MM2 John Reynolds

Of all the places the Navy took me in my almost twenty year career, my first port visit was with the Joey. We stopped in a small town south of Naples, Castellammare di Stabia. After surviving the pond crossing, and duty the first night in (the night of the trash slick, but that’s another story) a bunch of us snipes decided to see the countryside. Six of us, I think it was Rob Gibson, Pat Caudel, Wayne Hodges, Barny (Reb) Barnes, Dave Norvel, and I headed to town. We took a train to Pompei, then another train to Herculenium, then another train to Naples. We bought round trip tickets each time, the locals later told us we over spent big time. The highlight of the trip however was a visit to Vesuvius. All six of us piled into a Fiat cab for the trip to the summit. This poor cab had a couple of tired squirrels pushing it up, and we gave the driver lots of crap along the lines of us walking up faster or maybe pushing the cab. Finally, we made the parking lot and he waited for us to make our climb to see the big hole. That done, we all piled into the cab for the ride back to town. Whoa, he had a gravity assist and plenty of weight with all of us big snipes packed in. The driver got his revenge, driving like a nut (or everyday Italian), he raced into hairpin turns, cut off busses, and scared the crap out of us. Not a word was said on the way down, we were all to busy holding on and praying. I think all our hands were shaking when we paid him off and crawled off to recover. He had a smile on his face that is still probably there from the pay back he had inflicted on us. We stuck to the trains from then on.