Laurence E. Johns

00:00:00

Laurence Johns: Well, most people know me as Bud, but my right name is Laurence, L-a-u-r-e-n-c-e, middle initial e and the last name is Johns, J-o-h-n-s. I was born in Morganville, Maryland which is close to Hagerstown in Washington County, and I went to school in Leitersburg and then to Hagerstown schools for middle and junior high and finally high school at Hagerstown high school.

00:00:30

Laurence Johns: Graduated in 1950, just when the war started.

Interviewer: Ah! What is your birthday?

Laurence Johns: 7-11-32

Interviewer: Very good. So you just graduated from high school and the Korean war broke out.

Laurence Johns: That’s right. 

Interviewer: How did you know and what did you think about it at the time?

Laurence Johns: Well, I guess we were all starting to get aware of it in high school 

00:01:00

We kept hearing about it, but I was a farm boy so you know I was not exposed to much to all the city stuff, but anyway when time to graduate it wasn’t long until I had to register for the draft. I was 18 and when I registered for the draft then I realized that this thing was going to be real to me. I was going to have to make some kind of move somewhere.

Interviewer: It’s going to be real and really real.(laughter)

00:01:30

Laurence Johns: Yes. So, I played the odds for a while and said maybe they won’t get to me. Well anyway, then I got my notice to go get my physical for the draft. I got wet and took my physical in Baltimore. Took me down in a bus. It was probably one of the most humiliating things I’ve ever been through in my life. 

Interviewer: Why?

Laurence Johns: I had never been undressed in front of anybody except my mother, and there were three hundred guys all parading around naked in this building in Baltimore. (laughter)

00:02:00

Laurence Johns: Anyway, I got through the physical and I decided to come home. I was already married. I came home and I told my wife I said…

Interviewer: You married at the age of?

Laurence Johns: I got married when i was20. My wife was 18. I came home and I told her I said I’m not going in the Army. She said why. I said I’m just telling you what I saw today was enough.I don’t want no parts of the Army. I’m going somewhere else.

00:02:30

Laurence Johns: She said where are you going? I said I don’t know but I ain’t goin’ in the Army. So anyway, as luck would have it, next week in the newspaper…

Interviewer: What year are we talking about now? 

Laurence Johns: That would have been nineteen fifty early 52.

Interviewer: Mm hmm. And… I mean what did you think about the break out of the Korean War? What did you think about it? Did you know about Korea before?

Laurence Johns: No I did not know who it was or where it was.

00:03:00

 Laurence Johns: I just knew it, our country, we had just finished… I just went through World War Two and grew up in high school with all the World War Two stuff and it was finally over and here we are talking about going to war again. This time it was going to involve me and that was different. Before, it was always some of my relatives or somebody else you know. It didn’t bother me but now it’s going to involve me. So anyway, after I came home with my physical I said I’m not going in the Army.

0003:30

 Laurence Johns: She said what are you going to do? I don’t know but anyways as luck would have it that week in the local newspaper was an ad that the United States Coast Guard would have a recruiting officer in our local post office the next week. So, I don’t know what they do. I don’t know anything about them, but I know one thing. They don’t fiddle in the dirt, and I’m tired of fooling in the dirt. I’ve been farming all my life. I’m going down to talk to him, so I went down. I talked to the guy and of course like all recruiting officers…

00:04:00

Laurence Johns: Everything’s possible with them you know. Everything. It’s a… it’s a beautiful thing. No problem. We fix everything. Yeah well. (laughter) Anyway, I decided I’d join. I came home. Told my wife I said I think I’m gonna enlist. So I enlisted in the Coast Guard. Well, I went back and the guy says…

Interviewer: That was 50?

Laurence Johns: 52.

Interviewer: 52 you join?

Laurence Johns: Well, but he wouldn’t take me. That’s another story. He wouldn’t take me. 

00:04:30

Laurence Johns: Says you’re overweight. Now I had just finished four years of high school football and had been a farm boy all my life. Now I was in about as good of physical shape as you could find and I said well what do you mean about he says you’re overweight. You got to lose some weight. He says here’s what you do. You go home and you drink a glass of warm lemon juice every morning when you get up and he says you do that for 30 days and you come back and we’ll check you again.

Interviewer: Can you reveal how much you weighed at the time?

00:05:00

Laurence Johns: Oh yeah 186.

Interviewer: That wasn’t that bad.

Laurence Johns: Oh no! I was in excellent shape.

Interviewer: But why do they refuse to take you?

Laurence Johns: The Coast Guard is really particular. They have pretty strict standards. I don’t know. I don’t know who set them but they’re really they’re very particular. I mean you just can’t just walk in there.

Interviewer: Wow!

Laurence Johns: Yes wow was right so anyway. I went back after my 30 days. The guy says guess what.

00:05:30

Laurence Johns: I said what. He says you lost nine pounds, I’ll take you. He says you really want to go? I said I don’t want to go in the Army. He said well then come on sign the papers here. So anyway then they shipped me off and the Coast Guard is a real small outfit here. I don’t know if you know about it or not but when i joined, the whole service only had about twenty five thousand men in it and a few women. They were called nobody hardly anybody knows what the women were called They were called SPARS s-p-a-r-s

00:06:00

Interviewer: Oh. What is that?

Laurence Johns: That’s the women Coast Guard.

Interviewer: What does it stand for SPARS?

Laurence Johns: I don’t know but spar is a piece of a sailing vessel, the wood part of the mast goes off to the side, that’s called a spar and that’s what I do not know if that is how they got their name or not but anyway.

Interviewer: Anyway,

Laurence Johns: We didn’t see very many of them there weren’t very many.

00:06:30

Laurence Johns: So anyway, I joined the Coast Guard and they sent me to boot camp on my own. No bus. No nothing. Gave me a bus ticket.

Interviewer: Where?

Laurence Johns: Cape May, New Jersey. Cold Spring Harbor Cape May New Jersey is where I went to boot camp.

Interviewer: Was it still 1952 or 53?

Laurence Johns: This was December 1952 and it was cold in Cold Spring Harbor I’ll tell you.

Interviewer: Ah hah.

00:07:00

Laurence Johns: Anyway…

Interviewer: What do they teach you?

Laurence Johns: I went through boot camp. Now boot camp was divided into two things, physical, getting you ready physically, and mentally, for the military etiquette and all that stuff to know about the military. They teach you to march and all that kind of stuff. So I went through boot camp and I passed my physical. The first day there they have to take a physical.

00:07:30

Laurence Johns: That decides what you have to do the rest of the days you’re in boot camp. You have to do extra exercise in the afternoon if you do not pass. Well, I passed my physical first time through and he said you did good. He said I’m gonna give you a job. I said what kind of job. He says I’m gonna make you the company mailman. So, all the way through boot camp while I guess the guys were out there marching and jumping up and down doing all jumping jacks and all that, I was sorting the mail getting the mail ready to give them.

00:08:00

Laurence Johns: In the evening when they come in after they’ve been exercising.

Interviewer: How lucky you are.

Laurence Johns: Yes I was lucky. So, then I went, of course I got through boot camp, graduated from boot camp, and they sent me to Norfolk, Virginia and there I was on temporary duty. I did not  know it at the time but I was on temporary duty at a boarding party. Now at that time, well still, they still do it with any foreign vessel that comes into the United States waters…

00:08:30

Laurence Johns: Has to be boarded by the United States Coast Guard and inspected. At that time they were inspecting them for whiskey, not drugs. This is in the fifties. Now that was before drugs became a problem. So they take us out in a small boat with one officer and five guys, five enlisted men. The officer was the only one that had a sidearm and we had a couple walkie-talkies.They load us up, have to climb up the side of a ship and get aboard a ship…

 00:09:00

Laurence Johns: And then inspect the ship. They gave you a mirror, a whistle, a flashlight, and a piece of chalk and a screwdriver and you went they start you in the birthing compartments of the ship where the crew slept because that’s where they hide everything and you’d have to pry the sides of the walls the partitions off we call bulkheads on board the ship pry the sides off and when it get in there with a flashlight and where you couldn’t see hold a mirror up and then take the flashlight…

00:09:30

Laurence Johns: And reflect light down so you can see what was behind there and lo and behold we’d often find bottles of whiskey in there. So anyway, that was my first assignment as a boarding party. Then I got sent to radar school in Groton, Connecticut. Now the Coast Guard has their own schools called petty officer training schools and usually one of their schools is the one you’re going to…  

00:10:00

Laurence Johns: But it will cover probably three other categories. I went to radar school but I was also taught radio and sonar there. Got through that… graduated

[Recording Abruptly Ends]