ABOUT ME

AFTER SEEING SO MANY PERSONAL PAGES OF SOME OF YOU TALKING ABOUT YOUR LIVES, I DECIDED TO TAKE A SHOT AT MAKING THIS PAGE TO TELL EVERYONE A LITTLE ABOUT MYSELF. FIRST OF ALL, HERE IS A PHOTO OF ME THAT WAS TAKEN ON FEB. 19, 1997 I STARTED WORKING ON THIS PAGE ON FEB. 11, 2000 AND IT IS NOT COMPLETE. I HAVE GOT AS FAR AS HIGHLIGHTING MY YOUNGER YEARS AND MY FOUR YEARS IN THE US NAVY. I WILL BE ADDING MORE AS I GO ALONG.

MY PERSONAL GREETING TO ALL Hello, My name is George Masse and I want to thank you for visiting my web pages. I started this internet stuff in August of 1999 and I really love it. At first, it all looked so complicated to me but I thought I would give it a shot. I did not know a thing about computers, and I thought that learning HTML was out of the question. Then I started meeting people on the web and that started to make a difference. One of the first friends that I made was a lady named Judi, to whom I started to express my desire to learn as much as I could, and come to find out that she was a very knowlegeable person with html. She started sending me all types of help pages, and with all that, I slowly got the hang of it. So," here I am." I reside in Augusta, Maine and was born here on Feb. 17, 1947 I left home at a very young age to go into the Navy, I left on the day of my seventeenth birthday in February of 1964 with my parents signature. With little education I had no idea what I wanted to do in the Navy, it was mainly to get away from my disfunctional home. After completing recruit training I was lucky enough to get a shore station for my first assignment. That was at the Patuxent Naval Air Station, in Patuxent River, Maryland. I was assigned to one of the hangars as a deck hand in first division, "you sailors know what that is,LOL." I was kind of troubled and did not get along with the petty officers, and as a result of that, I was sent to mess cooking. That is the Navy name for KP......I use to think that KP meant "KEEP PEELING !" but I found out that there was more to it than that. "My Gosh, I never saw so many pots and pans in my life." After I was in the gallows, "err no, excuse me," I meant galley, for a few weeks. I expressed an interest in wanting to learn to be a cook. My request was approved and I was taken off mess cooking, and introduced to the basics of food preparation. That made me feel pretty big after doing all the other dirty work. But being only seventeen and had never worked before, I had a difficult time adjusting, and still did not understand the values of life.......After a few dicipline problems that I had with the petty officers, I was punished by being placed back on mess duty for awhile, and that really made me sad.

NEXT, I FLEW THE COOP This Naval station was on the edge of a little town called Lexington Park. It was sort of a summer resort for some people. During my first couple of months there, I met a few of the people who were on the outside. One family who operated a small food drive in and had children my age, I made friends with and became kind of attached to them, they kind of treated me like one of their own. I did not drink alcohol back then and even if I did or wanted to, I was too young to go into the bars. So, that little place became one of my hangouts, and the soda pop was great, LOL.At the end of the summer and come to find out, I learned that this was their summer business and they were going back to a city in Northern Maryland called Rockville up near Washington DC. They planned to leave in late August, and when I heard the news I was devestated. Being dissatisfied with my duties on the base and now losing my best friends, I did a very stupid thing and went AWOL. I hiched a ride up to their area and looked them up in the phone book when I arrived. They had told me that I was welcomed to come up and visit them anytime that I wanted but were very surprised to see me so soon. I told a big lie and said to them that I got kicked out of the Navy, and asked if I could stay and visit for awhile before I went back to Maine. To make a long story short, I took an interest in helping out in their hotel catering business and ended up working for them full time. They soon learned the truth about me being AWOL and strongly suggested that I went back. It was getting close to the holiday season and I waited until the beginning of the new year to go back, after being gone for four months.....I was afraid to go back to my proper base so I surrendered to the Washington DC, Naval Station. After a special court martial I was sentenced to the Marine Corp brig in Quantico, Va. for six months, and ended up doing only four of them for good behavior, etc. The hard labor while in there consisted of choping firewood by hand, shoveling snow, etc. My skinny body had really developed well during those months. Then I was sent back to the Wash. Naval station to wait for re-assignment for a couple of months, to me that was sort of like a holding tank for transient sailors, LOL. There, I had very little to do but stand guard duty and do a little of barracks cleaning, a few hours a day.

MY FIRST SHIP In March of 1965 I was to have the most incredible experience of my life. Going on my first sea duty tour. The ship was the USS Okinawa, LPH-3, and what a rude awakening it was compared to shore duty, the routine was quite different than the other place. I soon appreciated that Pax River was a boy scout camp in comparison, and once again, "you sailors know exactly what I am talking about." This ship use to operate in the Caribbean and I got to go to Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands and Cuba ad Trinidad, a pleasure and much fun to visit. My first assignment ?? You guessed it, I was placed in the deck force 2nd. division. "Oh no, I exclaimed !" I realized very quickly that I was not too fond of the work I had to do but the brig had made me grow up quite a bit, so I was more careful of how I talked to the petty officers. I went along with the program until one day when we were in port, I was assigned along with a few other men to go down on a line, and chip paint on one of the dangling anchors......Now this is a small aircraft helicopter carrier and it was very high. I was too scarred to go down there, so I refused, I mean to this day, I am still afraid of heights,LOL. The petty officers took it the wrong way, and........"you guessed it, I got sent to mess cooking again." Surprisingly, I did not do too bad and got along very well, and actually I liked this better than the deck force. I wanted to give cooking another try, so I put in my request up the ranks once again and got approved. This is where I got my first serious experience with cooking in the Navy. I was now a member of the supply department and they had saved me from going back to the deck force.....I made a strong effort to do well, made a lot of friends and took pride in my work. The next thing I realized, I had passed the exam for petty officer 3rd. class and I became a rated man. That really made me grow up some more and I had more responsibility, now I was operating my own department in the galley, on the steam jacketed kettles. We navy cooks use to refer to those as "coppers." I really enjoyed my work and was in perfect health back then, I didn't know what tired was at 19 years old. I spent over two years aboard the Okinawa and to this day, the memories of that ship still live in my heart. One man who became one of my best friends named Robin Helmick, he and I still write to each other. He lives in Missouri. The following link is all about the U.S.S. Okinawa LPH-3 Thanks CRAIG, for sending me this great webpage July 9, 2000 DICTIONARY ON AMERICAN NAVAL FIGHTING SHIPS NAVY CONTACTS & REUNIONS VETERAN/MILITARY SITES ORIGIN OF NAVY TERMS G I SEARCH U.S. VETERAN FINDER GOAT LOCKER NAVAL TERMS MILITARY RECORDS LOCATER VETERAN BURIAL BENEFITS TIN CAN SAILORS I AM AN AMERICAN SAILOR DEPT. OF VETERANS AFFAIRS WELCOME TO MUGS PLACE

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