How this Marine veteran plans to ride out Hurricane Florence: 'It's just water'

Daniel Brown/Business Insider

Chuck Stewart on the bumper of his car.

• Business Insider met two Marine veterans in North Carolina who said they plan to ride out Hurricane Florence.
• Charles Stewart, 75, said he lives in a mobile home, and will go to his car or truck if it gets dangerous.
• Carl Foskey, 66, said he has a well-built home and will ride the storm out with his wife.
• Neither of the Marines said they were nervous.

LELAND, North Carolina - Marine veteran Charles Stewart sat on the bumper of his car in a Waffle House parking lot directly in the path of Hurricane Florence.

Wearing loose-fitting jeans, a turquoise T-shirt and brown Rockwell shoes, he sipped coffee and smoked a Camel cigarette as Hurricane Florence loomed off the North Carolina coast.

Stewart, 75, who served in the Corps from 1962 to 1974, more than a year of which was in Vietnam, said he wasn't concerned about riding out the storm - much like the Corps he once served.

"If I decide it's unsafe, I'll get in the car," Stewart said with a smile, patting the bumper of his silver Cadillac. "If it flips over, I'll get in the truck."

Despite his nonchalance, he also seemed prepared.

Stewart said he had plenty of non-perisable food, first aid kits in each vehicle, a generator, and more. "I got all kinds of stuff."

Daniel Brown/Business Insider

Carl Foskey (left) and Charles Stewart (right).

A large broadshouldered man wearing a San Francisco 49ers hat suddenly came around the corner heading towards the Waffle House door before he noticed Stewart.

"Hey, Chuck," Carl Foskey said.

Foskey, 66, who also served in the Corps, said he wasn't nervous and planned to ride out the storm as well.

"I'm just gonna take care of my wife," he said. "She's totally disabled and I take care of her ... I'm just gonna turn the TV on and watch a movie or something."

"Until the power goes out," Stewart interjected, with a laugh.

But Foskey seemed to be in a safer position then Stewart since he has a "hurricane built" house that's "only six years old."

Foskey, who served in Vietnam and the Gulf War, said he was an E-7 in the Corps when he got out in 1993.

"Yeah, he outranked me - he told me what to do," Stewart said, who was an E-5, as they both laughed.

An E-5 is "what they call a Buck Sergeant," Stewart said. "I called it 'going down, and coming up.'"

The two men discussed some of their experiences in Vietnam, but they didn't want to go too deep.

Daniel Brown/Business Insider

Foskey and Stewart laugh as they discuss Hurricane Florence and their experiences in the Marine Corps.

"It's hard for anybody to understand what you go through unless you been through it," Stewart said. "That's why me and him can talk about it because -"

"We been through it," Foskey added.

Stewart said he was mostly in Da Nang in Vietnam, and did funeral detail for two years after returning.

"I just come out from over there and come back here [to do] burial," Stewart said. "And that'll warp your mind."

"Yeah, it will," Foskey agreed.

Besides his service, Stewart said he's survived cancer twice, among other health problems, which made it easier to understand why he wasn't too concerned about the impending storm.

"It's just water," Stewart said when discussing having to possibly go to his car or truck during the storm. "I might grab a bar of soap."