Navy Blues: Growing Up in Uniform

After naïve, seventeen-year-old Mike Gadell is convinced to enlist in the U. S. Naval Reserve in order to receive an appointment to the Naval Academy, the recruiter who made the promise disappears, leaving the young sailor with a six-year military obligation.

Navy Blues: Growing Up in Uniform tells the story of this young man's tribulations as he attends boot camp, begins college, and engages in summer training. As the Vietnam War heats up, he leaves school and embarks on active duty, serving on a ship in the amphibious navy and enjoying duty on a tropical island. Returning home to an alcoholic father he cannot tolerate, he finds himself on his own. Navy training helps him land a newspaper job, and he soon becomes a husband and father.

This memoir focuses on the other military story of the Vietnam era-the story of those who were subject to being sent into battle, but whom fate sent in the other direction.