Well, let's take a break from the present and turn the clock back

 to when I took the then UDT, now SEAL swim test as a kid down at Damon's Point.




I pretty much owed Damon's Point as a kid. It was the source of lobsters, fish, clams, exercise and entertainmment and it was generally conceded by kids bigger than me that if I could get myself into the water that it was pretty much an automatic escape because I could outswim a striper.



Anyway, I was about 14 or maybe even 15 when a Navy chief brought four guys to the Point for an informal swim test. The guys were of age to join the Navy and wanted to enlist for the Underwater Demolition Team option, the details of which have slipped my moldering old mind.



They were supposed to swim up to the Route 3A bridge and back and the Chief had figured that they stood a pretty good chance of getting through the Basic UnderwaterDemolition school if they could.



I looked at the Chief and sneered that I could do that with no sweat and of course he tried to 'big deal' me with how this was official US Navy business so I retreated to the top ot the old burned out rairload trestle and bided my time.



The plan with the four guys was that they would go in teams of two and there would be a petty officer in a small boat in case they tired.



The boat was tossed in, the petty officerboarded it, two guys dove in and they started heading toward the bridge. I waited until they got about 100 yards out and then executed a pretty good jackknife off the trestle and started for the bridge.



The tide was falling and the bridge was upriver so I headed straight for the back eddys where the current was either much slower or worked in my favor and about halfway up I saw well behind me the first of the two get into the boat. He had quit.



I kept on swimming and the other guys managed to get to the bridge, the halfway point, and he, too got into the boat. By that time I was well on my way back to the point riding the outgoing tide with ease, exerting myself just enough to stay ahead of the boat.



When I got to the Point I swam behind the float and treaded water until they got back.



The chief gave me a lecture about being a crazy kid and all and I looked like I was paying attention and was respectful and all until the first two guys got out of the boat and the second two dove in to try their mettle.



I treaded water until they were about fifty yards ahead and repeated the feat with ease, watching the pair of them fight the current while I crossed the river to take advantage of the slower currents and backeddys to make things easy.



Again, one quit before he reached the bridge and the other one packed it in just after the bridge which made no sense as all he had to do was ride the current back to the Point.



I figured I was likely going to get chewed out by the Chief so I swam past the point on my back, doing the back stroke ad spouting water up into the air llike some kind of whale spouting off. Truth is I was being cocky. I saw the Chief watching me from the top of the trestle shaking his head as I passed by and I went on downriver to past the bend to the clam flats where I saw Walter Crossley digging a bucket of clams.



I figured I'd help old Walter out and then dig a few clams for myself and get mself something to eat later on.



Walter was one of those old Yankee types that was pretty self reliant. He was pretty old at the time, having served in WW1 if I recall. I had been in his house once and asked about a picture of a guy in an Army Air Corps uniform. His wife answered that it was a picture of their son that had been killed on a B-24 mission over Germany. She explained that after he had dropped his bombs the co-plot went forward to see why he wasn't up doing what he was supposed to be doing and found a hole in his forehead from a piece of flak. That had been a couple of years earlier when they had me in the house.



Anyway, Walter was there and we dug the clams and put them into his skiff and we sat there a while and talked for a little while until the water turned slack and the tide turned and then he let me row the pair of us back to the point.



Of course, the story didn't end here. One of the guys that failed the UDT test knew who I was and told the Chief. For the next several years the family post office was stuffed with Navy recruitment mail and it didn't quit unti long after I got out of the army.



For years my mother kept wondering why.





my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/