ABSTRACT
Immediately after graduation from college, the men in our NROTC unit were commissioned as ensigns. There was a ceremony, probably at the same time as graduation, but I remember that commissioning even less than I remember graduation. Life as a naval officer started with three weeks of playing pool and drinking Heineken beer at the Officers’ Club at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (“Gitmo” to Navy people), plus ineffectually trying to learn to man a tiny one-person sailboat. I was waiting for my ship, the destroyer Samuel B. Roberts, DD823, to come into port, when I would join the ship’s company.
