My name is George Henderson,I am a retired Eastern Airline mechanic.I am married to Barbara Sue Bowen Henderson.We will celebrate 50 years of marriage on Nov.12th.of this year(2000).
My purpose in putting this story on a web page is mainly for my children,grandchildren,and future great-grandchildren.Hopefully they will understand more of how our family started from seeing it on their computer rather than just looking at old photo albums.
I also hope they will understand how two people who love each other can endure all the hardships that go with a marriage and raising a family and they can now look back and see the fruits of their love and labor.I thank God for my Children and grandchildren, they have all turned out extremely well in this turbulent world that we live in.
I also dedicate this site to the officers and crew who served aboard the USS Henderson DD785 during the Korean war and the bombardment and invasion of Inchon,Korea in September of 1950.
After graduating from high school at the tender age of sixteen (in 1947 high school only had eleven grades in Georgia)I worked as a helper on a soft drink company delivery truck and by the age of seventeen I was driving the truck.In September of 1948,( I was now age 18) I was laid off due to seasonal slowdown. It was at this time that I decided to join the navy and see the world.
It was only a little over three years after world war II and my older brother Charles had been in the Naval Air Corps and my brother Edward had been in the Marines, so, remembering this billboard poster in front of the post office in Rome,GA,
Click on thumbnail for full size.
I enlisted and took all the exams. I then went to Macon for the physical and was accepted and sworn in on 4 October,1948. I traveled by train to San Diego,Ca., where I commenced my boot camp training at the United States Naval Training Facility.I will always remember the feeling of trepidation I had as our bus from the train station pulled into the gate at the training station. All of these young sailors were yelling at us "YOU'L BE SORRY ". By the end of that first day, I thought they were right. We were rushed to a barber shop where our heads were shaved, rushed to a dispensary to get our first vaccinations, rushed to the mess hall for our first navy meal (cold cuts),rushed to another building to get our uniforms and rushed to our dormitory and assigned our bunks.Also I will always remember that first night alone in my bunk wondering what I had gotten myself into.
p>I was assigned to Company 461,my Company Commanders name was CPO Bertick. The thing I remember most about CPO Bertick was that he always referred to us as "lad". We were Quarantined for the 1st. 2 weeks of boot camp during which time we were shown horrible films of all kinds of things that would happen to us if we were not careful and above all, stay away from Tia Juana, Mexico. Of course,being 18 years old and indestructible, we all headed for Tia Juana on our first liberty.That first trip to Tia Juana was quite an experience,Of course San Diego had it's bars,burlesque shows and every one trying to get the young sailors money,but Tia Juana was a city dedicated to cleaning a young mans pockets.There was bar after bar,bar girls,hotels ,prostitutes and no one seemed to care if you were under the legal age to drink.As I said it was quite an experience.The photo above is my 1st.navy picture,shaved head and baggy uniform.I thought I looked so cool and worldly.
All of our time during boot camp was spent marching,attending classes,rifle firing, learning fire fighting skills,military disipline and marching,marching and marching.One of the things we all looked forward was standing watch when we were not otherwise occupied.There was barracks watch,and a real fun one was clothes line watch.The sailor on clothes line watch would spend 2 hours marching up and down by the clothes washing area and he would have to challenge anyone that came into the area.These watch duties were from 8:00pm at night till 6:am in the morning in two hour shifts.Our favorite was 2 til 4.You would be awakend at 1:30am releive the former watch at 2 then back in bed at 4:am then revelie at 5;30 what fun that was.
Of course I cannot forget the practical jokes played on new recruits,The first one that was pulled on me was a classic.I was standing in line for our noon meal and this guy came up to me ,and in a very authoratarian voice demanded to see my coffee mug. I handed it to him and he flipped it over and said " You have Lieutenant Davis's mug " He showed me that LT. Davis was stamped on the bottom of the mug. Well of course this scared me to death, a lowly seaman recruit daring to have a Lieutenants coffee cup. I asked what to do and he told me to rush it over to company headquarters and I took off. At company headquarters I explained what had happened and that it was an accident. They told me to rush it back to the mess hall and give it to the petty officer in charge. By the time I realized that everyone was in on the joke and the LT Davis on the bottom of the mug was the makers stamp, I had missed the noon meal completely.
