Other Memories I went aboard as a seamen apprentice and left as a Third Class Petty Officer (RD3) during which I made four western pacific deployments to the Far East in 1956, 1957, 1958, and 1959. The Cushing served as plane guard and joined in hunter-killer exercises with TF 77. Aboard the Cushing we patrolled in the Taiwan Straits when China was fighting to regain Quemoy and Matsu Islands, and on one occasion remained on station, at sea, for 78 consecutive days. The patrol took us inside the international waters of China, and earned us a number of ?serious warnings.? Answering a distress call from a Norwegian freighter we sailed within a mile of some of China?s islands and was intercepted by four Chinese gun boats. They hoisted international flags telling us ?crew safe make haste home?. Battle ready we turned and headed back into international waters. We visited various ports strengthening national ties in the President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "People to People" program. One of those port calls took us across the equator to Australia and New Zealand. That?s when I painfully became a ?Shellback.? While "stateside" we operated along the west coast in antisubmarine and antiaircraft warfare exercises, and midshipmen and reserve training. Out to sea for two weeks and then back to Long Beach harbor where we usually moored to a buoy and took liberty boats ashore.
