoots down there and all that stuff. But I wasn't on there. At that time because after the three day see detail, when we were coming in back into Boston Harbor, the ship hit, ran aground not totally to the point where it didn't move, but it was enough. I'm on the fantail to see detail. It was enough so that the ship come up in the air like. And it rocked like so. And then there was enough momentum that we kept on going. And we just we got back into our berthing area and all that stuff. Well, they knew that something goddamn we said there. So we go back into the dry dock. And what happened is that they tore off the the sonar, brand new sonar going and bent one of the shafts of the this cruiser. So the sort of I think it wasn't that, I guess that target to replace it. They could have done in a couple of three or four days. But the shaft, they had to go to a foundry or whatever and make another one to straighten that one out and all that stuff. So it took enough time that I wasn't going to be on board ship when they went down to Cuba to do that, which are another key detail. So then they just, they sent me down to, uh, to a, um, discharge. Um, I called discharge. It's one of those like I had the two weeks before I went to terminal leave. Yeah. Or terminal. You know, one of those places you get breakfast that you want. I mean, for the last two weeks, I was in there. It was like living it being in the lot like a king, you know, compared to being on board a ship. So that at that point. Oh, I forgot to tell you something. When I was on dry dock in January, Betty and I got married. So we got married on the 30th of January. My birthday's on the 6th of January. And so at that point, the last five months of the Navy, there we were. I was like married to Betty there. And, uh, and then we moved back to Wisconsin under protest.

SPRAGUE: Why under protest?

GUASTELLA: Well, Betty wanted to be with her family. Okay. So leave the married 50 year marriage of 68. So be 55 years. Yeah. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: What? You had talked a little bit about this before, but was there any particular thing, particular reason why you wanted to get out or.

GUASTELLA: Well, you know, even when I was a dry dog and the day after they'd said, I'm eligible to take the E-5 or second class petty officer test site. So I took it, I took it in January and I passed the thing. And to actually be second class, you have to be, uh, have nine months of service left. And I only had five. And so I was like, I was kind of like an asset there that that goes into the I think it was. It wasn't the captain. It was the executive officer. To do an interview associate. He said, I see you pass second class. Da da da da da da. He says, But you don't have enough time left in service to get it. He says he's got to extend it into, uh, I don't know, August or September or something like that. And, uh, I says, There is no way. So I went out. And of course, that's not the answer he was looking for, because obviously he was a lifer already. So, you know, that's kind of an insult if you don't want to stand for whatever. So that was the reason. Yeah, it was right to listen to my Uncle Charlie doing the the Navy that he did. For one thing, he was doing his, his time in, uh, and in the Navy. He was on two different aircraft, the Yorktown and the Lexington. And they had military, they had the Corsairs on there. So they did, you know, they had real airplanes, except that these things that I had on when I was on the Essex. And then he goes to Japan and some of these other city places around there. So in San Diego and so sounds so much like fun, you know what I mean? And see the world and I get stuck in one spot for almost four years and then the one cruiser got. They blew up the OR then they blew it up, but they blocked the Suez Canal. We're going to go to south, as you know, to cover the ports in Africa. They didn't even plan pan out because so far, though, it catches on fire, you know, so on and so forth. So there was too many disappointments, you know, and. So that was probably one of the main reasons why I left.

SPRAGUE: What? When you got out, uh, what what did that feel like coming out of the military? Back to the civilian world? Initially.

GUASTELLA: Freedom. Yeah. You know, it's just you. It. I can make my own decisions that day or the next day or the following day and all that kind of stuff. You know, there wasn't any restrictions. Uh, my weekends are free, you know? And that was me and Betty only married six months. So we, you know, we were able to go out and do things and and so on and so forth. So, um, yeah, you know, it was. Like a caged animal just being released.

SPRAGUE: Oh, and then you had mentioned you came back to Wisconsin. Madison.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. So when I got out, I worked at a job almost within two or three weeks at the telephone company, Bell telephone at that time. And it was uptown, their main switchboard and all that stuff. And I had prior to leaving to go into the Navy, I had applied for my apprenticeship to be an electrician. But at the time that at that time they. When you went down to the union hall to to sign up, they basically said that anybody's son would have priority to be allowed to be an apprentice. So, in other words, if you're already a journeyman electrician and you've got an 18 year old 19 year old kid and he wants to be electrician, too, and he signs up, he's got priority. So some point at that point, I told my mom when I left, I said, You go down there every six months and sign me up again, sign me up or sign me up, which she did at some point in that four years that I was, uh, gone, they changed the rules on a thing that you couldn't do. The father son thing. There's a name for that, too, and I can't think of it. Uh. When you picture patron? I don't know. Anyways. Nepotism, usually. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's a word. So they couldn't do that anymore. So now you had a they would take you off a list as you, you know. And of course they just take anybody you ever you had to test out and all that kind of stuff. But I couldn't wait for them to uh, usually in June and May and June is when they would hire apprentice apprentice classes. So I worked at the telephone company. That's what they started there, and I think it was in July of 68, and I worked there until April of the following year. And that's when I got a call saying, Do you still want to be electrician? So I quit the telephone company and that's when I started. My apprenticeship is, uh, two that had been April of 69. No, no, no. So yeah.

SPRAGUE: Did you do any the veteran activities after leaving the military?

GUASTELLA: You know, no. Uh, at that point, I guess I had enough of the military kind of stuff. It wasn't until I started going to the reunions on the day. Every year we have a reunion. We've had them, But I had one here in Madison, June of 2009. And that was the 25th anniversary or reunion reunion. So 2009 and now it's 13 years later. We're still doing them and we're going to have one this summer. Or it may be, I think it is in Natchez, Mississippi. And how that works is that, um, you volunteer. If you are to host the next reunion, it'll be wherever you live. You know, we've been out to Idaho, we've been over to Vermont, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, uh, Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky. So every year is a little bit different, and this year is the same. 25 guys come in and their wives and all that kind of stuff. Although now there's some people have been eliminated because we're getting up in the seventies. And you know what I mean? Guys are dying off, so. Um.

SPRAGUE: What's that like going to those reunions?

GUASTELLA: Well, you know, we sit down and we well, we talk about going across the equator. We talk about the offices that we had or we talk about when we were a part of such and such a place. And, uh, in the ladies get together, they do their hatchet talking and all that stuff. But it's like, um, I don't know, it, it's, it's unique in the fact that this is and, you know, I'm fortunate enough that the two years that I was on the dais, that the majority of the guys that go to the reunions so it's like not a stranger and these are guys I've I've known for a long time, you know what I mean? So it's really it's very enjoyable that, you know, we go and whoever has the reunion has set up a little tours or whatever. You don't have to go on if you don't want to. They've got a hospitality room where you can go sit down, drink some beer and shoot the breeze with whoever and and so on and so forth. So even the ladies like to go to very, very strong times because, um, it's at the end of the reunion tour, we have a banquet at the last day and we have a business meeting on the last day and we also have a uh, um, auction or whatever boils down to is everybody supposed to bring something to, to auction off, they say? And the reason behind that is that whoever this is going to host the reunion has some seed money to, uh, whatever by, say, the hotel might one $500 down to hold so many rooms. So they got to have that seed money there. Uh, if you're going to book a couple bus tours or whatever, a lot of times about cause I'm going by what we had to do the bus company to say, okay, you know, you're going to have 30 people, we're going to have $200, and then a month, a week before, two weeks before we were going to pay the rest, you know, the remaining amount. So this kind of the, uh, auction that money goes to for seed money. And then of course, uh, you do you know, when we have the banquet, you pay for them things and then you do pay for the excursions and all that stuff. But that's. After that, it's usually $1,000. They get to the individual that's going to have the reunion to, you know, to get the thing started and all that.

SPRAGUE: So what do you do? Anything special for Memorial Day?

GUASTELLA: Well, uh, I, I did for a while and, um. Yeah, so, yeah, I do have my kids kind of trained on it, you know? So this is this is the McFarland. Oh, wow. When they were young.

SPRAGUE: Those are your children.

GUASTELLA: Grandchildren.

SPRAGUE: Grandchildren. And that's you in the background? Yeah.

GUASTELLA: And you notice on the bricks.

SPRAGUE: Oh, I see them. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: So I bought bricks for all my uncles and me.

SPRAGUE: That's in McFarland, Wisconsin. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: It's actually in Madison. It's our single goal, but it's, in my opinion, it's McFarland. Wow. Okay. And then, um, this one here is the, uh, about Bellville. And they have a, um, a model that tomorrow. Yeah, for the veterans in Bellville. But my daughter says, you know, seeing that you're married into the family of Bellville, they're not that, so they. But I bought this. They have a they don't have the ones on the ground and the backside of they have four for the stores and on the backside, down on the bottom, they have all the names and all that kind of stuff. And that's that's where I got these down.

Unidentified Here, so. Oh.

SPRAGUE: Do you have any? Because it's coming up. Do you have any holiday or Christmas memories while you were serving? Oh, stick out in your head or.

GUASTELLA: That was the only one that I remember is in in December of that would have been 67 as a very house. Um, and do you remember the ice bowl?

SPRAGUE: I do. Yeah, I, I don't remember it. I, I was not a gleam in my mother's eye at that point. Well, but I've watched that.

GUASTELLA: Well, I got to watch the ice bowl in. Boston. Okay. So that was that was a bit more specific. I can't remember what the date was, but it was I was there in her house or parent's house, I should say.

SPRAGUE: While you were in the Navy?

GUASTELLA: While I was in the Navy.

SPRAGUE: And for those who don't know the ice bowls, when the Packers played.

GUASTELLA: Dallas.

SPRAGUE: Dallas.

GUASTELLA: In Green Bay and it was -30 or whatever. And if you look at the people that are watching the game, you don't see them with big headgear and big coats and boots and all that kind of, you know, they got the hats of the era which didn't protect your ears. The women were wearing dresses. You know, It's like.

SPRAGUE: What the hell?

GUASTELLA: I mean, that's like being outside with a in your swimsuit, for Pete's sake, in my opinion, you know. Yeah. I mean, and I think there's only like 57,000 they could go to, to Lambeau Field at that time, but, uh, yeah. Other than that, I mean, I spent the other three Christmases in the Navy there as at. And this is true. This good at the holiday time. I mean, if you're out to sea or something like that, which it could be, um, you still do your duty. And then, and then in the in-between times, they'd have your, your regular dinners and all that stuff, but nothing really. Um. Have a more memorable, as you might say. Uh.

SPRAGUE: You have that picture in front of you.

GUASTELLA: This is when I got out of boot camp.

SPRAGUE: Okay, maybe let's show that to the camera so they can at least see it. And for us Army veterans, the rate or rank, what, 80 to 82? And that's called what? A seaman or.

GUASTELLA: Similar crew.

SPRAGUE: Seaman or crew.

GUASTELLA: Recruit.

SPRAGUE: Recruit. Okay.

GUASTELLA: Interesting. Yeah. Then you go to three strikes, which is about a three. And then when your petty officer with one one red strike, that's it for you. And I'm starting to forget the three. It goes up to first class, which would be three strikes and a crawl. Or the widget go. I mean, yeah, go. And then you go to cheat. But there's a. These seven guys. Their classes for the class classes. Five First class is six, Chief of seven, eight and nine. Yeah, they. They have three. They have three, Uh, Chief. And then some other chief. And then some other. And then after you've made a nine, if you're going to be a warrant officer took you out of it. So. But I forgot all the other designations and the chiefs and all that stuff, so.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. So how do you think your life has changed as a result of serving? If you hadn't served in the Navy, how would you have turned out? Uh.

GUASTELLA: The biggest thing is, is I think it's been. You have to grow up. But when you, in my opinion, uh, anybody who gets out of high school so they have to do before they go to college. Have to do a structured type. Doesn't have to be military, but some type of structured venue where they can be back in. It's like in back in the Depression era where they guys used to work in the forest and all this kind of stuff. In other words, where you had to get up at 530 in the morning. You went to breakfast. You work with a, you know, a crew of people and all that kind of stuff, you know, And your day ended at 530 or 6:00 if you wanted to do that. And then the evenings, you know, might be. But everything everybody was kind of like the same uniform. So not the riches in it for as a candidate. No distinction here. So when I saw that when I got in there, I knew that when I got out, I had I had a focus. You know, that's what I did before I went in. The Navy wasn't going to cut it. That's how I, you know, with the apprenticeship and that, uh, I'm very fortunate that I really enjoyed my my career as an electrician is so varied all the time. I mean, you know, Sure. I mean, it did similar things, but it could be in a different location, you know, uh, different people, all these kinds of things. So it wasn't like every day was different, you know?

SPRAGUE: So, yeah. So, uh, what motivated you to do this interview?

GUASTELLA: I guess you know what one of the other turning points of. The military kind of thing. Um. Just seeing some of the things on TV, like PBS. We have the Korean thing and they'd have the Vietnam thing and they had World War Two. And it got to the point where I thought, Damn, I got a book upstairs that I remember the second time I read it. The last stand of the tin cans, sailor. You ever heard of that?

SPRAGUE: I know about tin cans, sailors, but I don't know that.

GUASTELLA: Okay. You know, I may get teary eyed again.

SPRAGUE: That's okay. We got you covered. Okay.

GUASTELLA: The book is about Lady Golf in the Philippines. And a long story short, but there was the Japanese had already been, you know, kicked a little bit by the United States Navy and all this stuff. So the last which of course, it was going to be the car that was going to go into the Philippines and freedom after being kicked out, I don't know how many years before MacArthur, but MacArthur told the Filipinos that I will be back. So MacArthur was going to be coming in to invade or when you call it invading out of it back into the Philippines. So they had in the Gulf a lady there, the United States Navy, had to protect that area so that the assault going in, those two soldiers were going to be protected, you know, like they had airplanes or whatever that the Japanese had. That's what their responsibility was. So holes in the the one other I can't think of the other thing. Was was the admiral at the time. But the Japanese knew that the MacArthur was going to invade the later Gulf area there. So they sent in a. Crew, two battleships, a bunch of cruisers and destroyers coming in from from the north part of the island. And then they had another section coming in from the southern side. So the southern side, the United States had they had figured this out. So they had four cruisers, four battleships, a bunch of cruisers, and they were coming up the island and they had all the Americans have all their ships sideways like this. So now they had nine guns pointed versus like this. You only have the the balance. So they had the whole channel there was was filled with America. So they're shooting it. I mean, they're sinking both left and right and all that kind of stuff. Well, this guy, Admiral Kurita, from, uh, the sugar from the Japanese fleet, I guess he didn't he didn't inform him enough or whatever, but he thought he could still come in from the north and invade or take care of MacArthur. And his visit got a little bit north to him. They had sent the Japanese as send an aircraft carrier out to sea Halsey and they were I can't think of the other. And then they wanted to sink the Japanese aircraft carrier because they only had a couple left, had already done so. So he sends his aircraft carriers that were supposed to be blocking or taking care of late involved. He sends them out there. So now the Japanese are coming in with their big the biggest battleship of the world, bigger than the one that's in Germany. And him and his what you call it. I can't think of what they call it. Of him anyways. Two big battleships, bunch of big cruisers, destroyers and all that is like 15 or 20 ships. He's thinking he can come in here and surprise the Americans and he sees off in the distance aircraft carriers anything because he's getting calls, these aircraft carriers. But these they had they had a name for it. They're not just the regular aircraft carriers.

SPRAGUE: They're fast carriers.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, but they're not they're not built like, you know, for big, heavy duty. So the Japanese guys, he sees it curious. He thinks he's getting that whole these carrier fleet. So he's going to shoot at he's shooting at these guys. In the meantime, as these fleet carriers, these little teeny ones and all that. They don't have enough planes to go attack this Korea and his. And I'm not saying the right guy because I think there's another admiral for the Japanese. So they keep coming in and all that stuff. What it boils down to is the Johnstown and Robert. De which is in is smaller than the tin can. And the Johnstone I think is a destroyer. There in a couple of other ways end up attacking this Japanese fleet that's got all these big ships and they're of course I'm only halfway into the book again. But what it boils down to is this tin cans and the destroyer escorts little teeny ships. We're able to run a smokescreen so that the Japanese couldn't see the the aircraft carriers or they could see what they're shooting at. They ended up going into into the Japanese and torpedoed these their ships sinking a couple of these cruisers, not the battleship, but the cruisers. In the meantime, they're running out of I think they're run out of torpedoes and all that stuff. They ended up going back out, running the screen, but the Japanese were able to sink to the Johnstone and Robertson, I think it was. And there's a description of what it is, is that it's a documentary story because this guy was able to, if you read it, it's just like, you can't believe it. These two little boats pretty much saved the island. If it wasn't if it wasn't for them, well, the Japanese would have taken over because they had they had the rest of the Americans outnumbered because their main fleet with their airplanes was 100 miles away, 200 miles away. Then you think about these guys over here, you know. So it was a Yeah. Anyways, and then we went to Gettysburg. That was a reunion too. I forgot about that one. There must've been five or six years ago. And that to see what the guys went through, I mean, it's. It's unreal. It's unreal. Well, I guess I talk a lot about it now.

SPRAGUE: Anything else you'd like to cover? Oh.

GUASTELLA: This is. I can remember anyway. I don't know. I don't know if you want to see some. Let me see if I get the pictures or what the hell of it. They're bringing some of these things out there. Uh. I think I did show you the one where. Oh, so, yeah. You already took a picture of them guys. I think that were those. Those are my my buddies that I keep in contact with. And, um, those are from the diocese.

SPRAGUE: The diocese. And they're also involved with your reunion?

GUASTELLA: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. 50, 50 plus years later. Yeah. At least 55 or somewhere.

GUASTELLA: Yeah, 68 and now? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I guess these are postcards from my mom and, you know. But there's media to. And here's is another one of us going underneath. You know.

SPRAGUE: It must be quite an experience. Yeah.

GUASTELLA: When you see the whole front end, right? Yes. This is when we would refuel out to see see detail. So you see this individual in a race?

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

GUASTELLA: Well, we have to. What I would do when I was under under ten can be a few from a tanker or from the aircraft carrier because we didn't have enough to fuel on there. So anyways, uh, they, they had this thing they call Monkey Fest where it was just like a baseball all wrapped around. And then I'd have a lot of court and I'd, I'd have to fling that thing across to the other ship, and there'd be somebody there to grab it. And then they start pulling lines across and all like this stuff. Then the next thing you know, they, they test this big black holes, and that's how we refuel.

SPRAGUE: What was the thing called that you threw.

GUASTELLA: The monkey first.

SPRAGUE: Monkey first. Okay, Interesting.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. So we'd be way, you know, and of course, if you're at the aircraft carrier, the flight deck is kind of above us and all that stuff. So everybody had to be kind of what's going on. Because if the ship's got to get too close together, we had to break away and it was set up so that that's how it would happen, could never happen. I was on board, but that's what could happen. So. And but even even so, the. We move like this in a carry sometimes move a little bit like, you know, you're not in sync. You try to be bridge and not because the water just doesn't. So when you go like this and they go it, you see the flight deck, you know, like a smash on it or what. We had one ensign on board ship that nobody liked, and he had to go across for something. So you can see there's lines across that thing that's kind of keep it tight. But, you know, when the ships come together, the line gets, say, zero. Well, if you let it take a little bit more, you can get wet. You don't drown them with it, but you.

SPRAGUE: Help.

GUASTELLA: The security. But it was an accident. Now, here's here's the same guys that some of the guys that I, uh. Well, 40 years, 50 years later. Wow. So this guy was a go to his mate. He went off to school with me. That's me. He went to school. He's in Ohio. He's. He was in Ohio. Virginia. Florida. He's in Massachusetts. This guy's in Buffalo, New York. He was, uh. He's. He was below decks of. Is that a steam fitter? Um, his coach Snipes. I don't know why they call statement that we were. I forgot where this one was at to it. Anyway were we were buffalo. They had the, they had the tin can in a cruiser there that we could go in from World War Two. So here is me trying to get into a sleeping quarters that we used to be able crawl into now without any problem. That was that was effort, let me tell you. And going up and down the ladder. As together. They keep keep in contact. Well. This was pretty much our gunner's mates in fire control that that was in by and Ireland as well. Do I know? Know the history about this guy here? His name is Andy Winters. He lives in Maryland. We we call each other every 8 to 10 days. Okay. So we're in Boston Harbor and a district on the. Tin can and. I was at Liberty. This was like in May of 68. I was at Liberty and I was with Betty. I come back to the ship Sunday night. Because we had to be on a monday morning and this was waiting. And most of the guys had already gone out there for that weekend to a skeleton crew and nobody knew. So about seven years ago, we had the reunion in Massachusetts there. And he was there. And what happened is, while I was gone away that weekend, he got orders to go to Vietnam to be a gunner. Not a gun to me. Well, if he wasn't going to make it at that time without one of those patrol boats that goes up and over shall have his fingers on all that stuff. He got shot at you, got burnt and. He was he was able to tell me some of the history that he went through. And I tell you, uh, he was quiet. He was just he didn't even know he was around when he said worship. And then they had him go through the shit that he did. And he told me about it, just like as unbelievable as I believe. And he's able to talk about it now a little bit, so.

Unidentified You see their handiwork more together. Yeah. That.

GUASTELLA: That's that's how we get into that way. These are. This is in Massachusetts. That's a battleship there that goes to show you a victim so you can have guns on anything that.

SPRAGUE: Looks like a 16 inch.

GUASTELLA: Gun yet.

SPRAGUE: On a battleship, maybe.

GUASTELLA: Yeah. And that's not the battleship Massachusetts. That's what it was, because I've been on there and then the New Jersey as a. Yeah. So this and these are from reunions. That's how I mean, that's always and here's like when we're at a banquet, you know, sitting around talking. Oh. And this is similar to what we be. So this is very trying to go down the ladders and that's if they're like this and there's not very much room on them. And, you know, when you had general quarters or whatever, you pretty much just kind of slid down the, you know, the railings and all this stuff and the deficit. You know, when I tried doing it now, when we went on there, that was an and, uh, the Kennedy, uh. It's a challenge. You got to be you've got to be in your twenties if you want to go up and down on those things. It's just not built for the elderly.

Unidentified So I don't know if I get anything else know.

GUASTELLA: I guess that's pretty much it.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

GUASTELLA: Good to talk to a long time.

SPRAGUE: Okay, well, why don't we conclude the interview? Sure. Okay. So this is going to conclude the interview. Thank you for your service. You're welcome.

[Interview Ends]