Wilkinson, Gary D.., RMC

Other Memories
I was assigned to the USS Samuel N. Moore (DD-747) from June 1959 to May 1962, a destroyer home-ported in Long Beach, CA and assigned to Destroyer Squadron 23 (DesRon-23). This was my first shipboard duty in my career. The first time underway was my first time of "absolute sea-sickness". I spent the first day underway "manning the rails". Once I got that out of my system, never was sea-sick again (well, maybe a little "woozy" when riding out a typhoon or two).

I first started out in the Deck Division for several months. This was the low-life duties of chipping paint, painting "Red Lead" primer, and painting lots of "Haze Grey" and "Deck Grey" throughout the ship. I also got the great duty assignments of "Scullery duty" and "KP duty", not to mention the cleaning of "Heads" (Navy term for Restrooms).

I was later offered an option to get into the medical division as a corpsman striker, working under HMC "Doc" Ben Mayotte until his retirement in 1960. Since I was so fed up with the Deck Division duties, I absolutely said "YES" to the inter-division switch, knowing it had to be a much better racket.

During my duties in the Medical Division, I learned quite a lot in First Aid, Minor Surgery, Pharmaceuticals, and Microscopic Biological Research. I learned to make some of the best "Terpin Hydrate" Cough Syrup on the west coast, 190-proof. Seems there was a lot of demand for my "special cough syrup" when at sea. Any time we deployed overseas, I assisted in giving all the necessary shots to the crew, like Typhoid, Tetanus, DTP, Chickenpox, etc. I never did like needles. The first time giving shots, I thought I was going to pass out, but later I got over it. I really got good at giving penicillin shots in some of the shipmates rear-ends while we were overseas.

Towards the expiration of my first enlistment, I was offered Hospital Corpsman School in San Diego if I re-enlisted for another 4-year term. I thought it over and determined that this was not for me; that I wanted to get into electronics.

Since there were no open billets in the ET (Electronic Technician) gang, the next best thing was to get into the Radioman gang.

The last few months that I was attached to the USS Moore, I joined the communications division as a radioman striker. Since my main interest was electronics, this was as close as I was going to get into the electronics field. I eventually shipped-over under the STAR program that guaranteed an "A" School for me, and if I graduated in the top 10%, I would be advanced to pay grade E-4. I re-enlisted and it got me the orders to Radioman "A" School in San Diego upon completion of my tour of duty on the Moore.

During my duty on this ship, we made two WestPac deployments of about 6 to 7 months each, visiting Hawaii and the countries of Japan, Okinawa, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. Hong Kong was a great liberty port. I had a couple of custom-made suits and a "white sport-coat" made on my first visit there, that were very inexpensive. Visited the "Tiger Balm Gardens" that was a very impressive Chinese "fantasy land".

We also made trips up to Seattle and Everett, WA; and operations at sea off the coast of Mexico. We also conducted cold weather operations off the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.


While attached to the Moore, we participated in a couple of 1962 nuclear tests, designated "Operation Dominic I" in the Pacific. One of the tests was conducted near Christmas Island & the second was off the coast of southern California.


(Note: After this ship was decommissioned in 1969, it was sold to Taiwan on December 9, 1969 and renamed Heng Yang. Later was stricken in 1993.)