Gilbert F. Fuentes, CTT3 USN, 1965-1968 Graduated from high school at age 17 and couldn't get a real job because you had to be 18 to work in most of the places in my area. My girlfriend and I had parted ways so I had a lot of free time; got bored one day and decided to check out some recruiters for the heck of it. Lucky for me, the marine recruiter was busy and I went to the Navy recruiter first; went home with papers for the parents to sign. When I was in the office doing the final paper work a guy came in to reenlist after being seperated for a couple of years. His words of wisdom to me were " kid; try to be a radioman, it's the best racket in the navy". I didn't pay much attention because I had a mechanical background and thought that the Seabees were for me. One day in bootcamp the company commander came in and said to get out our Bluejacket's manual and pick out three ratings, we were going to classification. I had my three seabee ratings picked out and was good to go; my turn came and one by one my selections were shot down because they required 20/20 vision uncorrected. I'm 17 yrs old, never been anywhere, and one of the "gods" wants an answer right now. The old salts words pop into my head and I say " how about radioman" , he says "let me check your scores". He checks and says " you can do better than that, how about Communication technician?" I said "what's that?" He said " I don't know, it's classified but it's good". Glad to say he was right. I was a kiddie cruiser ( in before 18th birthday out day before 21st birthday) so I had 3yr and 2mo to serve, they sent me to Wasington D.C. for 7 months before Corry so by the time I finished school I only had 1yr and 10 mo left to serve. Spent my only CT tour in Edzell, Scotland. Got out as a CTT3, made E-5 but would not extend for it. Gilbert Fuentes 1965-1968