By Mike Eberlein
PEACHTREE CORNERS, Ga. | That GwinnettForum recent yarn about being an Army train commander reminds me of the time when in the Navy I was called upon to be what the Navy called a “Prison Chaser.” (More on that later.)
I was an AO3, Aviation Ordinanceman, third class, at the McGuire Air Force Base in Wrightstown, N.J. The Navy squadron there flew DC-6, four engine prop planes back and forth to Rhine Main, Germany, with mainly military personnel and Navy family members.
The Navy really didn’t know what to do with me as there were no ordinance – guns, bombs or rockets – at our naval facility. So the commander decided he would open an armory. There was a tiny concrete block building near the end of one runway, about 200 feet to the side. This is the building he ordered to be electrified and fitted with a workbench.
Soon I received 200 new pistols, 45-caliber, and a like number of M-1 carbine rifles. The weapons were coated in cosmoline, a heavy grease that was very difficult to remove. I spent many weeks, alone, first cleaning the pistols and then moving onto the rifles. One of the lieutenant/pilots visiting the armory one day suggested that since it appeared I had very little to do, I should sand and varnish the stocks of the 200 rifles. The weapons, I have to admit, I did very well. They gleamed, with the stocks shining under clear varnish.
A few weeks later, after a change of command ceremony, our new Navy captain visited the armory. He was very happy with the 45s, newly oiled and waiting to be used. He was dumbfounded, however, when he viewed the rifles.
“Remove this varnish as soon as possible,” he ordered, since those shiny gleaming stocks would give away the position of anyone carrying the rifle in combat. “Do it immediately,” he added. So I proceeded to bathe the stocks in paint remover to hide the shine. After that, I was told to order two sets of holsters and webbed belts, so that the 45s could be worn, with the appropriate armbands, designating the wearer as Shore Patrol, the Navy’s police.
Here’s where my official title of “prison chaser” came one time. I wore the band once as a Shore Patrolman to escort a seaman who had been caught stealing liquor from a Navy facility. He was a young, very newly married man, had been found guilty and ordered to serve a six-month sentence at the naval prison in Philadelphia.
As soon as we placed him in the station wagon, with two of us guards for transport, he started crying. He begged us to stop at his apartment so he could see his wife.
I probably should not admit this, but we detoured slightly to take him to his house. When he came out of the building, after a short conjugal visit, he was a very happy man … on his way to prison.
Shortly after that I was ordered to the re-commissioning school in Newport, R.I., to be on the last non-nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Independence. I actually had real work to do, within my specialty in ordinance, on the ship, as it carried everything from 45s to nuclear weapons. That’s my military history!
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