FROM SWIFT BOATS TO SPACECRAFT

, three days after my 19th birthday. Shortly before completing basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center near Chicago, I received my first set of orders and was about to become a crew member on USS landing craft repair ship. It was then in dry dock at the base in Yokosuka, Japan. I had long been interested in the Land of the Rising Sun, so my four-year military commitment was off to a great start. When renovations on the complete, we got underway at a less-than-blistering 9 knots—about 11 mph. On Sept. 24, we dropped anchors in An Thoi, a South Vietnamese fishing village on the southern tip of Phu Quoc Island in the Gulf of Thailand. That was the first day of what would become one of the most interesting and memorable chapters