CHAPTER NINE THE NUTHOUSE The nut house! Charleston Naval Hospital in South Carolina. Section 8 called by the people who are there for various different reasons. I arrived at section 8 after spending 45 minutes in the Stockade in Charlston. The best thing about section 8 is that once you are put there the U.S. government can not force you to return to military life. So the first part of my plan of getting out was successful and in four and a half months I would be given an honourable discharge from the United States Navy, after serving three years and 6 months. However events at the Charleston Naval Hospital and section 8 respectively just have to be described. It is an incredible an true story. So here we go. Obs I should mention here that the time this was all going on is fairly important in context to the historical events of the time! I received my discharge on the 30th of August 1963 after spending a little more then 4 months in section 8. My discharge was dated just a couple of months before J. Kennedy was to be shot in Dallas. This story just has to be told. As I said I had arrived at the Charleston Naval Hospital, Section 8. The people who were patients on the ward were all military people mostly poor and working class kids. However not all of them. Some of the people on the ward were trying to get out of the military in anyway they could. Others were pretty sick in the head. There was a kid who thought he was George Washinton and stood on the bed and made long speeches about it. I wonder if he was sick or just running a game. There were people who would try and kill themselves. One guy I remember quite clearly tied a fan cord around his neck and ran ,at full speed till the cord ran out, trying to break his neck. The only thing he accomplished was breaking the only fan we had on the ward! And in Charleston at this time of the year it is really hot. The patients on section 8 did have one thing in common. We were all being drugged by the hospital staff and doctors. The drug being used was Thorazine and in fairly large doses! Thorazine turns you into a vegetable! It is a drug used to keep people calm and when your given Thorazine you are calm. So I like most of the patients was put on Thorazine. Soon after I arrived on Section 8, I think one week had gone by a new patient arrived on the ward, in the bed next to mine. A young man who called himself Ed Cameron. Ed C. did not say to much the first two days, but then he really came on to me. He claimed that he had been a petty officer on an atomic submarine stationed off of Cuba! He said that he had been charged with giving secret plans to the Russians and Cubans about the boat he was on. He claimed he tried to commit suicide while on guard duty witha 45 army colt! He also claimed this was not true but that he did support the Cubans against the Americans. Can you believe this one week after arriving on the nut ward this guy turns up with his story. I was naive and stupid but not that stupid! He was really trying to become friendly with me. Every chance he got he was their talking about political stuff. During the days he would exercise. Doing push-ups and stuff like this. I realised that this fucking guy wasn't getting any Thorazine, odd! ?. I mentioned this to him after a couple of weeks. I said that nobody can run around and talk like you do on Thorazine. He claimed that he was getting Thorazine but was not taking it. That was bullshit the personnel made sure you took your fucking medicine! So I said to him O.K. show me how you do it. Funny thing about that was from that evening on the personnel just gave Ed C. and me our medicine and kept right on going. We could just throw it away. So after this a period of discussions and training began. Ed C. and I would talk politics and train our bodies. He was always trying to get me to talk about my life, my friends, how I grew up and all this stuff. I did not say to much. In the back of my head small bells of warning began to ring that this guy was something more then he claimed to be. However I tried to be friendly, and being fairly unintelligent about politics at this time in my life I did not say to much. One of the things Ed C. would talk about often was his hate of John Kennedy! He was the one who was trying to start a third world war in Cuba. According to Ed C., Kennedy was dangerous, a fucking liberal who would get us all killed. Ed C. went on and on about this stuff. I certainly did not say anything to oppose this basically because I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. I mean I had not even turned 21 years old at this time and I had been travelling around the world the last three and a half years. However I realised that Ed C. was not really interested in me. He was interested in what my friends were doing. I realised that he new alot about how the kids in N.Y.C. were supporting Cuba and why. But Ed C. was not any working class kid and the way he talked smelled conspiracy. He was an upper-class kid from Boston. There ain,t no fucking way he could get me to trust him. I thought he was trying to find out about my friends and there smuggling operations.But I did not realise until years later, that this guy was Naval Intelligence and probably was trying to set up both me and my friends for a whole lot of other shit.. I thought however it was just a case of smuggling at this time. So I let him talk and I listened. However I did not have to take Thorazine and I could do pretty much what I wanted on the ward. In the next 4 months I would be put threw a number of tests. Finally processed and given an honourable discharge. I think the doctor responsible realised that I was not a drug addict, but that I was determined to get out of the Navy. He said to me one time basically the above. I said I don't give shit what you think I ain,t going back. If you try and send me back I will commit suicide. I think that decided the matter. I was released with an honourable discharge. I said good-bye to my friends on Section 8, wishing them well. I said good bye to Ed C. thinking I would never see this guy again... I went back to New York City. The first thing I did on coming home was take a cube of LSD. I needed it just to get the cobwebs out of my head. It did not go more then a couple of weeks and Ed C. called me on the telephone. Guess what he had also gotten a discharge. He wanted to come and visit me in New York City! This is almost beginning to sound like a soap opera. Had I realised how serious this stuff really was I would not have been laughing. I had rented a little apartment on Staten Island. I had loads of pot and LSD. I was smoking a lot and taking a lot of LSD. But I told him to come on up. I was sellinga lot of pot and had alot of LSD at the time and plenty of money. In that I was high most of the time I can not recall the exacts dates or times. Too bad. Many years later I thought I should tell this story to the Warren commission or something. But I also thought that who would believe a story of a guy turned on to pot and LSD, besides the fact that I had newly been released from the nuthouse. Yeah sure who would believe me if I were say that Naval Intelligence was running and operation on my friends in New York and myself with connections to the events in Dallas! So I have never told this story to anyone. Today, who the fuck cares. Nothing of this can be proved. They would still today think I was just a fucking nutcase. However the story should be told! Ed C. came to New York and guess what. He told me he had moved to Dalla,s Texas! He claimed to be living in a trailer park in Lovefield! I did not think anything I just asked him if he wanted to smoke some pot or take some LSD. He refused, said that he only like to get drunk. That is when I began getting paranoid that this fucking guy was a Federal Agent of some kind and after my friends smuggling operations: I told Ed that we had been in the nuthouse together for a number of months that is a plus for you. But I think you are a cop so I said that it is best that we parts ways now. He claimed that he was not a cop, he just didn't do drugs. I said O.K. but our ways part here and now. You can sleep here tonight but be on your fucking way tomorrow O.K. He agreed to this. The following day Ed C. disappeared. I thought for good but I was wrong. There followed a short period of street life for me. I was constantly taking LSD and smoking pot. I was also dealing and making lots of money. But I finally came to the point in my life that I realised that pot and foremost LSD were wonderful chemicals. LSD had wripped away many of the horrible things put inside of my childhood head. It wripped down and dissected the fear, the terror, the horror of growing up with a stepfather who abused booze and them abused us. LSD made me come to terms with all the bullshit, inferiority complexes, the adult American male complexes, and much more. LSD put me at ground Zero. Posing the question of where do I go from here with my life? It came to a point one night in the village when I on LSD I was walking down the street and actually believed I had stepped out of my body and was looking at myself. I actually thought I was god! I said too myself I have to get away from here and think about my life. I started collecting myself together. I sold all the chemicals and pot I had in the next week and prepared to leave the city where I had grown up. The place that had formed me from childhood to manhood. Ed C. called on the telephone at this time. I said I was leaving town. He gave me his address and telephone and said stop by. So I got on a greyhound bus with a suitcase and a Marlboro packet filled with LSD and left New York City. I have never been back there since. I decided on Mexico. I had never been to Mexico so why not. I started to read books. I needed knowledge. Because of the terror in my childhood I missed alot of knowledge. On my way to Mexico. I stopped off for a day in Dallas. Ed C. was really glad to see me. Of course he did not realise I had just broken with my life in New York City and was on my way out in the world to discover whatthe fuck the world was all about.He and I sat and drank some wine. I said that I was on way and did not know where it wasgoing to lead. That evening Ed C. got quite drunk. I did not , a couple of bottles of wine,while high on LSD is not going to make you drunk. Ed C. did not realise this. He thought I was straight. When drunk Ed C. pulled out a rifle which looked alot like the rifle the government later would claim killed J. Kennedy. I thought that Ed C. was either insane or a Federal agent.The next day I got on a bus and crossed the border into Mexico. I left Ed. C. sleeping in a trailer park in Lovefield, Dallas Texas. I never saw him again. However I still wonder today who Ed C. really was? I think that the Naval Intelligence was definitely running some sort of operation. As to whether they were involved in the Kennedy assassination or that they were being set up by somebody higher up in the government I do not know. Later on I thought I should tell my story to somebody. However given the circumstances around myself I realised it would be ridiculous even to think about it. Who would believe a story like this coming from a guy like me. A poor working class kid. A drug dealer in LSD and pot. A nut case, discharged from the Navy from section 8 in Charleston. No I don't think so. It has been many years since these events took place. Today when I am soon to be 53 as I write these lines, I wonder. I have not used any kind of drugs for over 25 years. I realised that drugs can perhaps get you high but it is not life in its essence. Live in its essence is that I try to cope with the circumstances surrounding me at a particular time with the brain and intelligence I myself have. Getting high does not solve the problems of confronting reality. It is only escaping from reality. So that is what I have been doing the last 25 years or so! Dealing with reality and trying to find a way to live at peace with myself while at the same time having a fierce defence of the class I belong to. The poor, the working class, these are my people and I will try to defend them the best way I can. As to my opinion on this stuff. I am fairly convinced that somebody was trying to hook up my childhood friends to the events in Dallas. For some reason somebody was trying to make it look like Americans recruited by the Russians or Cubans were behind the assassination of Kennedy. There were a lot of kids in New York City who had no love for Kennedy. The Kennedy brothers were certainly not popular in these circles. However these people would never of their own accord murder Kennedy. Murdering people was not the thing my childhood friends were into, however somebody else was trying to set this up. As to who was trying to make the world believe that Lee Harvy Oswald was the sole murderer of Kennedy was never the point. The point was the Russian, Cuban connection. Whoever was behind the murder of Kennedy wanted the world to believe that the Russians and Cubans were behind it. Who and why remain a mystery even today. I think it was the right wing and John Birch Society with connections very high up in the government that ran the operation. But who would believe a nut case. But the story here is true. Take it for what you want....