I was a 2nd class Radioman as well. While I was assigned she was on special ops mostly, or SIGINT ( signal intelligence ). We had a great CO and XO so life was pretty nice for us. The XO was from my home state, Wyoming, so he kind of looked out for me. Still had my share of crappy duties, like cooking in the galley, scrapping paint, etc.
I flew from SanFran to Guam then to Subic Bay to catch up with the Berry for my first assignment. She was pulling out within the hour, a major typhoon was coming in. Three hours after I was on board we were in one hell of a storm. I thought I was going to die. This was my first time on a ship, and my bunk was up in the front with the rest of the RM's and QM's. The seas were running about 60 to 100 foot swells, I could hardy hold myself up to go to the head. Never got seasick though, which I credit to the wild ride. It lasted for 2 and a half days. I was throughly exhausted. Can't say I'll ever forget that.
On one of our tours we had a boiler explosion under the Radio Shack. I was on watch at the time, 3 a.m. in the morning, I thought the one of the Vietnamese finally got something to shoot at us. We had been shooting the 3" cannon all week long while taking coordinates from a spotter plane. When the sun came up, I could see a 6 foot round hole in the side of the ship about two feet above the water line. The guy "boilermate" who fell asleep below was killed and 1 other guy was badly shaken with the percusion of the explosion.
I remember so many things from my tour, it would be fun to write them down and share them. Have you thought about making something on the web site for that.. I'll check back...
Gary Grant RM2
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Gary Grant today.