One of my first times to do guard duty was at the Naval Tactical Data Systems (NTDS) Command School on Mare Island in Vallejo, California, in the winter of 1971. I had the midnight watch, so I tried to get some sleep before going to my watch location. I always had the intention of going to bed early so I would have a full night’s sleep. If I went to bed at 7 PM, slept until 11 PM, then after the watch went back to bed at 4 AM, and slept until 7 AM, that would be 8 hours. That never happened, so (needless to say) when I was on guard duty, I was always sleep deprived and grumpy on the following day.
The NTDS school was certainly not a place that many people would target for a break-in. It was an old hospital that had been built during the Civil War, and had been in use for many other purposes since that time. The blankets we were issued looked like they had been left over from World War I. The school was located about a mile inside a large area that was designated as a Naval Shipyard, and sat right next to a naval munitions depot. I personally thought that spies and saboteurs would target those places, rather than a school in an old run-down hospital. Nevertheless, the Commanding Officer of the NTDS school always posted sentries at the entrance of the school.
One dark night in early February 1971, I remember that I got to the guard post a few minutes before my duty time. I talked to the sailor I was relieving, and I signed the log indicating that I was taking over the post. The previous sentry left, and I started guarding the entrance to the school. Another half hour passed, and just one car passed on the road in front of the school.
It was a cold, dark night, and getting colder. I inspected the loose sliding door to see if there was some way to seal it better. This thing was obviously built in California, where they don’t believe cold weather exists, I thought. Hey, there was a car coming, and he turned in! I stepped out of the hut to talk to the driver. He wanted to know where he could find a beer on base. It was the first day when beer was allowed in the barracks vending machines, because the drinking age had just been changed from 21 to 18. I was not able to provide precise information, but I pointed out several barracks for him to try. So the car circled the guard post and headed back towards one of the barracks I had pointed out.
More time slowly passed, and it was still getting colder. I checked my watch and found that only a couple of minutes had passed since the previous time I had checked it. I figured there would probably be a little more action when the bars closed and people would come back to the barracks. It was pretty lonely with nothing to do except shiver.
At about 2 AM (bar closing time) one car drove by, then 15 minutes later another car drove by. I checked my watch for the 500th time, and I still had hours to go.
About 3 AM, it was getting really cold. I was dancing around in the guard post to keep warm, and suddenly I could not believe my eyes. There was snow coming down! Just a few flakes, but it was snowing! The snow melted as soon as it touched the ground. But it was snowing! Then it stopped, as quickly as it had started. Wow! I got excited thinking about this strange phenomenon, and before I knew it the last 45 minutes of my guard duty had passed.
When my relief came, I told him it had been snowing. He looked at me warily with an expression that said, “Yeah, SURE, fella.” No faith at all in my reporting. Later, I told my classmates the same thing and they laughed and said, “In California? Never!” Several years later I told my new wife about this, and she wondered if it had hurt any crops nearby. She actually remembered several freak snowstorms from her childhood. (She also happened to be the only native Californian who ever heard this story from me.)
