Chasing God Until He Caught Me: Chapter Four - See the World, They Said
The Compelling Story of God's Relentless Pursuit To Rescue One Lost Soul
Because the Vietnam War was still raging in the early seventies, I had received a draft lottery number.
It was a relatively high number, but I was not in college and I didn't want to risk being drafted into the Army.
So I decided to enlist in the Navy. I liked their call-out:
Join the Navy, See the World
That’s exactly what I wanted to do.
Nowadays, they’re desperate for quality candidates, so they’ve added “and Get up to a $50,000 (or higher) bonus”.
Back then, however, they had a steady stream of guys who wanted to avoid the draft.
For the next six years, I worked joint operations type assignments at bases in Florida, Turkey, Germany, Spain, and California doing what sailors are known to do. Because of the nature of the work I did in the Navy, I never set foot on a ship.
It wasn’t the whole world, but a good portion of it. Plus, it was the part that I actually wanted to see.
A separate, more detailed account of this period in my life can be found here:
How Restlessness Saved My Life (and My Soul)
At that time, alcohol was a staple of military life. When we were not working, we were partying.
We thought nothing of binge drinking for our entire break (usually around 3 days). Many times we would carry it over into the next work cycle, often showing up at work drunk or with terrible hangovers.
In Turkey, which was primarily a Muslim country, we had to confine our drinking to the base clubs.
One of the clubs opened at 7 am which happened to coincide with the end of the mid-shift. If it was our last shift before our 3-day break, we would head straight over to the club to get a “head start”.
As a small Navy detachment on an Air Force-hosted base, all of us, officers and enlisted alike, became quite close.
Many breaks would be spent partying at one of the married men's houses. It didn't take long to learn that being “married” didn't seem to mean much to many of my married coworkers or their wives.
In 1975, due to a serious political situation that developed between the US and Turkey, our base began to close down.
Most of the single guys transferred to Rota, Spain, a large Naval base on the Atlantic coast between Portugal and the Straights of Gibraltar, to continue our mission.
Rota opened a new dimension to party life. Unlike the Turks, Spaniards were heavy drinkers and loved to party.
Spanish coastal towns were magnets for Northern European and British girls who were trying to escape the cold climates. Most of the ones who ended up in Rota came specifically to work the bars frequented by American sailors.
Unlike Turkey, hundreds of bars and discos lined the streets of Rota right down to the beach. All full of girls from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands.
Even Icelandic, Australian, and New Zealand girls got in on the action.
I had never experienced anything like this in my life. A virtual Sailor’s paradise right outside the base gates.
To my delight, the Spaniards had another custom called “Tapa Hopping”. Almost every restaurant, cafe, and bar took part in this Spanish version of Happy Hour.
Each place provided free specialty-type foods, called Tapas, to go with the various beers or wines they offered. Hundreds of people would walk up and down the streets drinking and eating all kinds of foods.
Our goal was to see how many places we could stop before the end of the evening.
Many times we would end up at Benny's Bar, our favorite hang-out, and finish off the night by getting totally smashed.
On more than one occasion, I would wake up not knowing where I was or how I got there.
Much later, I read what God had to say about the end of this type of lifestyle in Proverbs 23:31-35:
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.
They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
In January 1976, I continued this long European party when I transferred to Augsburg, Germany. The Navy and Air Force detachments were small and shared an old WW2 German barracks.
Our building had three floors. The first two decks housed the administration and living quarters, but the entire 3rd deck had been transformed into a bar and party area called The Crows Nest.
Of course, we spent many hours on the 3rd deck.
Germany is known worldwide for its famous Oktoberfest in Munich, which draws thousands every year from all over the world.
What most folks don't know, is that almost every town of any size also has its own Beer Fest. Each fest usually lasted two or three days.
We had a schedule for the whole festival season and would attend as many as we could to consume large quantities of beer and sing along with the German “Oompah” bands.
During the Winter months, we would frequently spend our breaks in the small town of Scheffau, Austria to ski.
A popular event there was the “Rodel and Yodel”. After dark, a guide would take us up to the top of a nearby mountain with wooden sleds, called Rodels.
After drinking an “appropriate” amount of German beer or Schnapps at the mountaintop restaurant we would go out, straddle the rodel, and off we would go. giving our best shot at yodeling the whole way down.
The road was steep and curved and had no lighting. Our only clue was the contrast of the snow-covered road between the dark tree lines on either side.
Steering was with your feet, so you can imagine the “mishaps” along the way for a bunch of drunken sailors. All in fun, of course.
Just like Benny’s Bar in Rota, we adopted a favorite “watering hole” in Augsburg - A disco bar called The Last Chance. The owner, a big German named Joe, was very partial to the sailors from our detachment and we claimed it as “our place”.
One night I was sitting at the bar talking with Joe, when Rob, an Air Force “Zoomie” I knew, came in and sat next to me.
For some reason, he kept egging me on about a particular girl we knew, and under the influence of “one too many”, I had had enough and dumped a whole beer on his head. We ended up in a big fight right there. Joe grabbed both of us by the collar, carted us to the door, and threw us out onto the street.
Stunned for a moment, we both started laughing and then walked back to the base as if nothing had ever happened, finishing the night in the Crow’s Nest.
At this point in my life I was becoming restless for change, but little did I know of how monumental those changes would be.
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Love this story! My Papa was in the Navy stationed in the Pacific. He didn’t talk much about the war but when the beautiful ship ‘Sea Cloud” came into Georgetown, SC, he was hired (18yrs.old) and sailed around the world 2-3 times. Send pictures if I can find them.
So good, Cork. "becoming restless for change" is what I pray for, for family and friends who don't know Christ, and that the seeking awakens a new perspective that leads to salvation.