Time to leave boot

Well by now I'm sure your ready for me to get out of boot camp as am I. So I will finish it up with the day before graduation. As I said before I was having a problem that the sick bay boy's (I don't think) thought I really had. On the morning of the next to last day it was raining so with rain coats on we marched over to the PX area and got our pictures taken in our dress blues. When it came time to return to barracks I managed to leave my rain coat behind and got soaking wet on the march back. After being back awhile I was not feeling to well and since it was forbidden to get into our racks I slipped around behind mine to lay down for awhile. Later in the afternoon I found myself strapped to a stretcher and being hauled down a flight of stairs and into a waiting ambulance and thats all I remembered until I got to the hospital. Seems I had walking pneumonia and had been ill with it for the last 11 weeks of my training. They got me out of bed every hour to take a shower to keep my fever down along with enough drugs in my system that I didn't feel a thing. Next morning doc came to see me where I was told I would be in the hospital for the next two weeks. That went over with me like a ton of bricks, we argued for a couple of minutes and I won out being it was my last day of boot and I was heading home for two weeks of leave where I laid in bed there for two weeks instead.

It seems I had acquired chronic bronchial pneumonia of an aggressive nature which was to plague me for the next 30 years until I managed to cure myself of it.

A final note: The doctor had my company commander send someone over to bring me back to barracks since he did not want me alone, the guys name was Charlie a black guy whom I had made friends with while in boot he has a story all his own that will be told later.

God Bless the US Navy!