Peter Gamwell I joined the Navy Reserve while in high school.  Went on active duty in August of 1957 at the Fargo Building in Boston. My active duty was scheduled for two years but I wanted Electricians Mate school so I needed to extend for a year.  I arrived in Chicago on Labor Day weekend and we didn't need to report until Tuesday so we spent the weekend at the YMCA in Chicago and among other things took in a Cubs game.  I  graduated from EM school just before Christmas and was assigned to the USS Kretchmer DER-329 in Newport, RI.  I didn't have to report to the ship until after New Years, so I had about two weeks in Pittsfield.  When I got to Newport, the ship was still at sea and I was sent to the transit barracks. As I enter the barracks who do I see checking sailors in but Phil Plouffe.  A couple of days later the ship arrived and I started my two and a half years on board. I rose from a Fireman Recruit to Second Class Petty Officer in that time.
The ship was part of the DEW line (Distant Early Warning) in the North Atlantic.  We had four stations from Argencia, Newfoundland to the Azores.  We would normally be at sea four weeks and back in Newport for three. I made on trip to Gitmo, Cuba after being in the Boston Shipyards the summer of 1958.  We made a trip to La Harve, France and Portsmouth, England in 1958 and another trip to Rotterdam, Holland and South End by the Sea, England in 1959.  Summer of 1960 we were back in the Boston Shipyards and my three years were up and I gladly left the ship.  I had been accepted to Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and finished my Reserve duty one weekend a month on a harbor minesweeper.

Posted By: Pete Gamwell - 04-09-2008
Views: 1824