Angles and Dangles and Other Sea Stories

About the Book

Old sailors don’t just “fade away,” we tend to sit around fireplaces, drink hot buttered rum and tell sea stories. Those that follow are retrieved from journals kept during my active duty years. While stationed in California, the base C.O. asked, “Do any of you medical ‘shavetails’ want to go to flight surgeon’s school? I’d always liked airplanes, so it was to Texas for flight training in old Stearman biplanes with Lycoming engines that rattled one’s teeth when taking off. From San Francisco the USAT General Hahn took us through a typhoon then on to Okinawa, where, although the war was over, Japanese soldiers still cut power lines and, perhaps through lack of communication, refused to surrender. Two Vietnam tours were followed by eight years in Washington, D.C. then two years in Iceland and a twilight tour at the submarine base at Kittery, Maine. This book is about these years.

About the Author

Carl Voyles was born in Duncan, Oklahoma. After attending the College of William and Mary, then Duke University and Johns Hopkins for medical training, he practiced in St. Petersburg, Florida before returning to active military duty as a medical officer with the U.S. Navy. He now lives with wife, Joan, their cat, “Tonk” and dachshund, “Tia” on the island of Anna Maria, off the Florida coast near Sarasota, where he sees patients, sails a 25 foot sloop, paints in watercolor and writes. Several of these vignettes have been published as short stories.