When I reported to my boat squadron, January 14th, 1970, I was shown to a room where a corpsman was sitting at the front behind the desk. He looks at the new arrivals (guys I trained with in Georgia) and said “Do any of you like SciFi?” Most of the guys didn’t know what SciFi was. I raised my hand.
“You afraid of big words?”
“I have a formidable lexicon.”
“You’re my understudy. Come with me.”
As we left the room HM3 Ho looked at a CPO and said, “Got mine, heaven help you with the rest.”
So, I was to back up the corpsman, replace him if he was killed.
Easiest volunteering I ever did.