This being the eve of the nation’s birthday, some of the usual suspects have been talking about the foibles of cruises-past, when we were in the best Fleet in the world.
I got to USS Midway (CV-41) in 1978, and I learned my trade at the knee of the Magnificent Vinnie and CVIC Asst. Rich Gragg and Larry Jensen, the CVW-5 CAG AI. Larry died several years ago, but what a riot we had!
And who could forget Fast Eddie Chow and Steve Oka and Dean Whetstine and Frank Oxsen, who identified Soviet preps to invade Aghanistan from the cable traffic?
The BOHICA (“Bend over, here it comes again”) spirit of Ma Midway gave me a completely erroneous impression of what the Navy was about, but I suffered from lack of imagination and didn’t get out, even if the best tour turned out to be the first one.
NIPS (Naval Intelligence Processing System) never worked and we had the SAO (Special Access Only) packages to plan things like DESERT ONE/Eagle Claw, which was quite a rush. I rotated a little before that went down to disaster. The Fleet Imagery Support Terminal (FIST) worked on the Admiral’s privacy circuit and if he wasn’t using it at night it may have been possible to get an image or two.
Then Challenge Athena- satellite communications and data- changed everything at sea. We could watch real television!
When I got to USS Coronado (AGF-11), they still had a FIST (Fleet Imagery Support terminal) onboard. I told them to throw it over the side.
But in looking for something else, I came across an old document, probably dating to 1980 or so. It was written on the flimsy sheet that used to back carbon copy paper. What a rush of memory! I include it here, for what it is worth:
“Anyhow, after doing an interminable set of pushups in the damp dishtowel of the Florida Redneck Riviera sun, I found myself commissioned as a Naval Officer, Special Duty Intelligence. Hard to believe. Harder to believe that the crisply-pressed Marine Demon who had persecuted me each waking moment was at rigid attention saluting me. I shook my head and went West, to learn the Mysteries.
In a dim little room on a dim little air force base the Lieutenant motioned for silence. “The envelopes, Please” he said with a Pepsodent gleam. “And the winner is…..” he paused dramatically. “Ensign Socotra! That’s right! Your life, as you know it, is over! You are going to the Midway!”
Holy shit. I had requested the most challenging duty available. I had asked for anything that would put me up against the Great Interface of peace and not-peace. What I got was the great gray Winnebago, the mobile home of 4700 of my intimate friends, and assignment to the red-hottest bunch of Fighter Outlaws in all the Pacific. I humbly extended my moistened paw and took the orders.
A mystery addendum to those papers consigned me to the horrors of the Warner Springs POW camp, to a week of no food followed by a week of intensive questioning by people who were Really There.
“Do these guys know something I don’t?” I asked myself while hunched over in a tiny isolation box. What did it all mean? Why were they pounding me nearly senseless? Was it an effort to teach me I was no John Wayne? Hell, I could have agreed with them in the first five minutes and saved the taxpayers a bunch of dough. But it had to played out to the end, and the end was the ramp of a Flying Tigers contract jet, which debouched me on the tarmac of Yokota AB, shrouded in the perpetual smog of the Kanto Plain.
Shortly thereafter I was to learn the complete meaning of the word terror. It is sitting backwards on a two-engine prop plane, headed to certain destruction on the flight deck of an Aircraft Carrier underway. I couldn’t see anything. I was suddenly aware that what I had wanted all along was another Stroh’s beer instead of walking into the recruiting station back in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But it was too late. The airplane lurched suddenly, my guts moved up and the Commander seated beside me blew his lunch. I suddenly felt better. After all, I wasn’t puking yet…….Bang! the wheels hit and 120 knots of kinetic energy was violently absorbed by the massive steel arresting wire and the mysterious capstans beneath the deck.
Somebody fold my wings, I prayed, and roll me away.
And there it really began. Turning 27 in a foreign land. Casually munching sushi in Tokyo. Strolling the dewy streets of Nairobi. Dodging the Military Police in Seoul, minutes before the curfew. Pulling the Vauxhall to the side of the road in Perth. “Is that what you call a dead kangaroo?” Drooling at the thought of a real live bar in Oman, only a hundred miles away. Watching the trash bags float gaily off the starboard sponson aft, into the blood red sunset off the coast of Iran. Coolly attempting to sample the fleshly delights of all Southeast Asia from my hotel in Bangkok. Damn, now where am I going to find a Laotian at this hour?
Been there, By God, all they have to do is let me go.
Now where was I? I do have a tendency to wander these days. Most recently I am still suffering from a mild case of near-combat fatigue after our epic 93 days in the Gulf, itching to send waves of airplanes over the beach to Tehran. I finished my first book out there, and worked hard on number two. Time? Plenty of time. All you have to do is not sleep. That would be out of the question, anyway too much industrial Navy coffee and cigarettes in the blood. And the amphetamine dream just rolled on, day after day, message after message piled up in foot-high stacks: “The PLO says that…..unconfirmed sources claim…..a usually reliable high military official says the situation is going to shit…..CIA analysts predict……” And the puzzle of Afghanistan began to emerge on our boards. “Yep, Looks like this week. Wonder if this is the Big One?
“Could be. Care for another cup of coffee or seven?”
Then, “Tito is dying. They are definitely mobilizing troops in Eastern Europe. In my opinion, war has never been so much a possibility as right now…..”
Suddenly, “Oh, yeah?” he replied wittily. “Wonder if I have a chance of getting a letter out of here…”
I have never felt so alive as when we were on the edge of the Abyss, looking down and throwing rocks to listen to the sound as they rattled down and down into the depths where no man can see. Thanks God our leaders are both corrupt and incompetent. Any other mixture might have provoked us into doing something rash. Like the right thing, maybe.
I looked up the other day. The ship was back in port. (Land? I thought that was a verb?) The Japanese workmen swarmed over the old haze-gray lady, sandblasting everything that didn’t move. Painting and reapplying the noxious smelling non-skid to the deck, hammering and chipping, removing the scars of five months continuously underway. Someone handed me a set of orders. I should have known better, but I reached out and took them anyway.
“Congratulations” the letter read. “You are now an Indications and Warning Team Leader for the Joint Staff, United States Forces Korea.”
Korea, I mused. That is where they have coups and crazies. Cheap prices on tennis shoes. This could be just what the Doctor ordered to get my nerves back in shape. After all, the NoKoreans are miles away from my new home. Heck, the tunnel entrances must be cross-town at least. Why sure! I like it out here!
Copyright 1980 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com