I remember Dad had a chest with his old uniform and all the stuff you get when you're in the Navy: He retired from the Navy as a Chief Warrant Officer. At the time he retired, that was the highest rank a non-commissioned officer could get, and he retired after twenty-three years.

This is an off number, because if he'd stuck out another two or seven years, his pension would have been consiserably higher. According to Mom, the Navy had laid down the law. They had plenty of Chief Warrant Officers. What they needed were commissioned officers, and that meant going to schools back east. Mom and Dad had settled in Southern California, and Dad wasn't hot for shoving the family all over the country.At the time there was my older sister, older brother, and Baby Me.

Dad figured, he'd done his duty, fought in The Wars, he was ready for shore duty. Which was the next sore point. No matter whether he went to Officer's School, or stayed in the Non-Coms, they needed him in West Pacs. It's true even today. Elements of the Pacific Fleet do a tour through the many exotic ports all across the Pacific; Pearl Harbor, Subic Bay, Japan, Korea, Viet Nam. It was all over the place. Sailors love this routine. The ports are playgrounds for young sailors seeking adventure. Thing is, Dad had done Adventure. I remember once going through the Lagunas, driving along what now is called Olde Hiway 80, looking up to what I now know is Sheep Head Mountain, and saying out loud, as nine-year-olds will do, "I wonder what's over that mountain?"

My Dad exploded.

"Who cares? Another Mountain!"

Yeah. He'd done adventure.

So, to avoid having to make a decision about ranking and deployments, Dad didn't re-up. He'd join at fifteen, lied about his age, escaping the grinding poverty of rural Geogia in the Great Depression, had worked himself through the ranks, would get a monthly stipend for his service. 

I had no business being in Dad's chest. Dress uniform, pressed shirts that he'd never fit in again. all those bars and brass, the military's version of a resume that they wear on their chests, all sorts of medals that I think you would call Participation Trophies, and there were two Purple Hearts. Two. I remember wondering, was one for the dress uniform, the other for the daily uniform?

I remember asking my Dad about it. I remember where too. It was the Oak Knoll Inn in Boulevard, on the concrete steps out in front of the restaurant, just at dusk, and the big 'Oak Knoll Inn' sign had just come on. Dad told me, "You know I'd done something wrong. I was in the engine compartment."

Years after he was dead, Mom would tell me that before the landing at Leyte in the Philippines, Dad had volunteered to be the Chief Engine Officer for an LST (Landing Ship, Tank).

Those were the big landing ships with the doors in the bow that would land after the initial landing, and put tanks, artillery, all the wheeled stuff on the beach and into the battle. Besides being vulnerable (The sailors contended that LST stood for Large Slow Targets), at some point before the ships beached themselves, an Army officer became the commander in charge of the whole operation, and just when he took command was an eternal inter-service battle. Besides, no sailor worth his salt wanted to take orders from an Army officer no matter what the circumstances.

To be on an LST, a sailor had to volunteer, and my dad did. Mom contended that once his LST had landed, and I remember it was named after an American city that starts with a 'P', but I can't remember right now what it was, after it had landed, a Japanese equivalent of a 5-inch shell dropped right into the engine compartment.

Dad wouldn't talk about the wars (WWII, Korea), and if I pressed, he'd only tell funny stories. I never found out how he got the second Purple Heart. Mom talked quite a bit about her experiences, but that's another story.

Where Dad got the other Purple Heart, I haven't a clue.