The 175-bed hospital opened in 1973 to serve the Charleston Naval Base and Shipyard and once employed more than 1,200 people. Operations were scaled down in the years after the Naval Base closed in 1996.
Best Friends LCPL Jonas Johnson, USMC, SSGT "Berny" Hogg, USMC, "Smoky" Richardson, "Popeye" Ross.
Best Moment Weekend in SSGT Hogg's private room with LCPL Johnson and an unlimited supply of cold beer compliments of the Marine Barracks.
Worst Moment When the Head Nurse, a LCDR confronted Johnson and I concerning a large number of beer cans outside of Hogg's room window. "We don't know, honest."
Chain of Command Head Nurse, Dr., don't know from there.
Other Memories Old "Smoky" as we call him. He was an old veteran, probably from WWI, he looked that old anyway. He would follow we smokers around all day begging smokes from us. The guy had lung cancer and was dying, so what the hell, we gave him cigarettes, against orders of course. The trouble was you could give him an entire pack and he would go to the head and sit and smoke the entire pack in about an hour. I had never seen the like. He was there for about a month before they sent him home, I suppose to die. We all loved the old guy.
They brought another old guy in whom they had found in his home laying passed out on the floor and from all appearances he was starving to death. They kept him strapped to a bed pan and tranfused for about a week before the took him off. He had bleeding ulcers. Once the too him off, I guess his appetite got the best of him, because he would eat everything on his tray and then come around and raid yours while you weren't looking. They held a Captains inspection one Friday, and when they opened this guy's side table, it was filled to the brim with bowls of soup, jello, crackers, all manner of food he had lifted from other people.
LCPL Johnson had endocarditis and he poked me one day as the nurse approached us and told me to watch this. He started doing jumping jacks and the nurse went rabid and ran to the office yelling for help.
We had another guy who apparently was trying for a discharge. We ulcer patients tested our stools every day for blood and gave the results to the nurse. They caught this guy in the head with a hypodermic needle drawing blood from his feet and drinking it so it would show up in his stool. They sent him to the shrink, and they put him on the psych ward, and I guess he got what he wished for, don't really know.
Popeye Ross was the only one of us that got to go home on the weekends. He came back in one day with a guitar case. I had mentioned that I played around with one, but wasn't too good at it. He told me to wait until I saw what he had in the case. He opened it and it was a Gretsch Country Gentleman Chet Atkins model. He asked me what I thought he had paid for it. I told him I didn't know, but I knew it was expensive. He said he had paid $125 in a pawn shop for it. At that time you probably couldn't buy a new one for less than $1500-2000. He said he told the man at the pawn shop what it was worth, and the guy got madder than hell at him. He could play pretty good, and he show me a few tricks and licks on it.
