- Have you ever been away from home for a long time or had to navigate change?

For sailors and marines who live and work on ships and boats, they serve our country daily, through uncertain waters, away from comforts and loved ones, living with new people in tight quarters, eating new food, all while out for long periods of time at sea.

- I was 17 years old when I went in the Navy.

- We have the collision alarm.

(alarm wailing) - Typically, a cruise would last anywhere from seven to eight months.

- Hi, I'm Chrisena, and today we are visiting the historic Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, the largest inland naval park in the country.

Let's go!

♪ Let's go, let's go, let's go ♪ ♪ Let's go ♪ - Here we are on Buffalo's waterfront on Lake Erie.

This destination features four decommissioned naval vessels that served in a variety of military conflicts in our nation's history.

The park's mission is to honor, educate, inspire, and preserve.

(gentle music) Hi.

- Welcome.

Hi, I'm Courtney.

- Hi, Courtney, I'm Chrisena.

- Let's come aboard.

So we are on board USS Little Rock.

This ship was like a floating city.

There were over 1,200 sailors and Marines that would've served and worked aboard this ship at the same time.

- Where would you put them all?

- We will go and explore some of those spaces.

Let's go check it out.

And we are at the post office.

This space was used for handling all of the incoming and outgoing mail.

- How long would it take to receive a letter or to send a letter?

- Well, that would really depend on where the ship was stationed.

If it was underway, what it was doing at the time, and how often the provisioning ships, or sometimes helicopters, could come and bring supplies and mail to the ship.

Typically, a cruise would last anywhere from seven to eight months.

It didn't normally go over a year, but sometimes it could have been just a couple of months, depending on what they were doing.

We're going to go into the mess deck, which is kind of like a cafeteria.

- There would be four meals served a day.

- Four?

- Four meals, if you can believe it.

And then they also had a midnight meal for those guys that were working overnight.

- These tables, I noticed they're a little bit different than the tables in my lunchroom at school.

What is this little lip for?

- You can come across some really rough seas and sometimes their trays would slide, so this little lip here would protect it from sliding right off onto the floor.

- That's smart.

What kind of food would there be?

Mashed potatoes, green beans.

- A lot of hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken.

They made their own bread, or they had their own butcher's shop on board, so they would bring meat on board and then chop it up.

So it was always very important for morale if you had good food on board a ship.

So we're in berthing, which is also known as the crew's sleeping quarters.

And this space particularly held about 80 guys, their personal effects, and also, as you can see with these bunks, where they slept.

Their actual bedding would lift up, and then underneath here about that deep would be where all of their personal items would be.

Photos of loved ones, many of them kept a diary, you know, maybe like kids today, they keep a diary or a little journal.

- I keep a journal.

- Do you really?

Yes, so the sailors would as well.

Sometimes they would hang out in their berthing and, you know, tell jokes with their friends and their bunk mates.

- Next I was privileged to speak with a veteran who served on the Little Rock.

So, Paul, you used to work on this ship?

- Yes, I did, right in this space.

- Right in this space?

- I worked directly for the admiral.

- What was the admiral's role in this?

- Well, he was in charge of the entire fleet under one flag, the Sixth Fleet was the fleet that served the Mediterranean area.

- When you were on this ship, where did the ship go?

- Spain, Lebanon, Turkey.

I was 17 years old when I went in the Navy, right out of high school.

I went to crypto school.

I had a lot of experiences on this ship and other ships.

- Can you tell me a little bit more about crypto school?

- What it was was the reading and writing of encrypted words via coded word.

(image beeping) - Did you make a lot of lifelong friends?

- Actually, over from Kansas was a wheat farmer, a little bit older than me.

I talk to him on the phone regularly.

- And you still keep in touch.

- And I keep in touch.

Another guy by the name of McNally, he lives in Florida now.

He was young and restless young kid.

I worked with him and worked with him for his speed.

He had to be tested and he made grade, and he's eternally grateful.

He spent five years in the Navy.

- It's been such a pleasure to meet you.

- Yeah, same here.

- Thank you so much for your service- - Oh, you're welcome.

- also.

(gentle music) Ahoy, Shane!

- Hi, how are you again?

- Hi, I'm great, how are you?

- I'm good.

- What are you working on here?

- Oh, you know, we're just trying to organize some of these mooring lines.

Do you want to go see something pretty cool?

- [Chrisena] Let's go.

- We are standing on the bow and the main deck of the USS Croaker, which is a submarine.

So this submarine served in World War II, and so the one difference between the other ships that you've been on and this boat is that this can go under water.

(image bubbling) Welcome to the Croaker.

And this is the forward torpedo room where about 16 torpedoes would be, but also about 15 crew would live here at any given time.

(image bubbling) - [Chrisena] These are tight quarters.

Service members needed to volunteer to live and work aboard the submarine.

- So welcome to the control room, and this is like the brain of the submarine, there's a lot of systems that are done here.

So the first alarm is the general alarm.

Let's take a listen.

(alarm beeping) We have the collision alarm.

(alarm wailing) And then we also have the dive alarm.

(alarm buzzing) Over here we have the diving stations.

Now these are really cool, they look like steering wheels, don't they?

- [Chrisena] They do.

- So the bow and the stern dive plane control the rise or the descent of the boat.

See how smooth that wheel is?

- So we'd have to work together so that the boat would go up and down- - Yes.

- at the same time?

- [Shane] Yes.

- Shane, thank you so much for showing us the inner workings of the sub.

- [Shane] And great to have you with us.

- I think it's time for me to take my leave.

Wow, I had an incredible day with you.

I don't think you'll forget about the lives and roles of US Navy veterans anytime soon.

I know I sure won't.

What do you think?

Well, I'm going to go and write in my journal about all the things that I'm grateful for, but before I do, I also want to say thank you to all of our veterans and active duty service members.

See you next time.

- So the shower stalls would be filled with food and you weren't even able to take a shower until two weeks after, or whatever the food had been eaten at that time.

So that was, - Stinky.

- Quite stinky, yeah.

- Yeah, that seems like it'd be stinky.

- Sounds great to me.

(Chrisena and Shane laughing) - Well, welcome, Connor, how are you?

- I'm good.

How about you?

- I'm good.

- So you were telling us about the shower, so they can't even take a shower for the next, I don't know, two weeks?