Hi Doc What's going on Devil, how are you doing?
I'm HM2 Hall, I work at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital right now.
I've been there.
Have you Yeah
Okay You're interviewing former cub master
Okay Of the largest cub pack in the United States.
Okay Yeah
Also a corpsman right?
Yeah, happened to do that in my spare time.
And if I'm mistaken, retired chief right?
Yeah Even better
Got a good eye (Laughing)
There you go Mr. Orr
Yes sir Chief Orr, when did you join the Navy?
Be about 55 Okay 1955
Yeah I wasn't even born yet.
(Laughing) Not even close.
You look too young to be in the Navy, (Laughing)
When did you join?
I joined the Navy December of 2008.
What qualified you to join the Navy?
I was bored.
Also not doing well in college.
And went to the recruiter station.
We had Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force all lined up in a row.
There was a parking spot in front of Navy, so I pulled right in, went straight in.
Two months later I left for boot camp.
I joined the Navy just to see, I was raised in Kansas.
Okay And I wanted to see what was over the horizon.
Yeah that's good stuff Your field of vision in Kansas is only 50 miles.
That's pretty good.
Well that's the end of the world is 50 miles.
Gotcha
And I wanted to see what was on the other side.
Gotcha What was your basic pay?
(Laughing) It was enough that, it wasn't enough.
I always moonlighted.
Really?
Until, even when I was a 1st class.
What's your basic pay?
(Laughing) Oh man!
It's, I think it's like 2,000 something maybe.
3,000 something.
Well when I moonlighted, it didn't even touch that.
No?
No How long was your "A" school?
Your corpsman school?
About three months.
That was about mine, about three months.
Where was yours at?
The mecca of hospital corps schools: San Diego Naval Hospital.
Yeah, they close that down.
Ah what a shame.
Yeah What kind of stuff did you learn in corps school?
Pharmacy was the best part.
Pharmacy, medications?
Yeah and that was a big part of being a hospital corpsman
was your knowledge pharma, pharmaceutical knowledge.
Yeah Yeah
We do a lot of Motrin now.
(Laughing) I take Motrin now for my arthritis.
Yeah, we take Motrin for everything now.
Motrin, drink water and change your socks.
Did you guys tell people to change their socks?
Yeah The Marines?
What is the average advancement time now?
Mine for chief petty officer was 12 years.
About the same now.
Yeah 10 to 12 years.
Our advancement rate, the percentage for 1st class, it hovers around six percent to eight
percent advancement.
What was your standard equipment?
Unit 1 (Laughing) What's that?
(Laughing) You have really missed out a lot?
It sounds like it.
Well it's like a, you'd describe it as a mechanics toolbox.
Okay That was reinforced canvas, and it was a
oblong box that had a shoulder strap.
Like your med bag?
We didn't call it a med bag. You didn't call it a med bag.
It was rigid.
Okay Is a med bag rigid?
Uh, no they're, they're like a thick canvas nylon material.
A bunch of zippers, pouches.
We can put all of our med gear in them.
No we didn't have zippers.
You didn't have zippers?
You had flaps?
Yeah I had flaps that snapped shut.
Uh, tourniquets.
Did you guys use tourniquets?
Uh huh What kind of tourniquets were they?
It was a twisting cloth.
A cloth?
Yeah and a knot and you could take your knife shield and put that in there as a leverage
to twist it To twist it
Yeah See now they have the tourniquets, they're
uh, they're Velcro.
They're long Velcro bands about this long and they stick to them self and it's got a
twist on it.
A windless and you crank it down and it just stick to itself.
You don't have to cut anything. No we didn't have a windless.
You didn't have a windless? No it was just a an open knot.
What was the hardest thing about being a corpsman?
To be on a special watch and your patient die on ya.
Yeah Pass away on ya.
Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a tough one.
Yes it is. Having a patient die or.
I can remember so many examples of that.
I can remember, they were in the hospital scene on the wards when I'd have a special
watch on somebody my age, retired.
And then, or when I'd be on duty and I would be an ambulance attendant, and I'd go to somebody
on quarters and they'd have a baby that died.
Yeah That was hard.
Yeah.
I'd have to agree with you.
We had casualties that passed away on deployment and you never get over that.
Chief Twitty, he would say to all of us and it just use to gripe us and then when I became
a chief I took this on and if I'd pass this on to anybody, is the mantra that Chief Twitty
had was "Be the job, big or small, do it well or not at all."
Be the job, big or small, do it well or not at all.
I'll remember that. Yeah. I appreciate it.