SOME NEW STORIES FROM RM2 Rembert J LANE

Received this email from Tater (as we fondly remember him) sharing some stories. Enjoy

Sure was good to hear from an old Navy shipmate. Glad to hear you doing good.

One sea story - We were patrolling off the coast of Viet Nam for a while and Capt Paul was getting bored with just going back and forth off the coast. He got the bright idea of asking the higher-ups for a firing mission to break up the boredom. After about two weeks of pleading we finally got the mission. With all our fire-power and under the cover of darkness we inched in as close to shore as possible and the dumb-ass dropped anchor. We shot off a couple of mortar rounds which ultimately kicked up a little bit of sand on the beach, could hurt anything. Then came the order from Capt Paul to weigh anchor, but we couldn't get it up. To make matters even worse he ordered the gunner to fire a flare to light up the area so we could see what the problem was. There we were lit up like a Christmas tree and stuck. Never seen 30 guys pulling on an anchor chain so hard in my life. Funny now but scary them.

Also, unreping off the coast around Christmas-time, the oiler sent over a Christmas tree. The BM1 took it off the hi-line on the port side and walked straight over to the starboard side and threw it overboard. So much for Christmas in Viet Nam

Got some more iffn you want them

C u later

Rmsn/Rm3/Rm2 Jim Lane (Tater)

One more quick one --

We were refueling off the coast with some oiler and they were suppose to transfer this fresh ensign via hi-line to us. Well, as usual BM1 was not in such a good mood during the high-line transfer. The ensign got in the boatsn chair with a guitar strapped to his back. About half way across that ensign was just smiling and waving and having a good ole time. Well, that didn't set well with ole bosn, and the next order I heard was "slack off" on the line. we must have drug that ensign in between the two ships for about two minutes. Needless to say there was no smile on that ensign when we finally got him onboard. However, bm1 was in the best mood I had seen him in quite some time.