Editor’s Note: I stirred around 0200 and saw an alert on the tablet computer. I fumbled for my glasses and turned on the bedside light. The New York Times informed me that Uncle Fidel was gone at the age of ninety. I read the obit in the NY Times, which was extensive and ad obviously been in the can for a while. By turns fawning and mildly critical, the words said the classic Caribbean caudilla was no doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist. A hybrid, they said. Apparently like Mr. Trump. I wonder who will b dispatched to represent us all at the state funeral?
Fidel and Mac Showers overlapped much of their long lives, but I don’t find much about him or the Missile Crisis in my notes. He may have missed much of the excitement, as he did the Korean War, being in Europe at the time, and then the Naval Intelligence schoolhouse tour through the mid-1950s. Then he went to Arlington Hall, and helped move the Navy element to The Fort (Y1/NFOIO). He might have been in Coronado for the showdown over the Russian missiles. I wish I had asked specifically.
Sigh.
– Vic
Running AMOC
(Mac and Ed D. Photo Socotra).
I pushed it. Fridays are like that, I have come to find. I try to take care of myself during the week, wear the brace, so my exercises to loosen the knot above the left knee. I feel better. I wear the stupid brace on the leg to the office, and to those excursions outside, and have devised a means of mounting and dismounting the driver’s seat of the Bluesmobile without stressing out the aching sciatic nerve down deep in my back.
But I seem to push it on Fridays. I have no idea how Mac keeps doing it at the age of 92.
The Advanced Maritime OPINTEL Course (AMOC) was coming to town. They wanted to sit down with Mac and pick his brain on the events of a long-ago war, one that created the discipline of radio intelligence.
Mac has to budget his trips these days, and has good and better days, as we all do. It was easier for the AMOC folks to come here than for him to go there- a mountain and Muhammed thing- and I volunteered to coordinate a private room at Willow as a place to chat.
It meant leaving the office a little early, damn the bad luck, and I slid the police cruiser into a better parking place than I usually get and wriggled my way out of the driver’s seat.
I was hobbling my way up the block to the uni-meter to purchase my time at the curb and saw Old Jim headed down the block. When I had secured my receipt for time at the curb, we made a peg-leg parade back down to Willow’s bar entrance.
“How is your day going,” I asked.
“Better than being a North Korean rocket scientist,” he said with a grimace.
“Or a Secret Service agent with the President,” I said. “Did you hear about the detail getting sent home from Colombia?”
“Interesting that things have changed so much since JFK’s time,” he growled. “But of course public morals are just for show.”
We set up camp at the Amen Corner to wait for the AMOC delegation to show up, and I removed the straps from the leg brace and hung it from one of the hooks under the bar. We placed our canes on opposite sides of the corner. I sighed.
“Just a couple gimps,” I said. “Pathetic.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Jim. “At least I came by mine honorably.”
“No misconduct on mine,” I said. “I have been damaging that knee for years.”
Jasper produced a fine crisp glass of Hay-Burner white and I carried it over to the long table in the nook by the front window as Ed D and three gentlemen appeared from the back door. We got arranged in our seats around the dazzling white tablecloth and neatly-folded napkins as Mac himself arrived via the main entrance to the bar.
“I drove,” he said. “I wondered about walking, since it is a nice day, but decided to take the Jaguar over.”
(The Dean and two Chiefs. Photo Socotra).
Ed introduced the AMOC students, two Chiefs and a retired Dean of the Old Dominion University. They were loaded for bear- they copies of the book we did to commemorate all the sessions at Willow, the unofficial history of the Pacific War, and then some serious works of history. The Dean had an ominously thick tome called “Shattered Sword,” which is one of those revisionist histories, I gathered.
“Many consider the Battle of Midway to have turned the tide of the Pacific War,” said the Dean gesturing at the thick volume with the famous picture of the SBD Dauntless dive-bomber wheeling majestically over the sharply turning wakes of the IJN carriers far below. “Parshall and Tulley have uncovered some original source documents in Japan that turn the narrative around. It is the first time since Gordon W. Prange’s Miracle at Midway that there has been a critical look at the battle.”
“Well,” said Mac, “I was there and don’t need any critical new interpretations.” Since he is about the last one alive who remembers exactly what happened, and who did it, we launched into an animated and detailed discussion of the decoded operations order that FRUMEL (Fleet Radio Unit- Melbourne) and Station HYPO in Pearl put together to reveal the details of Admiral Yamamoto’s great scheme. That line of inquiry lead, in no particular order, to why no copy of that message survived the war, and Joe Rochefort’s calm reaction to the news of the battle’s outcome, and whether Fleet Admiral Nimitz had worked in his parent’s bar at the hotel they owned in Fredericksburg, Texas, and then the complex prickly relationship between Douglas MacArthur and the Nimitz Staff.
“Don’t say anything negative about MacArthur,” I said. “That is how Mac and I met. I was writing something about Doug-out Doug years ago and he said we were not supposed to do that.”
Mac nodded. “Never respond to anything vitriolic that came out of the South West Pacific Theateer,” he said. “The Admiral was very firm about that.”
“So,” I said, taking a sip of wine “I started out in trouble and stayed there.” Then I told them about visiting MacArthur’s office in the Dai Ichi Insurance Company Building that the General had appropriated as the General Headquarters Building of the Occupation. “The little Japanese guide who showed it to me said they only use it once a year,” I said. “I have no idea what for.”
We agreed that was a curiosity, and I had another glass of wine, possibly two, as a couple of Kate Janen’s signature flatbread pizzas arrived. I pointed out that Jasper was a native of Guam, which made him and Mac the representatives of the territory where America’s Day begins, and we talked about the assassination of Admiral Yamamoto.
“What was the response of Chester Nimitz when his intelligence officer Eddie Layton told him they had decrypted the itinerary of the inspection visit to the South Pacific and might be able to intercept the Japanese aircraft” asked the Dean.
Mac pursed his lips. “Nimitz asked what it would mean, and Eddie said it would be the same as the Japs killing him. Nimtiz replied: “Kill the son of a bitch.””
The AMOC was interested in the what-ifs of fate. The Dean said, “Like imagine if George H.W. Bush had not been rescued by the submarine after he was shot down, and had been executed by the Japanese on Chichi Jima. Eight of the aircrew shot down there were captured by Japanese troops and executed. That would have taken out two future Presidents of the United States- Bush and his son.”
Mac snorted. “I don’t do what ifs. History is what it is, and we need to remember what happened, not what might have happened.”
My phone went off, and it was Ensign Socotra. He wondered if I might be at Willow, and I said I was there with the AMOC and Mac, and that there was a cold beer in it for him if he cared to come by. “I am in khakis,” he said. “Is that OK?”
“Best thing the Navy did was make it a liberty uniform,” I said. “See you when you get here.”
The Chiefs were continuing to ask questions- Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor was the subject of one line of questions, and Mac explained how his good friend had transitioned from Crytpology to Intelligence as a way to make flag rank, and was the first Restricted Line officer to make three stars. They were on top of their game, and had read everything in preparation for the session.
“It is a different Navy than the one I knew,” I commented. Both Chiefs had college degrees, and were better prepared than most of the junior officers of my day, when the Goat Locker was populated by colorful rogues and liberty risks. I said as much, and they nodded. We talked about the fact that the modern service was becoming a bit of a hot-house, with those who serve often having connections with fathers and grandfathers.
When Ensign Socotra arrived the talk had turned to how far it was back to Norfolk, and that the AMOC was going to throw in the towel. Mac thanked them for their interest, and they thanked him for being a National Treasure.
Mac and the Ensign huddled over at the bar after the AMOC departed. I was very glad I was not driving to Virginia Beach, and settled in at the Amen Corner. I looked down the bar, one generation earnestly talking to another. I decided I could not have been prouder, and said so to Old Jim and Jon-no-H and the lovely Mary.
“You lucked out, you son of a bitch,” growled Jim. “Now all you have to do is not fall down on the way home.”
I nodded, and defensively reached for the leg brace where it hung under the bar. “I can always fall down when I get there,” I said.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com