(A couple old salts protect the mail repository. Image Bangari Content Gallery).
You know the drill: a young sailor is given an important task, one in which failure will result being ostracized from the only community he or she is going to have for years. The Mail Buoy Watch is one of the most effective. In it, the sailor is given a large hook and binoculars, fitted with a harness and safety line and stationed on one of the ship’s weather decks up forward. The imaginary “mail buoy” is said to contain all of the ship’s mail, dropped off by another ship earlier that day. Instructions are given that when the buoy is sighted, the hook needs to be affixed to it with alacrity or else the mail will be lost and the entire crew is going to be really pissed.
Even in today’s hypersensitive maritime environment, I imagine some of the traditions remain. Of course, everyone knows the real way the mail snarls its way aboard the big decks. Simple as pie, really:
(Carrier On-board Delivery (COD on the ball with 5,000 pounds of mail! Photo USN).
That said, this was a clever means of turning to the last resort of the dumbstruck essayist: going to the mail-bag. I knew you were on to me. I just finished the account of how Joe Rochefort finally got the well-earned recognition for saving the Navy’s bacon at Midway. It was great fun to put it together from original documents, ones handled by Chester, and the Joes, and Mac, Jasper and Eddie. I feel them like a presence now. But that was going to lead into something else, a story so remarkable that it stunned me when I discovered that Mac had part of the story as well.
This is the cover letter my uncle Jim appended to it when he came across the tale in the effects of a recently deceased friend who shared an interest in short-wave radio. I challenge you to find the glaring error contained therein:
Anyway, this story is worth taking some time with, and I intend to. It will be The Last Voyage of the IJN battleship Nagato. But we are not going to do that this morning. We have survived the “Fall Back” of all the clocks except the ones that cause us to veer off the roads in our cars, the early football game from Wembley Stadium, and the onerous upgrade of the Operating System on the farm lap-top, which takes all available creative time in the morning.
So, like I said, we will dig into the mail bag and try to answer what Guy Noir likes to call “Life’s Persistent Questions” on Prairie Home Companion. The first one is a soft ball, like the ones Hillary gets:
Q: “Vic- I saw this on the AP this morning. Yemeni security officials say a rare and rapidly intensifying cyclone has killed one person and injured nine on the remote Socotra island.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to journalists, say Cyclone Chapala seriously damaged or destroyed at least 20 homes on the island on Sunday.
They say many residents living near the coast are taking shelter in caves. The island is being hit by heavy rain and strong winds, and rising waves are battering the coast. The officials say coastal areas are flooded.
The U.N. weather agency said Friday that Cyclone Chapala could dump more than a year’s worth of rainfall on Yemen. It’s expected to hit the country’s mainland on Monday. Did your hair get mussed?”
A. No, the pompadour is unscathed. Thanks for asking.
Q: “OK- I give up. Where did that idiotic pen name come from? Why are you hiding your identity?”
A: I was working at CIA. Not for them exactly, though there were of a different opinion as they are about all of us. We did a training gig at The Farm. I thought it was a fascinating place, and wrote an article about it. I submitted it to the appropriate officials in the Original Headquarters Building on the lush campus. They took a few days and responded, saying that the whole matter was classified even if everyone knew what the (Redacted, on authority of Executive Order 13526) really was. Having outed myself as a writer- this was the at dawn of blogs, like back in mid-2001, before the world turned on its head- and they primly advised me that everything I wrote needed to be reviewed for security purposes.
Naturally, I demurred, but realized I needed to: 1. Retire, and 2. Have some plausible deniability. I put on my thinking cap, looking for the right alternate identity. “Nick Danger” was logical, but came freighted with some intellectual property issues I did not want to revisit. But there was something evocative about the time period.
When we were in the Indian Ocean in 1979, the Russians were there, too. As tensions rose over the Iranian Revolution (and later the Embassy occupation and hostage-taking) the Russians assigned a tattle-tale ship to trail the Midway (CV-41) battle group so they would know exactly where to send the Long Range Aviation assets to turn our ships into radioactive slag, which is why the Nagato saga is of such poignant interest.
We were all agog about the goings-on, since we had been at a certain peace since the Vietnam conflict formally ended in 1975- almost four whole years. Our briefings would start, somewhat breathlessly, “Admiral, the Soviet Red Banner Indian Ocean Eskadra continues routine operations in the vicinity of Great Socotra Island, one of their primary anchorages in the Horn of Africa region.”
A hundred or so days later, we were all bored, Russians and Yanks alike. The briefings got shorter. “Sir, SOVINDRON is still rusting on the hook, vic Socotra.”
I knew a winner when I saw one, and the later need generated the nom de guerre.
You can only be thankful (as am I) that my other finalist in the contest was the protagonist of my second book: “Rex Bueno, Special Agent, Navy Resale System.”
Sincerely,
Vic Socotra
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303