ought to go that's right well as you know you know graduating from the class of sixty seven we were right in the in the height of the vietnam war and i think most of us realized that eventually we were going to have to fill our military legation so i went to the flag a building or what they called the navy building back there in south boston on some a street i think they called it the navy building because it was the headquarters for the st naval district boston the only in they took us down to this kind of like an assembly room and we waited there and i next thing i remember was the chief petty officer came into the room and he had a soft sit down and he started to talk about anyone interested possibly in the volunteering for submarine duty and there weren't too many people you know raising their hands at st but then he started to talk on and there's a story i like to tell there were he hit upon three phases he said st of all there's a very good chance you could get a submarine base right at the sub base in the london or groton connecticut by here and not far away at all and that kind of perked a few years up  submarine service get the best shall in the navy and i raise my hand and i said i'm ready but out of the thirty guys that were sworn in that day approximately thirty there were only three of us that wanted to go down and talk to these people about and that was an eight week course and then after a sub submarine school i got assigned to the u s s cobbler which was a diesel boat diesel submarine there down at the base so everything that he said was going to happen lower and the officer that's on the bridge with the sailors when he comes down he comes down he becomes the diving offices so he's telling them just what to do when the dive and  but eventually i ended up going back into the engine rooms to work and that's where i wanted to be and i got you know rated as a rd class engine and i st stood all the watches which is kind of like the there are two men in each would you bunk when you're on board would that work did you did you have your own bako to just share when someone oh we actually had enough bunks for everyone ok now and today's boats are some of the nuclear attack boats that are out there today some of those the galley and the cruise mess and the heads and eventually then i get out of the after battery and move to the after torpedo room will quiet a backfire because there isn't a lot of everyday noise going on you know when you're trying to sleep on the preparing the evening meal or watching movies or something you know it's kind of tough to get any sleep so dois it with the engines in the proper you know you're pretty much isolated from the engine the pre yeah the the the rudder and up the propeller shaft made a little supply and after twenty four hours it got a little little stale you know so you'd be looking to come up to open the hatches and some of the ventilation ducts and get some fresh air  were heading to the med for six and i didn't realize that i had got my orders and i didn't realize that until i was walking across the brow with my c bag over my shoulder on my orders in my hand and the topside watch asked me for bit over there where they friendly to sell us back oh yes oh paul yeah no absolutely we had a few encounters with some russian submarines while we were at sea over there but not nothing just you know they come close enough to take a look at us we come close enough to let you go look at them and then you go off on your own way or something like that you know that happened a couple of and but other than that no everybody was very friendly to us so how long how long was how long were you and what was your list when you're active duty my active know updated remodelled all that they do quite a bit and you work that you can work on your own sub i mean yeah absolutely yeah and when you when you're not working on a certain aspect of what they're doing there's always navy i learned to work on diesel engines and that type of thing so when i got out in seventy one i went to the construction business because i figured you know i could work on the diesels and other aspects of like heavy equipment mechanics and things like that i worked for a dealership over in allston call clark well cox and they were a heavy equipment dealership they sold  equipment john deere equipment for that type of thing and i worked in the service department and then i worked for them for eleven years and then eventually i got to work for a couple of different contractors i worked for elbagir welch a j welch in writing because there was a world war two vets organization so in the in the early sixty's you know the rest of the submarine veterans decided hey they need to have a group of their own you know ok so they established the united states submarine veterans and two years ago the two groups merged because there's not very many well what two sub vets left anymore so what they did is they merge the world war two subjects with the united states marine veterans and now it's just one but we have monthly and things like that and last year there was over four hundred cars you know that's how big it's grown and just a little over ten years but we meet in at the pearly what is at the marriott and in bedford and on sunday morning and then we make the run probably not going to win any awards but they usually take an older classic like one of the mid sixty's keyser something like that mine mine mid ninety's so it's not a real classic was last year's was rebuild i think that was somebody who'd gone ahead and did a custom rebuild yeah or you know they a lot of guys do that yes but they have car car clubs that car clubs come from all over the northeast now from not just women the come from canada they come from upstate new york they come from the jersey and you know that's how they were able to get you know over four hundred cars to come this past year well i like it when i go through the childline that i'm sort of by officers a foreman l i have a son that lives in scottsdale arizona so we good we go to visit with him twice a year we go down in the in the spring and in the fall that way we're not down there in the middle of the summer when it's one hundred and fifty dollars or so so you drive one hundred  say that i did that i actually you know you have to qualify once you get on board the boat you have to qualify on all the systems ok and once you pass all the qualifications this is above and beyond just going to sub school once you pass all the qualifications the captain award you with a set of silver dolphin similar well of like the ones i'm wearing this designates you qualified in submarines and didn't come out when the stern planes got activated and we went into like a full dive was a lot and had to do an all back emergency surface and i guess we were only in a couple one hundred feet of water at the time i was in the engine room but  that's a ten day crossing of the atlantic and back to connecticut and we were about two days out from being back to port and some rays and the captain came up into they were traveling on the surface and the captain came up to the tower and he got on the intercom and he told the officer the deck on the bridge to clear the bridge submerge the ship so on that order the lookouts come down they're going to man their planes down and the diving station the officer comes down  like you do see in the old world war two movies he pulls the hatch down tight and the quantum master goes up and dogs the hatch then he continues on down and he's in charge of the diving station well as the lookouts were coming down that day the captain in the conning tower grabbed this fellow's name was scratched klos and he was about six for something like that and they would call them stretch and the captain grabs stretch claassen and pulled him over by him and hit him behind the periscope so as the other lookout and be diving officer came down the hatch got dogged and continued on down into the control room the officer didn't see stretch over there so he gets down to the diving station and sees there's only one plane there ok whereas stretch no wonder we're stretch was did he go overboard and all of a sudden here's another emergency surface because we've started we're starting down here's another emergency service now all hands have to be accounted for on a man overboard type situation and everyone was accounted for except stretch and then all of a sudden at the end of that at the captain pull him out from behind the periscope and said areas right here it was you know just he wanted he planned this like a little snake drill for everybody to see how we would react to it all it was alexa so i was an exercise that was just in his head and nobody else know emergency her surface is just blow everything blow all tanks you know on a submarine you know the ballast tanks around the outside of the pressure hole and there on the surface obviously filled with air that's keeping you afloat  on a dive the chief of the watch at the hydraulics control manifold he opens the vents at the top of the tanks the air rushes out the water comes in the flood ports are open at the bottom water comes rushing in the tanks fill the submarine goes  they have you in there for a good ten to fifteen minutes before they release the pressure and you know and there's also a skate trunk that you have to go in at certain  levels and blow to the surface they usually have you go in nowadays i believe it's from thirty five feet but back in the old days at the old days it could have been up to one hundred feet they would want you to blow and go from i didn't have to do that i did it from a you come to the top it's only thirty five feet away but as far as psychologically i mean i think that you know guys that want to go figure that you know they're just going to do it you know and i did not see anyone get weeded out for a psychological shift you know physical situation yes but not the other you most have to learn to get along with people if you're on a submarine well this is very true qualification aspect involved get qualified on all the different systems and all the different watches so if you had to jump on someone else's duty because he was disabled or something happened you know you could do it at least have some sort of a knowledge of it but no one other than the med cruise and the other runs we made the different  ports we operated out of new london as i said and it was a lot of times it was just either like weekly ops and you would go out in the we would go out into the north atlantic we go pee on long island sound pass long island past mont uk point and block island out into the northern atlantic and just operate out there with either of us submarines or surface craft or aircraft you know what we go out there and you know we try to find us and we try to maybe sneak up on them and shoot a shoot something that them without them knowing about it and you know that kind of thing you also act as a rescue potential rescue vehicle for planes that went down or something we didn't know what they but that's what boats did during the war during world war two a look at the president was a good deal u s s finback when he was a young navy pilot but they would go out on what they call these wolf packs or well actually the germ of the germans called the you both hand a matter of fact the submarine that's down at battleship cole in fall river the u s s lionfish that did life god duty the last year or so of the war and they rescued a b go down and provide tours for the visitors to battleship golf they love it when one of our guys goes down there and he spends the day taking people through the boat or just stand on top side telling them sea stories and you know well like i say you know we were at the height of the vietnam war and i think most most most people realize that they somehow they needed to fulfill the military obligation and but no i get i get out just like you and seventy one came back to earlier my son lives in scottsdale arizona he's been there six years he works for grand canyon university so you may have seen some of the commercials on t v they're always advertising grand canyon university mostly for their online online cou know him but he works there as a student recruiter to try to get you know students to come to the school and he just recently finished his master's course through the school being an employee he was able to take the masters course through the