thedrifter
03-28-09, 06:54 AM
March 27, 2009
Cates ships out for Iraq
By Rodger Nichols
of The Chronicle
Navy Medical Corpsman Third Class Micky Cates of The Dalles left this week for a posting in Sinjar, Iraq, near the Syrian border.
Cates is attached to the First Marines. Tuesday he flew from Oceanside, Calif. to Bangor, Maine as part of a longer journey that will take him to Germany and Kuwait on his way to Sinjar.
Cates, son of Michael W. and Diane Cates of The Dalles, flew Tuesday from Oceanside, Calif. to Bangor Maine.
“He called me from the airport that night,” said his grandfather, Bill Elton. “He said, ‘Grandpa, I’m in Maine.’ I asked him if he’d had a chance to eat. ‘We’ve got to go into the terminal, though we had to leave our guns aboard,’ he said. So I asked him what he had to eat. ‘I ate a lobster sandwich,’ he said. A lobster sandwich! Well, he was in Maine.”
Elton is one of Cates’ biggest boosters. That may be due in part to a shared Navy heritage; Elton served aboard a minesweeper in the South Pacific in World War II.
“We had a motto,” he said “‘Where the fleet goes, we’ve been.’”
Cates was a member of the first class to graduate from the combined The Dalles Wahtonka High School.
“He was quite a baseball player,” says Elton. “He played centerfield and second base and was a good hitter. He always had a string of girls cheering him on.”
Cates is also an accomplished trumpet player. When he attended boot camp at the Great Lakes Training Center, he marched in the graduation ceremonies as first trumpet in the unit’s band.
Following boot camp, he was stationed in Norfolk, Virgina for corpsman training, then took Marine training at Quantico for three and a half months.
Elton says his grandson has two more years of a five-year hitch to serve and plans a career in medicine.
Elton asked that we publish his military address so that his many friends could write to him. “He’s very popular,” Elton said. “Whenever he got time off it was hard to get hold of him, because everybody wanted him to join them.”
The address is:
HM3 Micky Cates
3RD LAR BN H&S CO
UNIT 41700
FPO AP 96426-1700
“I hope lots of his friends write to him, “ Elton said. “He’s a good kid.”
Ellie
Cates ships out for Iraq
By Rodger Nichols
of The Chronicle
Navy Medical Corpsman Third Class Micky Cates of The Dalles left this week for a posting in Sinjar, Iraq, near the Syrian border.
Cates is attached to the First Marines. Tuesday he flew from Oceanside, Calif. to Bangor, Maine as part of a longer journey that will take him to Germany and Kuwait on his way to Sinjar.
Cates, son of Michael W. and Diane Cates of The Dalles, flew Tuesday from Oceanside, Calif. to Bangor Maine.
“He called me from the airport that night,” said his grandfather, Bill Elton. “He said, ‘Grandpa, I’m in Maine.’ I asked him if he’d had a chance to eat. ‘We’ve got to go into the terminal, though we had to leave our guns aboard,’ he said. So I asked him what he had to eat. ‘I ate a lobster sandwich,’ he said. A lobster sandwich! Well, he was in Maine.”
Elton is one of Cates’ biggest boosters. That may be due in part to a shared Navy heritage; Elton served aboard a minesweeper in the South Pacific in World War II.
“We had a motto,” he said “‘Where the fleet goes, we’ve been.’”
Cates was a member of the first class to graduate from the combined The Dalles Wahtonka High School.
“He was quite a baseball player,” says Elton. “He played centerfield and second base and was a good hitter. He always had a string of girls cheering him on.”
Cates is also an accomplished trumpet player. When he attended boot camp at the Great Lakes Training Center, he marched in the graduation ceremonies as first trumpet in the unit’s band.
Following boot camp, he was stationed in Norfolk, Virgina for corpsman training, then took Marine training at Quantico for three and a half months.
Elton says his grandson has two more years of a five-year hitch to serve and plans a career in medicine.
Elton asked that we publish his military address so that his many friends could write to him. “He’s very popular,” Elton said. “Whenever he got time off it was hard to get hold of him, because everybody wanted him to join them.”
The address is:
HM3 Micky Cates
3RD LAR BN H&S CO
UNIT 41700
FPO AP 96426-1700
“I hope lots of his friends write to him, “ Elton said. “He’s a good kid.”
Ellie