A shipmate wrote to me about the Mombasa tale. He had joined the Foreign Legion after our last outing to the Indian Ocean, and the grand adventure of liberty in Africa with no immediate crisis in progress. He had not visited Kenya before, and he was determined to enjoy it, Hostage Crisis or not. He said:
“…after tooling around Diego Garcia, learning then about the seizure of the Embassy in Tehran, we were more than anxious…I predicted we would stay maybe a little longer in the Indian Ocean. It was only a scheduled to be a three month deployment and we were supposed to be back in Japan before Xmas in 79…did not turn out that way did it? But that port visit was what we needed, the calm before the storm, and my first East African port ever. Now the funny story. Five of us had paid for a trip to Outspan/Treetops resorts in Aberdare National Park. That’s where Queen Liz got the word her Father had passed and now she was in charge. Great, wonderful upscale resort. Our assistant Strike Ops buddy John S said “don’t worry about the transportation up there, I will take care of it…Well, he did. He just added a bus for us in the ships port logistics request. When we left Mombasa the Top Porkchop came to me and said what the hell is this $2,000 bus ride? Being the senior guy, I got the whiplash. As the dust settled, we chipped in and paid our shares, the XO was really pissed but it was all covered…May have been a different story in today’s Navy!”
That made me puzzle over the whole matter. It was less than a year since the last time I had been in Mombasa, and had been filled with excitement at the prospect. We were not supposed to be back- we were not even supposed to be in the Indian Ocean. We had picked up the requirement because the West Coast Show Boat USS Ranger had collided with a merchant ship in the Straits of Malacca, and instead of them, CINCPAC decided to send us. So, let me zig-zag back in the direction of 1978, and the first trip to Africa. We will get back to the crazy days of the Iranian revolution and the taking of the US Embassy in a minute.
Earlier that same year:
INDIAN OCEAN: Kenya
ONE DAY IS VERY MUCH LIKE ANY OTHER at sea. They pass one by one into a gray haze of work arid chow, and wake-up calls at odd hours. This cruise was punctuated by moments in the blazing equatorial sun. I would go up to Vulture’s Row each day Instead of lunch and sprawl in whatever un-shadowed section of deck was available.
In this manner I was able to determine to my satisfaction that the sun still rose, and grew huge, and eventually sank into the endless greasy swells of the Indian Ocean.
It was a long month. The last two glimpses we had of land were the shimmering towers of Singapore, and the low sand of Diego Garcia. These were fleeting and unsatisfactory.
‘Eyeball Liberty* is the euphemism we use for such transitory interruptions in the constancy of the seascape. We were ready to rock and roll in Africa, to kick back and not think at all. We left our seeing-eye Russian south of the Gulf of Aden.
We were tasked with a last thrust at the High Value Communist in the neighborhood. We did it in grand style. The sleek Krivak-class guided missile destroyer took off after hoisting the “Good Sailing” pennants from her signal bridge.
We muttered “So long, Sucker” and headed south. The Minsk mini-aircraft carrier and her protecting group lay a few hundred nautical miles to the southeast. We steamed through the night, and first thing in the morning a Flag musing turned into a juggernaut of activity.
“Wouldn’t it be nice” said our Admiral, “if we could get some good pictures of the Minsk before we head in to Mombasa.”
Your wish is our command, Sir.
Some of the Attack pukes had some range extension schemes they had been sitting on for a while, and the next thing the hapless air intelligence team knew, we were briefing an eight-plane fly-by at what was formerly considered “unreasonable” distance. I’m sure there were frantic Marxists scurrying to their publications. “See, Comrade, right here it says that the American A-7 Corsair II attack jet cannot be here at all! Nor the Intruder A-6E. It is all a clever ruse of the Capitalists.”
It was a hair-raising recovery on board when they got back, but we got everybody back alive, and we secured for the duration of our liberty, safe in the knowledge that we had defended Liberty, and once more confounded the Godless Commies.
We arrived outside the reef at Mombasa at eight. The hook rattled the chains across the foc’sle as it plummeted to hit the African sea bottom. Liberty fever ran rampant among the happy crew. I was flush with an extra hundred dollars from a late night poker game the night before. In the face of such omen I was confident of unparalleled outrages to come. Africa: Land of Uhuru, and Idi Amin, and a million stories, and it lay two miles outside the hanger bay!
It beckoned with palm trees and white sand. The water was a vivid light azure. There was a minaret in the cluster of little white buildings. There was a line you couldn’t believe to storm the accommodation ladder and swarm onto one of the little boats. We stood in line for hours.
The azure sea was battering the liberty boats against the massive slab-side of the carrier. It is the most excruciating of agonies to see freedom and to be prevented from reaching it.
Tempers, primarily mine, began to unravel. I saw a Commander cut in line ahead of our group and nearly laid him out. It was a clear case of ship fever. The gray walls. No smoking in the Liberty line.
Arrragh!
Like Tantalus, we could see a small white boat come near the ship and then be waved away. I swore the whole operation was going to be scrubbed; it has happened. If the grim look on the Captain’s face was any indication of things to come, the news was going to be bad.
But no! At last a party managed to clamor onto a ship’s boat. We advanced onto the very approaches to the “Acom” ladder and in good time a small boat braved the swells and came near. It drew up to the ladder and a few frail-looking ropes snaked across.
The white cockleshell rose and fell about five feet with the waves. The Liberty Assistance Team in their orange kapok life-jackets began to hand the luggage across and one by one the party made the jump. I reached the bottom of the ladder and made my move.
It was timed flawlessly and I scarcely injured myself at all as I sprawled headlong onto the deck. It was the deck going ashore, though, so it was all right. I found a relatively sheltered spot and began to grin. It was a small one at first but it grew like Topsy. Soon I was a grinning idiot. Barring a collision at sea, I was practically assured of seeing Africa up close and personal.
I gave myself better than even odds of swimming to safety even in the direst of straits.
It took about fifteen minutes to overload the boat beyond legal tolerances. The gunwales were low and everyone was standing. It was a classic set-up for capsizing, but everyone was smiling. Catastrophe would have to look hard and long to find a more willing bunch than us, going ashore after a month at sea.
At last the skipper of the liberty boat waved his green golf cap and the lines were cast off.
We looked up the great gray walls covered with fist-sized rivets. The Officer of the Deck looked down on us in his whites, and the duty standers looked resentful. I imagined the other four thousand people still in line weren’t exactly thrilled either. But I was in the right place, and the devil with the hindmost.
We lurched out into the swells that showed whitecaps racing in across the reef. As we came across the trough the boat pitched and rolled ominously. Shoreward sat a large white oceanographic ship. “Hey, Vic, what Russian is that?” asked Robert-the-Fifth. We had Russians on the brain after our adventures in the Gulf of Aden.
“Robert, that is a classic example of the treachery of the Marxists. That Russian is flying the American Flag in a cunning attempt to befuddle our trusty sailors.” The ship appeared to be a survey vessel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the NOAA.
“Oh. That kind of Russian.” Robert didn’t even have the good graces to act embarrassed. You can see the kind of material we have to work with out here.
Once we got away from the Midway it began to look less like the side of a building and more like a ship of some kind.
About the same time we noticed a freighter outbound on our starboard quarter. “That fellow has us on collision bearing.” said Bronco. He was studying his ship-handling as a possible career move to enhance his chances for command later. He was looking at the white water around the freighter’s bow.
“No sweat” I said. “We have the right of way.”
Bronco looked over at me quizzically. “Well, maybe he’ll give way. But I think the law of Gross Tonnage applies here.” Our boat began to jog across the trough again- we heeled over at about a twenty-five degree list.
Things were interesting for a moment and the danger passed us astern by a good hundred yards. A mile ahead was the buoy that marked the channel into the harbor. To our right was the hulk of a freighter that didn’t make it. The waves broke between the huge chunk of her bows and the rest of her superstructure. On the green point of land that faced us were the remains of gray rock gun emplacements. They sat incongruously on a golf course. We wallowed to port and the intensity of the waves diminished as we passed inside the reef line. It no longer appeared that we were headed for imminent destruction.
I took off my sunglasses and attempted to wipe off the salt film. All I succeeded in doing was smearing the lenses. Ox was leaning over the rail and sniffing the air with the intensity of a hound on the track of a raccoon.
“Smell them flowers.’ It’s a goddamn hot house!” God, it is good to finally smell something besides the fucking jet fuel, hot oil, and unwashed humanity. It is a lot like musk perfume: it’s down-right erotic. Damn!”
We saw the radar arrays of one of our tin cans tied up at the pier inside the harbor proper. I don’t envy them at sea. While Ma Midway motors along in stately nonchalance the small boys are plunging and rolling. When they come alongside for underway replenishment, to take on fuel from our bunkers, you can see under their keels a quarter of the way back. But now I really lusted after their capability to drive right into port, throw over a few lines and drop the gangway.
Africa, anyone?
We rounded the last little spit of land, covered with green vegetation and two huge signs reading “submarine cable.” We drove up to a floating dock and the lines went over. We had arrived. The only problem now was to survive the stampede off the liberty boat. The landing was right next to a ferry stop. A nice four-lane road dropped down from the bluff and into the harbor. Dozens of peddlers were hanging around selling masks, spears, and carved animals. Spears?
The reality was having a hard time penetrating. Still too close to the flight deck. Ed B was playing his usual roll as Beach Guard honcho, and with customary aplomb he directed us to a waiting VW microbus, the preferred method of transportation in the Third World. We stacked ten people inside and pressed our noses up against the glass.
Once out of the fleet landing area the crowds got thicker as the people could smell, American dollars coming. We sniffed the entrancing odor of burning clutch as our driver hung on the tail of a recalcitrant cement truck. Claustrophobia began to rise as the fumes penetrated the passenger compartment. When it finally seemed to be too much, the truck lurched forward and we popped up over the hill.
Welcome to Kenyan traffic.
We passed the mixer in a display of motorized élan, and roared with air-cooled power through the main drag of Mombasa.
The buildings were two-story. They featured long covered porches to protect from the heat, and needed paint.
Most seemed to date from the thirties. It seemed overgrown and colonial. It was great. Things reminded me a little of Southeast Asia; the verdant growth always a step ahead of things, but no one caring a great deal. The grass always grows back, doesn’t it? The driver pulled back on the stick and we did a few barrel rolls through the rotaries. More joie du vivre than similar structures in New Jersey.
We hit the built up section of town and dropped off a passenger. People walked under the long verandas, small shops were open to the air. Most of the signs were in English, but a Muslim influence was clear. Bright printed skirts and black veils on the women. A lot of Pakistanis, turbans, and big new Mercedes,
Like Thailand. The cars don’t go with the scenery. The quaint old buildings jar with a new 450SL parked outside. Which is not to say that everyone owned one; but of the percentage of cars actually on the street favored the big ticket.
After we dropped our rider, we engaged in another duel with the cement truck and came up victorious, luckily so. In a mile or so we came to the Nyalli Bridge, the one-time pride and current abomination of Mombasa. In structure the thing resembled one of the old bridges in West Virginia; silver painted steel girders and end-to-end plank paving. Here they had to build with the tide in mind, so the center span rose and fell in the ceaseless rhythm of the ocean. Which lead to an interesting situation. The buses had grown but the bridge hadn’t.
The metal luggage racks wouldn’t fit four times a day. I had been wondering why the urban behemoths all had a squashed look to them. No sweat. The “carry on” spirit of the Kenyans was amazing. Our driver handed a few shillings to the toll collector and off we rolled. When someone breaks down things are thrown utterly into confusion.
This crossing passed without event. Once on the other side of the estuary we really flew. The horn is as vital a piece of driving gear as it is in Korea. The pedestrians don’t flinch as some madman screams by at about a hundred clicks, honking madly.
We passed out of the developed area in a hurry and came into a district of fine new homes. We screamed past Jomo Kenyatta boulevard and broke hard into a ninety degree bend. Four-wheel drift all the way, a near side swipe, and over the palm trees we saw the signs advertising the Nyalli Beach Hotel. A last jog into the Hotel grounds and we came to the guard shack and a long cross bar across the access. The bored guard hoisted it up and we passed on the fly.
We arrived in state under the white portico. Bellhops waited eagerly for our luggage, but we were traveling light. I had my Foreign Correspondent’s suit, one pair of socks, cut-offs, and a tee-shirt. I was ready for action, danger and/or excitement. But above all I was ready for a drink.
“Reservations, Sir?”
“Well, er, ah, not exactly. Do you have a double?”
“I’m sorry. Sir. We have no rooms tonight.”
One becomes accustomed to the vagaries of traveling with 4300 intimate friends. I arraigned to occupy the softest part of Bronco’s floor and surrendered myself to the Oblivion Express.
********************
Well, cold beers were first. Tusker Lagers in green bottles. Tusker Ale in brown bottles. Served with chicken broiled on kabob hanging from a hook over a black carved plate with rice and salad. The food was fabulous, but the alcohol was supreme. I shifted to gin and tonics at the pool. It was a swell set up.
The pool was Olympic, the sun was tropical, the palms danced above us in the monsoon wind. Over the wall was a lawn with white lounge chairs scattered around. Several had bronzed European women in bikinis sprawled on them.
The scenery was outstanding. One particular lady (Spanish, by consensus) was obviously part of a conspiracy to drive the air wing mad. She wore a black John Player string bikini, high heels that pulled her delicious buns up tight, and mysterious sunglasses.
Behind her, if one was able to break visual lock, was a brilliant white sand beach, blue water and that hulk of a freighter on the reef. Picturesque? Shit! We couldn’t imagine paying the bucks to have that ship driven up and scuttled in just the right position so it was perfectly framed by the palms. Quite the hotel. A little path ran from the pool down through the thicket of lounge chairs to the beachfront restaurant. It was open to the breeze, dark and elegant.
Well laid out.
(Natya-class MSF. Photo Socotra)
It even had Marxists.
We were strolling down to the beach when we saw a party of stocky individuals drinking beer and soaking up rays. I was wearing my cut-offs and an industrial strength bhat chain from Thailand. I felt instant lockup from the Russian eyes. One of them raised his glass and used what might have been his only English, “Cheers!” he said.
“How ya doin'” I responded and tipped my beer to them. Real intercultural communication. I had to wonder what their rank was; it was evident that it they were the masters or the political officers from the intelligence collection ships in the harbor that had been following us around. It certainly wasn’t the happy crew of one of one of the ships.
Not so with our egalitarian system. I found out later that one of our third class petty officers bumped the Air Wing Commander out of his room reservation because the CAG was late getting off the ship.
The joys of democracy. Freedom, even in the military, is a more valuable commodity than you would think. When the Russkies pull into port the enlisted guys get to go ashore with a political officer. No vodka or pussy for the trusty Comrades, It would be enough to drive an American bonkers. When we are ashore the sky is virtually the limit.
And thank God. When we hit the beach I began to realize why the hotel had guards at the gate. They had them on the Hotel beach, too. From the prices you pay for everything it is hard to believe that the annual income is a couple hundred dollars. The tourist is fully insulated from the reality. We strolled out of the private area and within minutes we were surrounded by some enterprising vendors.
They had the same curios as every other place in the country. At astonishing markups. The only difference that was evident from the Fleet Landing was the fact that these guys were also selling reefer. Ah, the sweet romance of south equatorial Africa!
We returned to the safe enclave of the pool and watched the Spanish lady walk around. Best show in over a month. Frank was looking at the elephant he had bought. I was looking at the four gin and tonics I bought.
Finally the lady slipped on a black robe and the show was over. We adjourned to the balcony of Bronco’s room and watched a spectacular sunset. The only thing unusual about it was that the sun was sinking at our backs.
Bronco marveled at it, because as a Californian it was 180-degrees out of phase. I explained to him about the “Green Berets” scene that had John Wayne walking down the beach in Vietnam with the sun sinking in the West. All depends on how you look at things.
This evening the clouds turned pink, the wreck lit up, the sky was blue, and a full moon was hanging over the whole event. The clouds were swirled by the wind into fantastic shapes. When it got dark it was time to don my suit, have more cocktails, and head down to the beach for dinner. The breeze was cool and the sound of the rustling palms was not at all like the sound of catapults or arresting gear. It was great.
*******************
When we dined it was very drunk out. The surf roared and the breeze blew briskly through the open windows next to our table. We watched the crabs who had taken charge of the beach in the absence of the guests. We were warned not to stray from the lighted areas after dark. It was just one of several things that tugged slightly at the back of your mind to make you realize that you were in a land where the Mau-Mau might include the distinguished headwaiter, or the taxi driver, or virtually anyone you met.
No one talks about it very much. Uhuru is great, but that bloody slice of history when the colonial age died in East Africa has been neatly excised, at least for tourist consumption.
Much has changed since the old days.
No hunting is allowed anymore.
I had naively assumed I could get a skin of some kind, perhaps a nice zebra for the wall back home, but it was not to be. Perhaps a good thing. I have always felt that most animals were happier on the hoof. Spears and a nice shield, though, were a possibility until the ship’s XO banned them. I suppose he didn’t want the crew bringing on a few thousand lethal weapons. In light of the bad news that was spreading like wildfire it was probably a good thing for all those concerned. All the cocktails were good with dinner, as were both varieties of the house wines.
The crabs were a real show. We chased them for a while after dinner and were not attacked by guerillas, of either kind.
Tomorrow: “A Little Traveling Music.”
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303