I volunteered for the U.S. Coast Guard while a senior in high school. Me and two buddies actually offered to enlist in the Army, Navy, and Marines at the same time but all branches said they did not take high schoolers but would be happy to take us after graduation. We told the recruiters that we would go with the first branch that called us. The Coast Guard was first so we joined at once. We took boot training at Curtis Bay, Md., and were shipped to Cleveland, Ohio.

There was a chief petty offi- cer who had just joined the Coast Guard as a specialist in construction. His first assignment was to paint the look out tower at the Cleveland station. There were two methods of painting that 100 foot tower and I talked a buddy of mine into attacking it with me. It was a scary job when the wind whipped us around and slammed us back into the structure. The rest of the crew at the station thought it was fun chunking biscuits at us every morning. I quickly figured out a way to take part of the fun away from them. I would get a paint full on my brush and flip it at the tormentors. It wasn't nearly as much fun throwing a cold biscuit when you had a face full of wet paint.

When the two of us worked together we were on a small board suspended from the top of the tower. We pulled our way up and tied the ropes to the rig and would raise it again to get us to the unpainted level. When we were working alone we were in a small board much like a child's swing, Anyhow the chief never forgot that we were the only two idiots brave enough to tackle the job. He adopted us and had us transferred to his crew to travel around the country tearing down C.C.C. camps and shipping the buildings to other parts of the country where we reassembled them for military barracks. We moved to Toledo, and other parts of Ohio and on to Oswego, N.Y.

My buddy and I both put in for anything that looked like it would get us closer to where the shooting was. One day we got orders to grab a train for Nebraska to become members of the dog training K-9 corps. We were to train the war dogs to work with a handler both in the U.S. and overseas. The dogs were big and we made them mean and unless you were the dog's man you had better not get near one of them unless you liked being chewed on. Grrrr. Each man was assigned at least two dogs to train and funny thing the dogs took on the exact actions of the trainer assigned to train it, and it was fun to see.

The men who appeared "jumpy" had dogs that became jumpy after a few weeks. The men who were slow walking soon had dogs that were lazy. The guy who could nod off into a short nap on the 10-minute breaks also found a dog that could snooze in a sec. I saw smart dogs, dumb dogs, big dogs, little dogs, colored and solid, but the main thing that I remember are the dogs that were big and mean and could bite your arm off in a minute.

I was not afraid of the dogs like most of the kids at the start of training. The sergeant in charge saw this and approached me on the idea of my becoming the agitator. That's the guy who puts on a false arm and the dogs have at him. There was a suit also but I chose only the arm pocket — I wanted movement.

I had been a wrestler in high school and a football player and felt more secure dancing and dodging that 90 pounds of pure hell trying to cut my tour on the earth. I did not know how strong a dog's mouth was nor how sharp those 100 teeth were that looked like daggers as they challenged me each day. I chose to do this because I would be excused from K.P. and preparing and feeding the dogs.

We were not real impressed with Camp Robinson but most of us knew that we would be out of there in three months so we made the best of it. There was this one meathead that we learned to dislike. He was about five foot seven inches and he weighed over two hundred pounds, we called him "Lardo." He had a motorcycle and he rode it into town every afternoon and bragged about the good times every day. He hated officers, enlisted men, dogs, Nebraska, snow, wind and all of us. He did not like anything that we knew about except his motorcycle and himself. He was nutty.

One day it was his day to mix the food and feed the dogs. We all had finished our day's training and were at one end of the rows of dog houses watching Lardo come up with the wagon loaded with food. We gave him lots of good advice like be sure and stick your foot in that big dog's mouth. He just sneered at all the barbs and bent over to set the first can of food down. He turned to hurl an insult at the group just as the big dog came charging out of his dog house. The dog managed to nip him in a finger and Lardo shot backwards without straightening up and the big dog behind him got a pretty good chunk of Lardo's lard.

You could have heard him scream in Omaha. He spun and hit about 90 as he burned shoe leather out of there. We were screaming and rolling in the snow because we thought it was the funniest thing in our world. We later saw blood drops all the way from the dog area to his motorcycle. He bled pretty good. Lardo cranked up his cycle and with a roar and a puff of smoke he was out of there. We watched him run down the long lane, hit the highway and set away over yon mountain. That was the last time any of us saw of Lardo. He did not return to duty nor to pick up his clothes or anything else that was his. I never heard anything about him even though I asked almost every sailor that I met for years. He lost himself completely. Those of us at the dog school was unhappy to see him go because he took away our "man to torment." Every group needs a smart alec to throw insults at once in a while.

BUCKLE UP, DRIVE WITH CARE, PUT ON A LIFE JACKET AND I'LL SEE YOU ON THE LAKE.