Interview with Travis Peay [4/5/2003]

Billie Jines:

Okay. Today is April 5, 2003. We are taking this interview at the Travis Peay residence whom I will be interviewing. My name is Billie Jines. Travis Peay is my cousin. Okay. What branch of the service were you in?

Travis Peay:

I was in the United States Navy.

Billie Jines:

What war did you serve in?

Travis Peay:

I served in the Persian Gulf War. During the Persian Gulf War.

Billie Jines:

What was your rank?

Travis Peay:

At the time that I got out of the military, I was an E-5 enlisted is what the E stands for, and I was a -- my rank was an EM-2, Electrician Mate Second Class.

Billie Jines:

Exactly what were some of the places that you served at?

Travis Peay:

Some of the places that I visited or some of the places where I was actually was on -- on the bases?

Billie Jines:

Where you were actually on the bases?

Travis Peay:

I started off in Orlando, Florida. I went through boot camp there. I was in company C036. Then from there I went through nuclear power school, nuclear age school and nuclear power school in Orlando. And from there I was reassigned to Grand Falls, New York. Boston Spa is actually where the power plant was. Glenn Falls is the little town I lived in up there, and I worked up there on -- on-the-job training at a GE nuclear power plant, and then from there I completed my training. I was assigned to the U.S.S. Bainbridge in Norfolk, Virginia, and I finished out my military service in Norfolk.

Billie Jines:

Okay. I am just going to ask you some questions just to jog your memory a little bit. Were you drafted or did you in enlist?

Travis Peay:

I enlisted in high school -- straight out of high school.

Billie Jines:

Where were you living at the time?

Travis Peay:

I was living in Evansville, Indiana.

Billie Jines:

Why did you join?

Travis Peay:

The initial reason that I joined was to be able to earn money for a college education. My family didn't have a lot of money and all my friends were going off to college so I decided to enlist in the military. Once I graduated I worked for a few months in construction and realized that this wasn't for me and I needed something else, and I just didn't have the money to go to college myself.

Billie Jines:

Why did you decide to join the Navy?

Travis Peay:

My grandfather, Albert Peay, had told me that he worked at a utility company, and he said that they take a lot of the Navy guys that make it through the Nuclear Engineering Program, and the Nuclear Power Program I believe what it's called for the enlisted guys, and so I went down and took the test for that. And I passed the test and decided that that's what I wanted to do because when I got out, I knew I wanted to come back and work in utilities.

Billie Jines:

What did it feel like exactly to be in the Navy?

Travis Peay:

What did it feel like to be in the Navy? You mean when I first went in?

Billie Jines:

Yeah.

Travis Peay:

Well, at first I was kind of -- I won't say scared, but it's kind of unnerving to be somewhere a thousand miles from home. I lived in Indiana, and I was down in Orlando, Florida. The -- my family was all back here. All my friends were back here. My girlfriend. Everybody. Didn't know anybody. I got down there and, the first thing, first day, people are yelling at you. So, you know, you just had to keep in mind that once you got through the boot camp portion, that after that it becomes more like a job.

Billie Jines:

Tell me about your boot camp training experiences?

Travis Peay:

Well, you start out -- I flew down there just on November 24th, I believe it was around -- boarded the flight from Evansville. Flew to St. Louis, and from St. Louis flew to Orlando and arrived down there, I don't know. Maybe it was ten o'clock at night. I don't remember exactly what time I arrived in Florida. But November in Indiana is pretty cold, and when I got in Florida, it was fairly warm so I wasn't dressed correctly. That's the first thing. And I came in at night, and one of the guys there I knew that I became pretty good friends with, he met me at the door when I came in, and he showed me where to put my stuff and showed me where a bed was I could sleep in for the night. So that night I just went in and didn't sleep very well, but I went and went to bed, and the next morning they got us up at four o'clock in the morning. Went down. Got something to eat. Then we went over and got our haircuts, so that was the first -- first day. We packed up everything. They gave us some dungarees which are like working clothes, jeans and like a denim, denim-type shirt. They packed up all of our personal belongings, and we mailed that back home; and then from then on out, it was either we were doing physical training or class training. By physical, I mean running obstacle course or push-ups or things of that nature. Then they also taught us history of the Navy, fire and just different general topics. And, you know, you do different things in there, and they try to assign you responsibilities to see what you can handle; what you can't. Different people had different responsibilities. Some people took care of the laundry. Some people took care of mail, and it kind of rotated that around to show us different things that go on and everybody has to kind of work as a group to get along. I think that was eight weeks long. Yeah, boot camp was eight weeks long, and then after that, it really became more like a job.

Billie Jines:

Do you remember any of your instructors that you had?

Travis Peay:

Yeah. I had Chief Petty Officer Kidd (ph). He was a company commander, and I had Chief Petty Officer Patton (ph). He was our other company commander, and -- but they were -- they were pretty good guys. Petty Officer Kidd was young, and he was in there showing off to us all the time, showing us he could do one-handed push-ups and do push-ups in a hand stand and all kind of things like that. Petty Officer Patton was an older guy, older gentleman, and he was -- he was pretty nice guy as well. They had to be hard on you to make sure that you understood why you were there. They had to make you realize that there was something bigger than just you. You were part of a group now, so -- and really I had -- my girlfriend was writing to me and my mom and different people. You really looked forward to mail call, and then I would write, and you would get about 15, 20 minutes a day. They'd give you some time of your own to do stuff, and a lot of the times you shined your shoes or you wrote letters or things of that nature trying -- trying to prepare for the next -- next thing that was coming up, and you just had to really kind of just realize that once you were through all the conditioning and the training that you would go onto become a serviceman that held a position, and it was -- it was -- it was once again like I say, like a job.

Billie Jines:

How did you get through your weeks of boot camp?

Travis Peay:

By realizing that every time they were yelling at me, they were really yelling -- or not just me, at anybody that or any of the hard things that we were going through, they were really just showing you that you can do more than what you think. They were just trying to push you to become better. And I really kind of focused on becoming better or that they would yell at me because I couldn't do, you know, 300 push-ups or something in which most guys -- about 50, most guys were done. Couldn't do but about 50, but they'd have you down there and yell at you, and call you names because you couldn't do 51, but you just had to try the best you could, and that's all you could do.

Billie Jines:

Where did you actually go exactly? Where did you sail around to?

Travis Peay:

The different areas where was I at?

Billie Jines:

Yes.

Travis Peay:

Wow, that's -- that's big. I don't remember all the ports, and I probably won't remember all the countries, but I can name a few. We pulled into Egypt. We was in Haifa, Israel. I've been to Italy, France, Spain, Naples -- let's see -- that's France, Kenya. We pulled into Mombassa, Kenya, one time. We shipped many, many islands in the Caribbean; St. Thomas; St. Croix; Cuba; Jamaica. I can't even name all the islands down there that we went to. Then we went to Norway, Oslo. I've been to Great Britain, Scotland -- I can't speak -- Amsterdam, Holland. Pulled into Germany for a while. When I say Great Britain, I mean England. Pulled into Portsmith, England, and many other places; all up and down the east coast of America, Florida. We pulled in up in Rhode Island. Just different places. Pretty much all around. We were headed to Australia when the Persian Gulf War broke out, and we didn't get the opportunity to stop there.

Billie Jines:

What was your job on the ship?

Travis Peay:

My job assignment was a -- I was an Electricians Mate Second Class. I worked in the nuclear power plant. So since the ships are limited by space for the number of bunks that they can hold, the number of people, they had to combine the power plant operators and the power plant maintenance men into one -- one group, so for the electricians, the electricians mates, us, there were, I believe, 30 nuclear electricians, and then -- then there were 15 conventional electricians. The 15 conventional electricians took care of all the lights and all of the enunciation equipment or just -- just in general the electrical equipment topside on the ship where the nuclear qualified electricians, we took care of the power plants. We did all the maintenance on the generators. We did -- took care of the distribution system, the lighting, the communications systems, any of the alarms systems for the power plant, but in additional to the maintenance-type work, we did emergency repairs, and we also did operations. We were the operators for the power plants as well. We stood watches.

Billie Jines:

Did you ever see any combat while you were --

Travis Peay:

We were in combat areas, but being that I was in the engineering side or the propulsion plant side, we didn't actually get out and fight. My ship was the Bainbridge, was a -- a surface to air mainly was its defense mechanisms, so, you know, Iraq didn't have an air force, so we didn't have to worry about shooting down any airplanes from them. I mean they may have a few but nothing that was going to come out to the Persian Gulf or out where we were anyway. So did I actually see combat? I'm going to say the answer is no. We did -- at another time we went in and I seen some -- we were actually shot at by some little boats from Libya. We were in there testing the Kadafi's line of depth, and as my ship would circle in, they would send little boats out and shoot at us with machine guns, but they didn't really do anything so --

Billie Jines:

Were there many casualties in your unit?

Travis Peay:

Not from the war there weren't. Now we had, you know, typical injuries, guys on the ship, but they weren't actually casualties.

Billie Jines:

Can you tell me about a couple of your most memorable experiences?

Travis Peay:

Yeah. We had a -- and I have -- I have a couple. They don't actually include or they didn't actually take place during the Persian Gulf episodes. We -- my ship hit an underwater mountain and near Norway and tore a 68-inch or 63-inch -- I don't remember the exact size -- hole in the bottom of the ship, and we had a -- took on a lot of water that was flooding, and there was just -- there was a scary moment when you heard the collision alarms and then the flooding alarms as well, and the whole ship shuddered whenever we hit, so that -- that would be one of my experiences. Like I said, that -- that really wasn't related to the war. Another one would be the -- we were in a hurricane off the coast of England at the mouth of the English Channel basically, and I was standing Throttleman Watch. It was early in the morning about five or six in the morning, and the ship got a distress call to go and save a Greek yacht that was sinking, and we started headed towards -- towards where the distress call was coming from, and we were going to wait for the Coast Guard, but whenever we got there, there was people in the water. There was quite a few people in the water, and the -- and the little yacht was -- just had the nose of the ship basically sticking out, and we went ahead and made the decision to try and help them instead of waiting for the Coast Guard because we knew they wouldn't make it. And we rescued a couple people, but there were a few people that didn't make it as well.

Billie Jines:

Did you -- were you ever awarded any medals or citations?

Travis Peay:

Yeah. I did have -- I was -- had four medals, and to tell you the truth, I can't remember the names of them. It was a humanitarian medal, Southeast Asia conflict. I don't remember the names of them, but yes, I was -- I was awarded four medals. And my group, my ship, the things that we were involved in is how we -- how we got to those.

Billie Jines:

How did you stay in touch with your family while you were on board?

Travis Peay:

They have what they call a Morris (ph) phone. I can't remember what it was -- stood for, but basically you talked through a two-way radio, and what they would do is they would dial up somebody that had a radio set who would dial in and make a phone call, and then they would connect you and you could talk on the phone, but you would have to -- when you were done talking, you would have to say "over" so that they knew on the other end that it was time for them to talk. So you would say something like "hello" and "over," and then they would say "hello" and "over." You would pass back and forth like that. We wrote a lot of letters. That was the other thing, and then also when you hit land, you'd try and find a phone booth and let them know what's going on.

Billie Jines:

What was the food like on board?

Travis Peay:

The food was pretty good actually. They -- they served a variety of food. We went -- had everything from rabbit to beef to duck. Now breakfast was pretty routine. It was usually eggs and then some sort of pork and hash browns and, you know, some biscuits. Things in general, but the food wasn't too bad. You ran out of milk quick. I remember that, and they would bring on -- I don't remember -- some kind of -- I think it was artificial milk or something. I Don't remember what it was. It wasn't very good.

Billie Jines:

Did you have plenty of supplies on board?

Travis Peay:

Yeah. Being -- being a ship we were able to restock our supplies pretty regularly so there wasn't never any issues about that.

Billie Jines:

Did you ever feel pressured or stressed out?

Travis Peay:

Yeah. Yeah, there was one time when we were escorting nerve gas from Germany to Johnson Island in the Pacific. We had to go up to Germany, come alongside the ship that was -- had the nerve gas in it, and then just stay alongside of it basically all the way around South America and back up into the Pacific. And for that entire time, we weren't allowed to have any outside contact. Nobody could know what kind of mission we were on or what we were doing. They didn't tell us before we left. They just said, "We'll be gone for a while." I think we went 70 something days that time without seeing any land, so stress really built up. I had a wife and child at that time, and, you know, everybody was stressed, not -- not just me.

Billie Jines:

Was there something special you did for good luck?

Travis Peay:

No, not really. I didn't do anything for good luck. I ran a lot to keep and worked out in the gym to keep my stress levels down or keep my mind occupied because on your down time, if you weren't on watch and it was after the normal working day, you really didn't have a whole lot to do. They had sight TV which played videos day after day after day, but usually they only had a limited supply and you seen most of the videos pretty quickly.

Billie Jines:

How did people entertain themselves in their spare time?

Travis Peay:

Some guys wrote. One -- few guys -- we had some guys that had instruments on board that could sing. Guys got down and wrestled. I mean, just all kinds of just goofing around. 20-year-old guys is basically what you have; is a bunch of them, and whatever they could come up with. We didn't have things like all the advanced electronics games that you have now. I mean, we had a few, but they -- they wore out pretty quick it seems, and, you know, for the most part, it was a lot of reading, and things of that nature. Sitting around talking about what you was going to do when you got out of the Navy or when you got back. Things like that.

Billie Jines:

Was there ever any entertainers that came aboard your ship?

Travis Peay:

No, not on our ship. We went to a steel beach picnic on one of the carriers one time, and -- and they had a country singer that was flown out. We'd been out for a while. That was in the Persian Gulf. I don't remember who the country singer was to tell the truth. Country wasn't my genre. I can't even say the word. So there was one over there, but other than that, I never was, never seen any.

Billie Jines:

What did you do when on leave?

Travis Peay:

Well, if we were in a foreign country, a lot of times we would sightsee during the day, and we'd go out and go to the different bars and try the different foods at night and see if we could buy some souvenirs. Things -- things of that nature. A lot of sightseeing. I mean, you don't know anybody. You got your few friends from the ship, but if you go out in too big a crowd, usually you got in trouble, so you tried to stay away from anything like that.

Billie Jines:

Do you recall any particular humorous or unusual moments or events or anything?

Travis Peay:

Humorous? Yeah. The -- we was up off the coast of Maine one time, and there was these large ocean buoys, bright red, and they were all in a line down through there, and what we were told was they were buoys marking where they had lobster traps down in the -- the depths there. Well, one of the watch officers decided that he was going to try and salome the ship between these buoys, so we were weaving in and taking our 570-foot long ship and weaving in and out in between the buoys as they would come up on us. Well, we got through all of them, and there was a bunch of us out on the fantail. We was watching. Just sitting out there talking, and all of a sudden one of the guys out there, he said, "Hey, that buoy is following us," and nobody was like, oh, you don't know what you are taking about, but then we started paying attention, and the ship was moving along pretty good. I don't remember what speed we were doing, but the buoy didn't seem to get any further away. It just stayed right there with us, and it -- it was probably a good thousand, thousand feet behind the ship, but it just didn't get it -- get further away, and so they called up to the aft watch, and he called the pilot house, or -- and I don't remember what it is called up there. He called up and told them they thought the buoy was following us, so then they started looking at it, and we started turning the ship left and right and doing different things and everytime we'd turn, the buoy would turn. It would be behind us again when we would get going straight, so the thing that made this funny was or kind of funny, all of a sudden you heard a large, a loud noise somewhere within the ship, and flubbing (ph) alarm went off and about that time the buoy disappeared under the water. And what had happened was the main sump pump which -- which brings sea water in to help cool the condensers had sucked up the line on the buoy, and it was wheeling the buoy in like a big rod and rail. So when the buoy disappeared under the water, they -- they panicked pretty quick. They tried to shut everything down, but it racked up 15 hundred foot, 13 or 15 -- I don't remember the number -- but it was a lot of cable that this buoy had been attached to and just wound it up inside the pump. It was just really very expensive so the pilot, the guy that was the operator steering the ship around, he -- he, I think, he got in some pretty good trouble because if he wouldn't have been weaving in and out of the buoy, we would never have had that happen so --

Billie Jines:

What were some of the pranks that you and your friends would pull?

Travis Peay:

Well, some of the pranks that you would pull? Every now and then they pressurized the -- the ship had a plumbing system so that the toilets all tied into these great big tanks, and they would pressurize them to do maintenance or to blow them down, and they would put signs up saying not to flush the toilets if they were pressurized. So what you would do is you would wait until your buddy got up from bed and half asleep, and you'd go in there and you'd steal the sign, and if he'd go in there and go to the bathroom, when he flushed, it blasts basically waste water up his nose and his hair, everywhere. And he'd come out of there covered in -- in feces and urine and toilet paper and everything else. I mean, that -- that was a pretty rough prank, but everybody thought it was hilarious except for the guy it was happening to.

Billie Jines:

Do you have any photographs of when you were in the service?

Travis Peay:

Yeah, I have several that we can pull out, and I'll give to you. Several guys just sitting around on the back of the ship, and we had what was called steel beach picnics. The back of the ship was steel so we would go out there on Saturdays, and they would cook out on a grill and do different things. And I have some -- some down in the engine room a couple of them we could probably look at. And then some in our berthing area that shows where we slept and how things looked and some of the guys.

Billie Jines:

What did you think of your officers and your fellow soldiers?

Travis Peay:

I got along with all of them. There was one or two that would try to show their might, but typically you had to rely on everybody so you had to, you know, you worked as a team, so you had to make sure that whatever you did, you know, that you fit in with everybody else so we all worked pretty good, and being in the engine, the nuclear engineering group, we basically -- there wasn't very many of us, and we all kind of stuck together because we had to work together down in the power plants. And the watch officers, they sat down there with us, and if you sit in a room for eight hours a day for four or five years with a guy, you're going to get to know him and become friends so it -- it was pretty good.

Billie Jines:

Did you ever keep a personal diary while you were in the service?

Travis Peay:

No, I never did. I wish I would have. It would -- it would have helped me especially for something like this because a lot of that stuff I can remember. Like today I'll remember some of the places we went, but if you were to ask me tomorrow, I may be able to name ten different places that we went in. It's just a matter of what my mind's thinking about and what triggers it, but, no, I can't say that I ever kept a diary.

Billie Jines:

Okay. Now I want to ask you some questions about after -- after you were in the service. Do you recall the date your service ended?

Travis Peay:

Yes, I do. I -- I had put in for an early out. My ship was going -- excuse me -- going into the shipyards at -- gosh, I can't remember the name of the shipyards. The Bainbridge, the ship I was on, was going in for some work to be done, and I can't for the life of me remember the name of the shipyard it was going to, but basically my last two months in the Navy were going to be spent in a dry dock with guys just coming on -- the contractors coming on board and doing maintenance, and I asked for an early out. The Navy granted me one.

Billie Jines:

Where were you at the time when you left?

Travis Peay:

Norfolk, Virginia. That's where my ship was, and the name -- it just slips my mind. I just can't -- can't think of what the name of those shipyards were called, but it wasn't too far from where the -- where the actual ship was based out of. It was one of the little cities right there in -- around that area in Hampton Beach.

Billie Jines:

What did you do in the days and weeks after your service ended?

Travis Peay:

I still ran around with a lot of my buddies from the military, but being that I was married and had children, I really started looking for a job somewhere where I could work. I ended up a month or two after I left the military -- it was about a month, I believe, October I think, the -- I picked up a job where the company was stationed, not stationed -- the company was based out of Cape Coral, Florida, and they would either fly me or have me drive to different parts of the country to do power plant maintenance and overhauls.

Billie Jines:

Okay. Did you go back to work or did you go to work or did you go back to school after this?

Travis Peay:

After I did that with that company in Cape Coral, Florida, for a while, I decided that I had originally gone in to try and earn money to go to college, and I had taken the GI bill, so I thought, well, if I could move back home which was Evansville, Indiana, then I could go to the local college here, the University of Southern Indiana, and I went and came back, and I went back to school.

Billie Jines:

Did you make any close friendships while in the service?

Travis Peay:

Yeah, I made a few good friends. A lot of the guys -- you were in at different times. People would come and go, but there was a few that were on there for the same period that I was in, and we were pretty good buddies.

Billie Jines:

Did you continue any of those relationships today?

Travis Peay:

Yeah, a couple of them. Most of those guys I haven't seen or heard from in years, but there was one guy that for about five, five or six years, we'd talk occasionally and talk about different things, the things that use to go on on the ship, but I really haven't heard any of those -- heard from any of those guys in quite a while. Plus I've moved, and they've moved. One of them got divorced, and it has been ten years now, so I really haven't heard anything from them.

Billie Jines:

Did you join a veteran's organization afterwards?

Travis Peay:

I joined the local VFW. I think it's Post 119 is the post number down there, and I probably don't go as often as I should. I use to go. Before I graduated from college, I'd go down there, and they had fairly cheap meals and good entertain, and I'd go down there and not have to spend a lot of money, and I could do -- do some things.

Billie Jines:

What did you go on to do as a career after the war?

Travis Peay:

Well, I went to -- went back to college, and I picked up an electrical engineering technology degree from the University of Southern Indiana, and from there I started working with a consulting firm designing electrical, the electrical distribution systems in commercial buildings, and from that I -- I knew that I wanted to get back into the utilities and like I originally planned, so I had applied for a position in the local unit company which was Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Company at that time, and I came in as a commercial industrial new business representative which basically I did distribution designs for buildings or public authority-type projects. Whenever I say that, I mean like lift stations for the city sewer system. Things like that. So I really moved from the consulting firm designing buildings on the inside to the utility industry designing the power distribution coming up to the building, so I kind of worked both sides of that.

Billie Jines:

Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or about the military in general?

Travis Peay:

Yeah, I think so. I think everybody should join the military. I believe that a war that has an objective is just. I feel that, you know, if you've got somebody in another country that's just invading other countries or doing things that are -- would be against the laws here that are just general, not just our laws, just general -- most people have a common sense about them. There are things that are right and wrong to do. You know, if somebody in another country doesn't even want to allow two different groups of people to marry or intermix, that's one thing, but if they do it and they go in and start cutting off fingers or killing the people, then -- then I believe it's time to step in and do something about that person. I think the military is good. It was a good way to be trained, help do a lot of growing up in there. The, you know, there's no place else you can take an 18-year-old kid, give him two years of school and put in charge of a nuclear reactor. So -- and that's what I was doing. I -- I went in, and by the two years in, I was standing watching a nuclear power plant, and in just a year or so after that, I was qualified for senior watch which allowed me control over the power plant. So I think the organization is -- is a good one, and we should continue it and budget money towards it.

Billie Jines:

If you had to do it again, would you go back and do it?

Travis Peay:

Yeah, I would -- I would do it, and I would -- I would be proud to do it. The -- I have said, at the time I was married and had children so I still have children, but I'm not currently married. And when it come time to get out of the military, when it came time to reenlist actually is what I should say, I had been gone for approximately nine months, so I hadn't seen my wife and child -- two children at that time -- in quite a while, and so when I had the opportunity to get out and get a job that didn't take me away all the time, I -- I took that. Looking back, I may have been better off just staying in there because it was just a good experience all around.

Billie Jines:

Do you attend your reunions for the Navy in your class?

Travis Peay:

My -- my group didn't -- that I know of, we don't have any reunions at this time. If so, they are not contacting me so -- and that may be due just to the fact that I have moved a few times since I got out, and they don't have a forwarding address.

Billie Jines:

How did your service and experiences affect your life?

Travis Peay:

It really made me appreciate America. When you go to some of these other countries and you see how the people live and what they have to put up with and then you come back here, it really makes you think, we've got it pretty good. The -- whenever we was in Egypt, I seen people dipping buckets into the river to pull out water that they were going to take home and wash dishes and clothes with and cook and do different things and drink. Well, in that same river, there were dead animals floating in it. There was a dead cow or horse -- I don't remember which one -- just floating right down the river, and it was just dirty. People swimming out there and, you know, we've got it pretty good so it really made me come back here and appreciate America.

Billie Jines:

Is there anything else you would like to add that we haven't covered in this interview?

Travis Peay:

Just the fact that I think that everybody should spend some time in the military, and if -- if nothing else, it gives you the appreciation of what -- of what you've got here. Plus it shows you how to work as a team or part of a team. It could turn some people's lives around.

Billie Jines:

Okay. Thank you, Travis, for sharing your experiences with me.