Crimeny Stephanie, you hit the bullseye paragraph after paragraph. I was especially struck by your remarks that some of us aren’t “real” vets because we didn’t serve in combat. I used to hear I didn’t qualify as Navy because I spent my four-year hitch ashore. For starters, I didn’t have a choice: I was in from 1974 to ‘78; by law, women couldn’t serve aboard warships. That said, I was at Keflavik Naval Air Station from 1975 to ‘76. We were a base for P-3 Orion patrol planes operating in the North Atlantic. We tracked Soviet subs transiting between their base at Polyarny and their patrol areas off the U. S. East Coast. We were also prepared to sink them with conventional air-dropped torpedoes and nuclear depth charges (we had 36 cans on base). As a result, the Soviets were prepared to take us out, either by bombing the station, or landing troops to take it and use it themselves.

As a result, I resent it when someone suggests I wasn’t “real Navy” because I was in some safe billet ashore. Indeed, because it wasn’t safe, I wangled a slot in the base defense battalion. We did monthly maneuvers in the rock fields around the station. Our officers were initially reluctant to include some of us ladies. But we made the case that if the shooting started, like it or not, we’d be in it. So they may as well issue us M-14s and train us to fight.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the 180 Marines and Air Force base security guys used M-16s. But us sailors and most of the zoomies were issued M-14s. The Marine trainers didn’t think they could make us weekend warriors proficient enough with the 1975-era M-16s to keep them operating in Icelandic field conditions. The M-14s were less likely to get jammed by ice and lava rock particles.