After a few weeks at OCS, we had begun to meet with “detailers” from BUPERS (Bureau of Personnel) whose role was to make the assignments we would undertake as ensigns. Some of those in A6903 already had a general idea, because of their “designators.”
The designators’ four-digit codes identified the Navy “community” in which an officer belonged, e.g., supply, aviation, etc. The single designator relevant to us that included the largest number of officers was 1105 — unrestricted line officer (Naval Reserve). While “unrestricted” implies something of a wide range, officers with this designator were more commonly “ship drivers.” Initial tours of duty were aboard ship where they could be assigned to any number of departments, but they also stood duty as Officer-of-the-Deck (OOD) Underway.
At least a few members of A6903 — Cosgrove, Jones, Webber — were assigned to the Civil Engineer Corps (CEC).
I had a designator no OCS detailer had seen before. I learned some time after OCS that I and two other members of 6903 were the first officer candidates to enter OCS with the designator 1635 — Special Duty Officer (Intelligence). Prior to us, one first had to be a line officer before changing a designator to Intelligence. (This was also a time when there was a bifurcation — air and surface — in Intelligence. We were surface. The air intel types trained in Pensacola, along with Naval Aviators.)
So, when I showed up for my detailer appointment, the meeting was short. Essentially, he told me, “I have no idea what you’ll be doing. But I know it’ll be a desk job. Washington, Pearl Harbor, maybe Japan.” Well, if it meant anything, I told him, I would prefer those in reverse order.
“Knowing” I would be going to a desk job, I began to make remarks to my soon-to-be ship-driver colleagues when Victory at Sea showed destroyers being tossed about by violent seas. Smugness reigned in me.
My request regarding shore duty had been irrelevant. About halfway through OCS, I received a letter from my detailer, a Commander Demaris. After welcoming me “aboard” the Naval Intelligence community, he said I would be ordered upon commissioning to the Fleet Operational Intelligence Training Center in Norfolk, Va., for six weeks of intelligence schooling. After that, three weeks of “intensive” Combat Information Center training at the Fleet Training Center, Norfolk, and then “assignment aboard a ship for approximately 18 months.”
A ship? A ship? I wasn’t familiar with whiskey-tango-foxtrot in those terms then, but the unexpurgated version was pretty much my initial reaction. CDR Demaris also said that, after sea duty, I could expect assignment in Washington or to a major staff.
Well, maybe he meant an aircraft carrier. Those don’t get pushed around as much at sea as a destroyer or LST (Landing Ship, Tank). (As I soon learned and you will soon learn, I was not ordered to a carrier.)
Bob Hamilton was 1105. “I remember meeting with BUPERS and filling out a ‘dream sheet.’ You could pick three choices for location and three choices for type of duty.”
Don Cockrill, also 1105, remembers the “dream sheet” and the caveat that “the needs of the Navy were always the top priority. “How true,” he said. “I requested shore duty on the East Coast, which, of course, resulted in my assignment to a ship on the West Coast.”
Lenny Borg was 1105, as was Dennis Greenspon.