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From Pearl Harbor to Hickam Field we were transported along with a flight surgeon and staff in a trailer that was loaded on a flatbed truck. From there we were flown to Houston, quarantine unit and all. When we got to Houston, they backed up the trailer next to the building set aside for our prolonged quarantine at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (now known as Johnson Space Center), so they were able to transfer us from the trailer into the building without letting loose any germs. The building had sleeping quarters and a mess hall, and the people who were debriefing us were on the other side of a glass partition. If anyone came inside the quarantine unit, that person was not permitted to leave until we did. Someone had whimsically placed a sign over the door, PLEASE DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS.

We were in quarantine for twenty-one days after we came back from the moon. From the time we were picked up from the ocean until the time we entered the more permanent quarantine quarters in Houston, we wore biological garments to protect the rest of the world from any potential toxicity or strange new microbes we might have picked up from the lunar surface. Nobody I knew at NASA actually feared that we had been contaminated, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Beyond that, the mandatory quarantine served a much more functional purpose in keeping Mike, Neil, and me away from the public, and the public away from us, for a few weeks, till we had a chance to process all that we had experienced—to write our mission reports, as well as to debrief and help the Apollo 12 astronauts with any information we might have gained from our experience. Quarantine also provided us with time to pause and reflect on the events of the past week or so, trying to understand it all, and wondering how it would impact our future.

Craig Fisher, the medical doctor, brought in plenty of booze for us to celebrate, and I discovered that he kept the supply in the filing cabinet. When nobody was paying attention, I helped myself to a little extra of Craig’s stash. His sleeping quarters were right next to mine, and one morning I was in my bedroom reading—since our time in quarantine was a period of catching up on the news, rest, relaxation, and isolation—and that morning I heard the doctor say, “Who’s been drinking all the booze?”

I shifted uneasily. My need for a release to take the edge off the tremendous excitement we all felt in completing this mission had me drinking his stash. But that’s how it was over the span of my military career, where we would go to Friday-night beer calls after our rigorous Air Force flight-training exercises, sorties, and missions. Drinking was our way of celebrating a successful mission. Apollo 11 was clearly the most momentous mission I had ever flown. I felt I deserved a little extra indulgence.

During the three weeks we stayed in quarantine, we had several executive debriefings. We attempted to convey all that we had experienced to NASA and to the astronauts who would follow us on the next lunar landings. The three of us sat on a panel behind the glass walls that separated us, and NASA personnel quizzed us about our experiences. The questions were surprisingly benign, mostly I suppose because the other astronauts had been at various key positions in the control room and throughout Mission Control, and had experienced each step of the flight along with us. Either that, or they felt we had little they could add to their already arduous training.

While in the quarantine units, we had numerous medical checkups to ascertain whether our journey had had any ill effects on us. There was some concern that even though we were all pretty healthy guys, exposure to radiation might cause a problem. We had little dosimeters that we wore while in quarantine, and when we left, the doctors said that the radiation to which we had been exposed was nothing to worry about. When we were finally released from the quarantine facility in Houston, it was determined that none of us