Upon arrival the harvest was over but straw was being picked up, baled and stacked. Tractors pulled specialized equipment and she tried to drive a tractor.

She loved it. Simply loved it. Couldn’t get her off those tractors, which were top-of-the-line with all the bells, whistles and hydraulics. She found excuses to tow, pull and push things, and managed to stay out in Montana over Thanksgiving and Christmas. Her fiance was getting irritated, but kept his protests a bit muted.

After Christmas came plowing, discing and harrowing, with our heroine pulling the plows, discs and harrows from sun-up to sun-down. She pulled the seeders and fertilizers, loving to drive the tractor. She learned to service it, and could pull minor repairs.

The date for the wedding was approaching and her fiance became more and more agitated and demanding, as one would. Clearly she would have to make a choice.

And shortly thereafter she sent him a John Deere letter.

That’s about the time I got my letter. My ship got pulled off the line offshore from our patrols off the DMZ and got secret orders to Korea. We escorted a cruiser who would occasionally come alongside us at speed to transfer fuel. As we went North, the weather got colder, by the time we got there it was snowing, we didn’t even have foul weather gear aboard to wear.

The N Koreans had hijacked USS Pueblo, and we were all spoiling for a fight; I was ready to kick some ass personally: they had our guys! But the days in the Sea of Japan soon stretched to weeks, and the uncertainty and the weather was killing us. Ice was building up so much on the superstructure we had to knock it off with fire hoses so the ship wouldn’t become top-heavy. The mail came in by chopper every day from the aircraft carriers, but we were not allowed to write back for security reasons. Our folks back home were going crazy because they hadn’t heard from us.

A Japanese TV station hired a small plane to come out and take pictures, and the film eventually made it back to the States. One of my mate’s parents recognized our hull number and wrote back a terrified letter to her son, wanting to know why we were there and why hadn’t he written. Except for the oiler that would come by every other day or so to top us off, we saw no other ships around us. We knew a great armada was out there, just out of sight over the horizon, but except for a brief glimpse of the distinctive superstructure of USS Enterprise, a gray ghost ten miles away, we did not see anyone else.. The supply helo bringing mail, movies and fresh ice cream was our only other link to the real world.

Our skipper did a good job of keeping us informed, but no one, not even he, knew how the situation was going to be resolved. We were all convinced the world was on the brink of nuclear war, and the irony of it all was that even if it came to that, we aboard ship, would probably survive it while fire and death rained down on the rest of the world. There might not be any home to go to, and no way to get there. The feeling of isolation was unbearable, but it was all in the background. The ship was on port-and-starboard watches 24 hours a day (six on, six off, half the crew at battle stations at any time. On Star Trek they call it “Condition Yellow”). My GQ station was in Mount 51 at the time, so I could at least catch up on some Z’s while I waited for Armageddon to get started.

That’s when I got my Dear John letter. If you’ve never been in the military, it must be hard to understand how absolutely vital those letters from your girl are. I was devastated, of course, and feeling awfully sorry for myself. I was just a kid.

After 56 straight days at sea (a record for a ship of our class), we had a boiler casualty that forced us to limp back to a yard in Japan for repairs. By the time that was patched up, the situation had changed, and we got new orders to go back to Yankee Station.