Veterans Interview: Dennis Boyd interviews John Crist

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

And now back to answers for elders as we honor our military veterans. Carriage is the proud sponsor of our veteran segment hosted by former CTLE SEAHAWK DENNIS boy. We are here today a patriots landing and Dupont Washington, talking to John Chris, a twenty two veteran of the US Navy, and getting a chance to find out what it was like to be a submariner. I started in Norfolk, Virginia, HMM, Squadron Sixth are my first submarine and I tell you, from a boy out of the hills of California, I really did not get got myself into it was it was different and but I don’t think after my twenty two years I would give up anything. I don’t know that I would go that same route again. One of the desires I’d added was to be a chief. I could pass the test, but I couldn’t get rated. Yeah, and that did just burned my bottom side, but I did everything that. They took my chief away from me and they they put him out on the I was on a fast attack nuke at this time. Put Him out on the BCP ballast control panel where you dive and surface sees things and if I talked to talk to him once every two weeks. We were lucky. So I had the radio gang and and we did well. We did good. Tell me a little bit about training for to be a submariner, and the reason I’m asking is that I had mentioned before that my dad was twenty years navy and we were in Pearl he was stationed Pearl Harbor. been there. It told about the diving tower. been there and the hundred foot assent that you have to make. Is a submarine. There’s one there, there’s one in new London. They don’t use them anymore. Okay, they’re going. I was in I was being trained as a radio operator in San Diego and one day at noon this chief walks in. We didn’t knowing from Adam, and he got the whole class together and he said how many fellows want to make a another fifty dollars more a month? got every hand went up. Okay, and they left and we didn’t hear anything about it anymore about this chief. And then one day I went to school and they said you got to report over the medical building. I said, what the Heck for? I’m not sick. Yeah, well, you’re going out and to attender and San Diego Bay and you’re going to have a pressure test. What the heck is a pressure too? I had just come out of the hills of California and my biggest thrills and lives was hunting fishing. That’s all I like to do. So we went out there and they put us in this chamber and down we went and I was looking at this young kid right across on another seat, directly across from me, from Colorado, and in that stage of our training you didn’t say boot anybody. He’s just set there and all of a sudden I saw blood starting to squirt out of both of his ears. I said this can’t be good, and so the instructor was at the other end of the tank. The this lock we were in and nobody else moves, so I got up and I grabbed the instructor’s arm and I thought he was going to punch me out and I said everything stopped. We went back to sea level, atmospheric’s level, and they took him out. We never saw him again, but I got through that and and then we had some psychiatrist test and I never have to this day understood the meaning of it. But out of three hundred and fifty of us in San Diego that had volunteered for the submary service, two of US left San Diego to go to new London. HM, three hundred, three hundred forty eight of them all. They’d stop your calls for anything. If a bad tooth one year was longer than the other, it didn’t matter what you you were not going. And so I went. Went to new London, got through that and went to Norfolk, Virrginia for my first submarine, the Torusk, four hundred and twenty three. She is now a school boat in Baltimore, Maryland. So they saved her. Did make razor blades out of her. And after that I finally got back to the West Coast and that’s where I belong. was on the West Coast. East goes people. If you’ve been back there, they talk a little funny, they dress the little different. I mean I’m not saying that they’re at the edge of left, but there are folks back there that are stranger than the ones on the west coast. So I was glad to get back to the west coast. I remember in correct me out for the seven mariners, but on board ship dad would be out on a six month tour, meaning basically he was out out to see for six months, back at dock at port for six months. Was it similar then for some earners? No. No. I rode three diesel boats before I ended up on a fast attack nuke. What what slows the the diesel boats down is the amount of fuel I can take submerge or your run on battery power and the amount of foods you can take. We were good forty five, fifty, fifty five days and that’s really pushing it on a diesel boat. The nukes, the only thing keeps you in port would be your your inability to carry that much food to substain you. Everything else is going to run forever. I mean it doesn’t stop out there, goes, goes, goes. It’s that’s why I say seven and a half years between gas stations. So and people will look at me when I say that. They say, what do you mean gas stations? Do they take gas? Well, no, not really, but yeah, I really like after I got used to it, I I really enjoyed nuclear power. It was good. It was good. We drilled seven days a week. I’ve never drilled so much it’s worse than the Seahawks preseases. You Go, go, go go. We want seven days at every week and if you messed up then’d stop it and you’d critique it and start all over again. So, but how much of that I mean, I mean survival at some point in the event of an emergency? Is it requires people to act without almost without thinking. Yes, well, one of the things in the summery service is that most of the nuclear boats, I would say all of them, operate in water. This nonrecoverable. I mean you go down and in the thing is going to explode himload, and so there’s not a lot of thought about survivability. You know if something dast really happens to that thing, that you and all your shipmates are going to go down together and that’s it. And you don’t think about that very much. It’s probably a good thing, and I know I didn’t. I talked to a lot of fellows out there. It’s just something that’s maybe in the back of your mind, but you don’t think about it. I lost a friend on the one that the US lost right off of the East Coast, and he was the young man. He wanted off the submarine was on and he was electrician and he got his wish. He went. It was a young fireman and we read about it and in the paper. You know, so things happen and people forget you’re doing dangerous things. Oh and they you make it look so routine. It becomes routine up to a point and then you better get serious with it. And the people. I think that, besides the skipper and the ex so the people that really take care of that subbaring the solar people. They are the ones there’s your eyes windows. If they screw up, they’ve got a hundred and twenty people behind them. They just screwed up for and but other than that it the oceans are deep, there are lots of space to travel out there and it was pretty much fun, pretty pretty much my whole career. There were UMPS and downs. That like anything. If you get demoted to the second squad Isa, why me? What happened? That happens in football too. That’s ours referring to. But the question for what was the average age of the men on the on board ship. It went from the average age was probably when I on my diesel votes was probably somewhere around mid s okay. Youngest might been was probably seventeen, and you had some old timers. It came out of World War II. There were finishing up their careers and that’d be up in there late. The S are really old. Huh. All there what keeps you guys up? So they don’t like to talk the young guys. It’s but that was life. But that’s what always sometimes a perspective of you’ve got a twenty something year old young man or woman now operating a billion dollars worth of equipment. The navy has been pretty good, I mean it’s better than pretty good, about their screen of people coming in, officer and enlisted. John, again, thank you for your time, your twenty two years of service and a few minutes we’ve had a chance to talk today. We appreciate them both. This has been a special honoring veterans. Presentation of answers for elders brought to you by carriage. For more information about carriage, the website is sere agecom.