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Members of the 50-year-old Glen W. Eyler American Legion Post No. 282 in Woodsboro slide a card to get past the lobby and into the interior. For others there is a doorbell.

Inside it resembles a casual restaurant, with tables and a long bar that winds through the middle of an open hall. There is one table, however, where no one can sit. A black POW-MIA flag hangs on the back of the chair.

"It's for the comrade who's not able to be here," said Michael Strausbough, outgoing commander of the post he has led for two years. Strausbough and two other officers from the post on Sunday talked about the life and times of "three Navy guys." They will be among the members of the post participating in the annual Woodsboro Memorial Day parade on Sunday.

David Bloxsom, 47, of New Midway, incoming commander of the post, left the Navy in 2004 as a chief petty officer and electronics specialist after a 23-year-career. He works for Microbiology International in Frederick.

Ron Holland, 65, of New Midway, the post's chaplain, served as petty officer third class, instrument man from 1961 to 1964, in Norfolk, Va. — "the largest naval base in the world" — and aboard the USS Cadmus, a fix-it-all ship. Holland has retired from a 42-year-career with the U.S. Postal Service.

Strausbough was in the Navy for 14 years, eight of which were spent on active duty. He served as a hospital corpsman. Now he works in Montgomery County as an EMT and firefighter.

On women becoming sailors

"Combat vessels were men-only" in 1982, when Strausbough entered the Navy, he said. Privacy didn't exist. Not everyone took hygiene as seriously as he should have. When women came aboard in the 1990s, sleeping areas and bathrooms were chopped up and segregated and men started taking better care of themselves.

"I'll be honest with you, I had some bums working with me, some fellas that you had to literally drag out of bed, sometimes bodily, just to get them to show up. I guess they felt they didn't have anything to prove," Bloxsom said.

He and Strausbough agreed that the transition to co-ed, while difficult, has been a positive one for the Navy.

"One of the things that it provided that I think was a big plus was a deep sense of competition between the genders," Bloxsom said. In operations where attention to detail was paramount, "overall, service improved dramatically."

Gulf combat

Strausbough was stationed in Hawaii when his ship was dispatched to the Persian Gulf to watch over fuel tankers while Iran and Iraq fought a war against each other.

"I spent all of 1988 in Bahrain, in the Gulf protecting the tankers. That's when the [USS] Vincennes shot down the Airbus, the Iranian Airbus [a commercial airliner with 290 people on board], and the Sammy B [the USS Samuel B. Roberts] hit a mine, and [Operation] Praying Mantis — it was a rough year over there," Strausbough said. "We saw combat and it was pretty ugly. The locals weren't happy about the Airbus being shot down."

Strausbough's ship came to the aid of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, which had been badly damaged by a mine set by Iran.

Thirteen years later, Bloxsom was in the Persian Gulf with the USS Detroit — a "great big gas tank with bombs" — when Iraqis standing with shoulder-launch missiles on boghammers, tiny flat-bottom boats, harassed the ship.

"We spent Christmas Eve at general quarters," Bloxsom said, adding that, because the crew was not permitted to shoot the Iraqis, it "saturated" them with fire hoses.

The U.S. military's involvement in the Persian Gulf hasn't been confined to the two Gulf wars, according to the veterans. "It hasn't stopped over there since 1987," Strausbough said.

Wounds suffered

Strausbough's career as a Navy medic started on Parris Island, the U.S. Marines' training ground, in 1982. The first cardiac arrest victim he treated was an 18-year-old woman who ended up dying from an undetected heart condition aggravated by training. Strausbough recited her full name and the exact date of her death.

"I remember every one of them," he said. "That kind of stuff just sticks with you."

Strausbough returned to active duty in 2003. For six months, he was part of a medical team that received Iraq war casualties at Andrews Air Force Base and ferried them aboard ambulances to Bethesda Naval Medical Center or Walter Reed Army Hospital.

He estimates he helped treat 400 casualties. On the interstate to the hospital, he would loan his cell phone to soldiers so they could call their parents and let them know they had returned to the U.S.

"It was rough when you're dealing with the kids; 18, 19 years old and they're blown to hell," Strausbough said. "The IEDs were just starting out but most of these guys were from mortar attacks."

There were never complaints, Strausbough said.

In previous incarnations of the military, enlisted men and women were supposed to suffer horrors silently, said Strausbough, who in 2005 was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Now members of the military are talking through inner and outer wounds with crisis teams made up of their peers.

"I honestly believe that this session in the Gulf has done it because too many people are coming back [with wounds], the numbers are so much higher," he said.

Life at sea, and getting out

While ship life is never easy, it gets a bit more difficult when fresh water runs out. Instead of taking showers, sailors wash up in sinks. Getting coffee begins to require creativity.

"It wasn't uncommon to reuse grounds two or three times," Strausbough said.

"And you can make coffee with boiler feed water, but it's disgusting," Bloxsom added.

The veterans fondly remembered the infinite hazing rituals, rites of passage and drills they endured and participated in while enlisted. All three remembered the one where someone asks a newbie to fetch a "bucket of steam."

Strausbough's time in the Navy began to wind down as soon as he returned to Hawaii from combat. He had crossed the equator twice and passed through the Panama Canal. He applied for a transfer to Bethesda, and got it.

"I was pretty much burnt out at that point, because I had done eight years and five of it at sea, and I was trying to save my marriage," he said. He has been married for 22 years.

Bloxsom enlisted with the intention of serving 30 years. But having crossed the equator twice and sailed the Adriatic Sea, the Arctic Circle and many other bodies of water aboard five different vessels, "it really just stopped being fun anymore so I figured if it wasn't fun to me I was just making everyone around me miserable, it's time to find something else to do."

While they are no longer on ships themselves, they continue to serve from the post. They organize and attend military funerals, sponsor scholarships and ensure that veterans have a place to go for help or to talk.

"We all shared the same experience, even if it wasn't all at the same time," Bloxsom said. "We never met until I moved up here and joined the legion. It's amazing for an organization such as the United States Navy to be so bloody big, it really is a small community."

E-mail Jeremy Hauck at jhauck@gazette.net.

On Sunday

-9:30 a.m. wreath laying ceremony at war memorial on north side of town

-1:30 p.m. Memorial Day parade starts at Mount Hope Cemetery, goes down Main Street, then 2nd Street, then Liberty Road; ends at Glen W. Eyler American Legion Post No. 282 (101 W. Elizabeth St.

-www.alpost282.org