I had just got to the thrilling conclusion of time with the redoubtable Matre Avery-Glis Kaine. We were swapping sea stories, and we had all made calls in the south of France, at Toulon, Marseilles, Nice and Cannes. They are all connected by frequent rail, and you can get all the way to Monaco in a morning.
My pal Point Loma leaned over at the bar at Willow and whispered, sotto vocce, “It is not a Tres Grand Voiture, he said. That means a big-ass automobile. The high speed train is called the TGV- the Train a Grand Vitasse, you dumbass.”
“Well, it was a goddamn big car. But I take your point.”
Point Loma laughed. “My initiation to the City of Light was in 1983 on the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) during her round-the-world delivery cruise from Norfolk to Alameda. We had ducked into the Med on the first part of our nine-month extravaganza for some weird nuclear response reason on the way to four months on Gonzo Station in the IO.”
“I was responsible for planning the Boat 1 target package on Forrestal. Problem was there was no Boat 2 around to do the rest. It is sort of embarrassing to have the wrong strike package all planned.”
“I’am surprised they didn’t crucify you for that,” he said, taking a sip of Happy Hour White.
“Trust me, they tried. But I had the message from EUCOM directing me what to do. They fucked up.”
“Never trust the staff of a Combatant Command,” he said. “I learned that the hard way. We could have gone to Cannes, but the luck of the port schedule was that the boat was going to be on the hook for eight days in Nice which, considering the fact that it was the off-season there on the Cote D’Azure (March), made it even weirder than the other port calls we had in the Atlantic on the way south around Africa – Casablanca and Abidjian.”
“One of my bunkroom mates was the famous Harry O, who was from Georgia and one of our finer A-6 ball flyers. Harry O’s family was from Kentucky and were original investors in Harlan Sander’s fried chicken enterprise. To his credit, he lived off of his Naval aviator’s salary which was a lot more than I made as a air intelligence LTJG on a second cruise, but I had to keep up.”
“Of course,” I said. “One must keep up appearances.” Sammy the Moroccan bartender topped up my glass. He keeps pouring and I keep tipping, so things work out.
“Harry O never cared to hang out in the admin in port and, like me, wanted to see places. His unofficial motto was “I’m going to have fun and I don’t care what it costs. Signed, Harry O.””
“Four hours after the Vinson anchored in Nice, we were on an Air France flight to Paris, and were delivered from Charles de Gaul airport via bus to l’hopital on the Rive Gauche. We found a hotel, had a fabulous three days, and took the Tres Grand Vitasse south to Geneva.”

“I never got out of the airport there when I stopped coming back from Zagreb,” I said pensively. “I have always wanted to see the place. I had to be content with airport chocolate and a couple drinks.”
“After touring around that lovely Swiss city for day, we took a slower train back around the Alps to Nice. We had reserved seats but hung out in the bar car and met some ex-pat twenty-something American female dental techs who were working in Switzerland who were making a group trip down to the Cote d’Azur.”
“Go figure that there would be a community of American dental techs in Europe,” I said. “I met a bunch of Americans- kids who grew up on the Army bases. There were a couple of then who had never actually been to America. Their Dads homesteaded in Germany and liked it.”
“Yeah. Never see that again. The world has changed. But you can imagine our reception at the staff admin suit back in Nice when we walked in the door with six very cute gals in tow, four extras for the boys with three days to go in port.”
“As part of the deal, they had a nice trip out to visit the ship and by then, it had warmed up enough to go to the beach.”
“We saw topless gals there in the middle of winter. It was very progressive.”

Point Loma nodded. “One night, I remember vividly wearing my dark grey James Bond suit I that was tailored for me at Harilelas in Hong Kong during the 1981 cruise on the Hawk on a visit to the casino in Monte Carlo. I took my date, a very nice brunette gal from Connecticut with spectacular breasts who had gone out with her girlfriends during the day and bought a slinky cream-colored man-killer dress for the occasion.”
“Monte Carlo was a gas, and an easy train ride from Cannes and Nice. The yachts in the harbor had helo decks and were as big as destroyer escorts.”
Point Loma nodded. “We had dinner at a nice place on the hill next to the Casino before going into the Casino. Once inside, we played roulette, rolled the bones at the one lonely craps table (Europeans don’t play craps), and danced together romantically in the disco. Since I was well-dressed, was know to have won some money, and having some true eye candy on my arm, we passed muster for entrance into the adult gaming room, where the minimum bet was 5000 francs. The games there were roulette and baccarat.”
“We watched a very drunk and arrogant Italian playboy lose more money in five rounds of chemin de fer than I had ever made in my life to that point. I can still see the sweat on his face, going mano a mano with this French guy who controlled the shoe. he was kicking this Italian guy’s ass and smiling at him the entire time, which pissed The Italian off even more. As in the movies, the tension around the table was real.”
“I’ll bet. I saw a table in Tombstone Arizona one time where a guy dropped $180,000 on one hand of Faro.”

“This guy was bigger than that. Like Largo in the James Bond movie Thunderball, he kept calling “banco” after every game, trying to win his money back. I estimated that he was down something like 300,000 dollars when we left. I realized that I was half drunk in a place way over my head, and that the best thing to do was to hail a cab take my by then very randy girlfriend back to the hotel for the night. After that port call, we had a saying – “Nice was nice.”
Point Loma finished his glass and waved languidly for another. For some reason, all of us at the Amen Corner were smiling. Maybe tomorrow I can tell you about Paris.
Copyright 2014 Vic and Marc
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