"I'm on a road shaped like a figure 8"

Well, some direct questions with Larry Johnson has revealed some interesting insights.

Larry tells me I remember wrong that time in Charleston in 1990.

That wasn't Larry who drove up to Greenville and then was at my apartment.

The way I had remembered it I was working my civilian job in Greenville South Carolina. The book I got from the Wainwright veterans association tells me the ship returned to homeport Charleston SC on 12 April 1990. My official United States Navy records tell me I transferred off the CG-28 while inport Monaco on 02 March 1990. That was my permanent departure from the ship.

Larry tells me he left the ship before I did which was news to me.

Whether the power of suggestibility or a vague memory resurfacing I had some flashes of memory in my mind about that.

I am trying to strengthen my memory of 1989 so I can try to regain secured memories that physically exist in my brain that could confirm my presence on Flight 232 in 1989, an experience I have no active recollection.

So I knew the Wainwright would return to port in 1990 and I drove down there to Charleston from Greenville SC because I had left some of my stuff on the ship instead of shipping it back.

I wrote about how I walked to the ship, showed my active military ID to the guard and then the ship's quarterdeck crew and then they let me roam the ship where I went to Missile Plot to get my stuff.

And that's crazy because I just now had another flash in my mind where I spoke directly to Larry Johnson. He was asking me how much money I made at the new job and we were standing in Missile Plot.

So I had written before that he drove his blue Camaro to Greenville and he was there at my apartment and then he left and went to visit his relatives that lived there in Greenville.

So Larry tells me he couldn't have driven that car because it was destroyed in Hurricane Hugo, as was mine. After he wrote that I had a flash of memory of him telling me about how the storm surge had left river water filling a whisky shot glass that was sitting on the dashboard of his Camaro. So that seemed to make sense. My pickup had been flooded too.

Somewhere out there I guess someone still has a photograph of me and Larry Johnson in 1987 standing next to the statue in front of Buckingham Palace.

I could have sworn I wrote somewhere in my journal about that memory of 1990 and visiting the ship and Larry driving to Greenville. Can't find it though. So I am trying to correct something I might have never written about before, just a lingering misconception in my confused mind. I wrote today and now here something similar to how I must have been thinking of someone who was a secret agent and while I could not actively think about that person my mind and my mind sort of reassociated the details in my mind.

So I am trying to regain active memories and regain the precise date of those memories and so what is the point of that.

Well, I have to think there is some point to it.

Larry timestamped one active memory as the weekend of 29 May 1989. I can recall that very well. The next active memories I can match with calendar dates are the days of Hurricane Hugo and general dates of the days afterward. I just cannot recall July 1989.










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 01/24/07 1:03 AM

I must have dreamed a lot about the Falklands, but I don't remember any of it. It feels as though I was processing a tremendous amount of detail about that experience as I slept.

But what I started thinking about was a girl I knew long ago from Britain but that I think must definitely represent another operation where I was a combatant with the British; probably the First Gulf War. The "memory" is a woman named Briney, although I don't think that is how she spelled her name, or at, that is an important detail about the "memory" but I haven't figured that out yet. The most obvious clue about her name is that it have have something to do with the ocean or an operation with the Navy because 'briny' reminds me of the sea. So anyway, I was in Palma, in Magalluf (spelling?)specifically, and Larry Johnson, Mark Mogge, and I ventured into a bar that had some touristy name such as British Pub. Or maybe Larry and Mark found it the night before when I was on the Wainwright for duty, they told me about it, and we went back the next night. It was great because we were staying in port for the entire Christmas and New Year's period and we were spending it in my favorite port. Sometimes my duty was to drive the Shore Patrol van around town. So I think it was Mark that had told me about a great bar they had found that was full of gorgeous British women who were flight attendants. And he was right. We went back there every night talking with those women.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 24 January 2007 excerpt ends]



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 7:10 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Wednesday 23 July 2014