Shipmates and Gentle Readers, this is a guest post from the Master Chief to complete the action after the end of the American War in Southeast Asia:

The last helos were on board and Midway Magic headed south to return the Air Force Jolly Greens the base at Utapao and finally get some liberty for the crew, which was cut short when we left to take our station off of Vietnam.

You may be thinking that Air Wing FIVE, left behind in the Philippines, was having a great time drinking San Miguel beer and hanging out on Magsaysay Boulevard with the working girls. Not so. In the middle of Subic Bay the Navy maintained a recreational area on Grande Island.   It was a great place for snorkeling and putt-putt golf, healthy activities away from the fleshpots of Olongapo City.  The island soon became a refugee camp for the Vietnamese fleeing by boats.  Air Wing Sailors left behind were put to work feeding and caring for what became a small Vietnamese town.

(The Subic Bay Naval Complex. Grande Island to center left, the runways of NAS Cubi Point to the right.)

Midway arrived off the coast of Thailand and was given a new assignment.

Anyone that possessed the keys to an airplane in Vietnam flew that last day to freedom.  We were given the job of hauling RVN Air Force F-5 fighters and A-37 light attack planes that had landed in Thailand to someplace ‘to be determined.’

The planes were carried to Midway-Maru by CH-53 Sea Stallions using a cargo sling, and dropped on the flight deck with Air America and Vietnamese helos. At least one jet slipped from the sling and ended up in the drink.

Leaving Thailand, we headed toward the Philiipines, but learned there would be an issue with the importation of the warplanes there and instead, we were directed to steam further east for Guam. During this transit we crossed several time zones and rather than maintaining one local time, “Midway time,” we adjusted our clocks forward and back to meet the actual time of the zone we were sailing.

To ensure the Navy got a good day’s work out of the Ship’s company, the clocks would be advanced at noon extending the work day an hour and if we lost an hour it was changed at midnight cutting sleep time by an hour!

When we arrived in Guam we were told only Sailors with family on the island would be granted liberty. One weather-guesser convinced his boss his brother was a missionary on the island.  Steve was really a hardy steamer and was in dire need of a beer.

As the cranes started moving the planes from the flight deck to barges for the ride ashore every young lady put on her bikini and jumped in the family boat to make circles around the big aircraft carriers that rarely called at Agana. All we could do was fight over the “big eye” binoculars on the signal bridge to see what we were missing. I think you know what we said.

It took just over a day to offload the now-surplus warplanes and we finally pointed the ship west and headed back to the Philippines with the associated clock changes and the thoughts of cool San Miguels lagers to come.  It was a tradition on Midway to have steak and lobster for dinner the night before arriving in port. After a great dinner, all we could do was dream about liberty in the PI.  But Midway Magic was ready to sprinkle some fairy dust (also known a BOHICA) and our plans changed.

On May 12, the U.S.-flagged merchant ship SS Mayaguez was steaming near Cambodia when it was boarded and seized by pirates. The ship was taken to Khao Tang Island, about fifty clicks off the coast of Preah Sihanouk Province in the Gulf of Thailand.

Two days later the Ford Administration directed a rescue mission be launched to rescue the crew. Midway was secured and readied for sea. Marines landed on the island to rescue the crew and encountered heavy fire.  The rescue effort resulted in the loss of 15 Marines, Sailors and Airmen KIA with an additional 23 Airmen killed when their helo crashed.

Midway received orders to skip our in-port period and steam to a point between the Philippines and Thailand to act as refueling lily pad for aircraft flying to the USS Coral Sea, which had been ordered to the scene.

(US Flag is raised on SS Mayaguez by Marines. US Navy Photo.)

The Mayaguez Rescue was over and Midway finally headed to Subic Bay.  As tradition we had a second steak and lobster dinner and made ready for liberty.  As colors were shifted—the U.S. ensign is moved from the main mast to the stern and the Navy Jack is raised on the bow when in port—the brows settled on the pier and a couple of pickup trucks arrived at the aft brow used by the enlisted Sailors.

When we went down the brow we were met by our skipper, CAPT L. C. Chambers, who gave us our choice of a couple of beers or sodas.  Mission Complete.

Over the last 33 years I have often wondered about the Vietnamese and others that were rescued that day.  When I meet Vietnamese people today I often ask when they came to America and often the answer is: April 1975.

Some, of course, followed in the infamous escape of the boat people in the 70s and 80s.  When I asked a Lt Commander I served with in Texas when he came to America he went to his office and showed me a framed copy of Life magazine and pointed out his family crowded on the deck of a junk.

In January I had some neck bones fused in a local hospital.  The anesthesiologist came in before the surgery and I asked her when she or her family came to the States and she told me they were on one of the last flights out of Tan Son Nhut.

She did a great job on my surgery and I was glad she was in America.

The O-1 Birddog “Miracle Plane” now hangs on display at the U.S. National Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola. A similar model is on display aboard the San Diego USS Midway Museum, which hosted a reunion of Vietnamese refugees in 2005.  The reunion included the pilot that landed the Birddog on the flight deck so long ago along with his entire family.  There is a photograph of him in his traditional garb surrounded by the generations of children and grandchildren who are in America because the Midway was at the right place in the sea.

(Major Bung Ly is interviewed after he landed the “Bird Dog” aboard the USS Midway in April 1975. Ly flew his wife and five children to safety to escape Northern Vietnam troops encroaching on Saigon. Photo Courtesy Midway Museum.)

Copyright 2012
www.vicsocotra.com

The First Day of the Rest of My Life started yesterday. I got done with the morning rant- why aren’t those bankers and financiers in jail?- and looked up at the clock. I realized I had 31 minutes to be in a place I had never been before.

Crap. Double crap.

Every movement takes extra time, and my internal Washington Commuter Clock just doesn’t work properly to incorporate the brace and the tentative steps. Attempting to “hurry” takes on a certain air of the surreal, but after tottering down the hall to the elevator I got to the lobby, greeting Rhonda the Chief Concierge and Leo the Engineer, as I hobbled with earnest intent across the marble and out the front door.

Then I was in the Bluesmobile and headed west. After some interminable traffic lights on Route 50 and one wrong turn, I found the office complex whose address I had scrawled on a piece of scrap paper.

This would have been easier, of course, by punching the address into the Crackberry navigator app, but of course the Company had zeroed my device in a security update, and nothing worked. Crap.

I did blunder across the building almost by chance, and found a parking slot almost large enough for the massive Ford was filling out insurance paperwork in the office upstairs with a minute and thirty seconds to spare.

I am getting too old for this getting old business, I thought.

The office was an alcove off a large sunny room with various devices of torture and a middle-aged man who was walking slowly around an obstacle course of small orange cones.

I was handed a sheaf of papers to fill out and riffled through them. Once the physical therapy people were confident that they could bill me, I was turned over to a curvaceous young woman named Christina.

She had long blonde hair, a statuesque bodice and a diamond on her left hand. She summoned me to a work station next to a massage table in the middle of the room and changed my life.

No kidding. Up until the moment I took the brace off, I was an invalid and afraid of falling like a codger. Christina changed all that. She took me in hand (or foot as the case may be) and put me through my paces. It was quite extraordinary- I left the house an invalid, and within ten minutes at rehab I was being challenged to be healthy again.  It was almost too much to absorb, like the earth had lurched. I totally had to recalibrate the person I had become and imagine a new one.

Forty-five minutes later I was bathed in a sheen of sweat. Christina printed out two pages of diagrams for the exercises I am supposed to go twice daily. There are twelve exercises to strengthen the knee and leg structures and set up a two-a-week office schedule with the admonition to do the exercises morning and night.

I was amazed at what I could do without the brace, but I had to remember that it was the fear that needed to go first. “Don’t push it too hard,” she said. “But push it.”

I got a real adrenaline rush out of the session, one that carried me through a business lunch and back to the computer at home. There, the adrenaline leaked out and I started to get back spasms, intermittent dizzy spells, a series of mini-panic attacks and gnawing pain that radiated from knee to the small of my back.

I gave up around five, I thought some Motrin might be good, then said, “Screw it,” and found the plastic prescription bottle of Percocet, happy that I quit taking them after the operation and still had a stash left. I took one, mixed a drink and got in bed. In a half hour everything was fine. I am glad I didn’t finish them weeks ago.

This is going to be interesting, and one thing for sure is that it is going to be different.

Sorry this is disjointed- they are going to power wash the garage and I have to move the Mercedes and think about how I am going to look like I am working today. Still amazed. What a difference a day makes.

Jeeze, Louise. Now the work starts.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

I am off to therapy in a little while and have to get cleaned up and be presentable. I am very interested to see how this will go. The incision looks pretty good this morning, I am walking a little better and don’t feel like I need the crutches or the cane. Very liberating.

The problem I am encountering is with the morning story. I need to write each day, and so long as I am shackled to the day job (even as tenuously as this approach to it is) this is the only time available to be free-wheeling. The politics of the moment, though, the astonishing mendacity of the whole process, is getting me down.

I have several correspondents who are fairly doctrinaire right wing. As you know, I am a national security and fiscal hawk, and a social progressive. You can pretty much go right down the list- same-sex marriage, end the war on drugs, choice for women, blah blah blah, and I am there on the side of personal liberty. And having a gun in the bedside table.

I know that puts me halfway to Ron Paul territory, but so be it.

What is actually going on would be mildly amusing if there wasn’t something fundamentally wrong with what is going on. It isn’t the politics that is driving me crazy. The finance mess is what makes it all personal.

For almost my whole life I have been a check-to-check kind of guy. Meeting my obligations, barely, through my military career, and tucking a little aside when I could, only to see it all blow away in the wind with the divorce, with two kids in college.

I get it. Life is about choices. I made mine and I paid for them. Fair deal.

The current small windfall from the estate offered the opportunity to try to fix some  structural problems with the real estate end of things as stumble- literally- toward retirement.

To that end, I have been trying to fix my two mortgages and take advantage of the Fed’s current historic low rates. You would think this would be fairly straightforward. I have had five basic mortgages at various times, and refinanced most of them, or taken equity loans against all them. All have been paid ahead of schedule, no missed payments, and never ever late.

I have been inundated with offers to re-fi my VA loan- I just got another one on the phone as I was typing. This appears to be the one lucrative aspect of lending these days, and there is relatively little required in the way of documentation. I got 100% financing on the farm- a good deal, even if I did not quite hit the bottom of the market, and I have had to keep throwing money at principal to keep it above water. The wrinkle was that it had to be my primary residence to qualify for the VA, and you have to have it that way for a minimum of two years.

The Condo then became a second residence, and it was really frustrating. I tried to re-fi the place at least twice, paying cash up front for appraisals that came back somewhere between irritating and depressing.

I actually managed to do so just after the magic two year ownership of the farm. I swapped the “primary residence” stipulation from Culpeper to Arlington and retired the crushing 6.1% interest rate that (with condo fee) resulted in paying around $3,000 a month for the little place.

It was crushing because the original purchase price was set near the top of the bubble. Those sorry criminal screw-ups in Congress, Fannie Mae and on Wall Street lined their pockets as the bubble swelled to bursting, and then re-lined them in the collapse while cynically eliminating their competition and elevating an admitted tax dodger from being Chair of the New York Fed to Secretary of the Treasury.

Not one of those son of a bitches have seen the inside of a jail cell, by the way. Increasingly, it looks like none of them ever will.

It doesn’t look so good over on this side of the fence. The collapse of the bubble has left an astonishing amount of personal wreckage. For a while there, I thought I would never be able to afford to buy  a home again. I jumped at the chance to pay $375K for the condo, and then watched in horror as the 80% loan began to sink me underwater as the appraised price sank from the purchase, headed south below the loan amount, and finally last December to $288K. That was, I noted ruefully, a theft of 100% of the imaginary equity, but then of $65K cash out of my wallet. Not theoretical. Real no-shit money.

Oh well, what is a hundred grand between friends like me and Secretary Geithner? It was unpleasant, but I managed to get the condo thing under control, and then turn my attention back to the farm.

Now, of course the banks are now very picky about borrowers, and I suppose that is only fair, though it is disconcerting to see the astonishing amount of paperwork required to demonstrate that I can afford to pay much less per month on a loan in good standing.

I also had to come up with a big chunk of cash to pay down the outstanding balance to show an 80%-loan-to-balance ratio. I am OK with that, but I have provided something north of two hundred pages of documentation to show I can pay less per month. It boggles the mind.

My harried loan officer came back to me daily with demands for additional material: cancelled checks, bank statements, tax returns, trust documents and attestations of good intent. Oh well. The farm is a nice thing and it is worth it. You make your choices, and then meet your obligations, right?

In the meantime, the latest round of Fed rate reductions made re-financing the condo again make sense on a cost-benefit basis.

So I went ahead on two packages of two-hundred plus pages. Mind numbing. Intrusive. Insulting. The latest development yesterday was the delivery of the latest appraisal on the condo: the one in December 2011 was not current enough, so another was ordered and I paid for it.

Some asshole showed up the morning of the power outage to perform it- he may have been cranky, or something, but he was definitely an asshole. He rated the place at $255K, down $28K from the appraisal of last December.

I feel sorry for my loan officer. He is a harried commercial functionary being run ragged by the underwriters at Fannie Mae. Those are the people whose absurd Barnie Frank Loan policies got us in this mess to begin with. He said they could re-finance if I brought around $30 grand to re-fi the condo, and twice that to do the farm.

That is why this is personal. These pricks stole a hundred grand already from me just as if they produced a handgun or tunneled into my bank account in the dead of night. Now they want another hundred.

Personal? You bet. But this is robbery.

It is personal.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Sorry, I have been up since two-thirty or so. I chose not to try to go back to sleep- my cycle of somnolence has been so screwed up with the amount of time I have spent flat on my back lately- and plowed through Town Hall and the same beloved NY Times before turning to finish the first book in Wyoming author C.J. Box’s series of mystery novels set in the Big Horn Mountains.

Box is pretty good- “Open Season” turns on the diabolic activities of pipeline concerns and the endangered (thought to be extinct) Miller’s Weasel and three murders and a couple mailings. There was a teaser chapter at the end for the beginning to “Savage Run,” which starts out with the homicidal ambush of an eco-terrorist with an exploding cow.

I gave it a try and now it is dawn, and a Monday dawn at that.

I fully intended to start the first of the Donna Leon Commissario Brunetti novels, the ones set in sinking Venice. I and had purchase a couple to go on the ubiquitous iPad that has accompanied me to bed for the last two months. My pal Jerry highly recommends them, and that was the plan, but it did not survive the first encounter with the exploding Holstein. I mean, how can you not get hooked on that?

Anyway, I know I am going to be a mess later. Regular sleep is one of those imperatives for mental hygiene. You could see it at sea, which was a regular laboratory for sleep deprived senior officers: no wonder the Flags and the Captains were all crazy. They didn’t sleep, sometimes for virtually a whole line period. Ordinary solid guys became raving maniacs- and shipboard life is too close for that to be pleasant.

I remember during the Gulf War having the same sort of feelings. I had come from Air Wing SIX to the Pentagon to work for Mikey in the J2. It was a tense time before DESERT SHIELD transitioned to the Air Campaign and then major ground combat.

During the annoying period before hostilities, there had been a report that Saddam had called his ambassadors home for consultations. We assumed there would be something awful coming back in their diplomatic pouches- maybe for our water supplies in New York, and London and Paris. We got very nervous about how vulnerable our buildings were, and that was the genesis of the full-blown paranoia we have now, focused through the lens of 9/11. I think I liked things back before we took leave of our senses, but that scarsely seems relevant to anything in particular now.

Later, after the shooting started, I worked with a very large Army Major in the Joint Intelligence Center. Rick was his name, and he must have been six-foot-four and well over two hundred pounds. Imposing guy. He had the unfortunate career distinction of having actually operated a U.S. mobile battlefield missile. Accordingly, the organization bestowed on him the preternatural ability to divine the thoughts of his opposite numbers in the Western Desert,. They gave him the job of trying to figure out what the Iraqis were doing with their SCUD missiles. He was under incredible stress, not sleeping much, and essentially a one-man show. The questions were essentially impossible to answer.

“Where are they hiding those things?” asked the policy makers.

“Are they going to use chemical warheads?” asked Mikey.

“What is the next target?” asked the J3.

This had been going on for some indeterminate number of endless days of the air campaign. I was bustling from one desk to another under the dim florescent lights in the Mezzanine Basement of the Pentagon. This was before the big rehabilitation and the plumbing would fail upstairs and things got disgusting with alarming regularity.

Rick suddenly stood from his desk and grabbed me by the arm. He leaned down to look in my eyes, close to my face, and said: “I have it figured out.” I thought it was something about hide-sites or pre-surveyed launch points that enabled the Iraqis to fire quickly and not be detected by the airplanes we had orbiting over the area. It wasn’t. It was about something much more primal.

“So when the thousand years are over,” he said. “Satan will be released from his prison and will deceive all the nations in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, and mobilize them for war. You got it? It’s the Gulf thing. And then it goes: Satan’s armies will be as many as the sands of the sea; they will come swarming over the entire country and besiege the camp of the saints, which is the city that God loves. That’s Jerusalem, see- that is what this is about. And it goes on to say that fire will come down on them from heaven and consume them. That’s the Jews, and Saddam is the devil, who misled them, will be thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are, and their torture will not stop, day or night, forever and ever.” He relaxed his grip on my arm. “And that explains the burning lake. This burning lake is the second death; and anybody whose name could not be found written in the book of life was thrown into the burning lake. That is the burning oil on the Persian Gulf.”

When he wound down a little he seemed OK. “Thanks, Rick,” I said carefully. “I appreciate the insight. Explains a lot.”

I got away as quickly as politeness could justify. I didn’t want to catch what he had, and it looked like something worse than the flu. I found out later the passages were from Revelations 20:7 and 20:10. Stress and fatigue can do funny things to you. Rick got through the SCUD firings, and he got some sleep and he was fine. The question is sleep, though, and the size of the nightmares that await you when you get there.

I am not expecting any nightmares from this weird sleep cycle, but it does occur to me that with the Russians escorting more weapons to Syria, and the Iranians vowing to support Assad against all comers, and maybe shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and deploy their own nukes, well.

Shoot. I am glad I am old and retired now. Maybe everyone ought to just take a nice nap. It might cool things off a bit.

What do you say?

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Air Vice Marshall Ky arrives on USS Midway (CV-41) during the evacuation of Saigon. His lavender jumpsuit and white silk scarf are impeccable. Official US Navy photo.)

This is a recollection from a shipmate and Midway Sailor who was in the middle of the craziness that went with the end of the war in Vietnam. I am going to try to be comprehensive. My pal the Argonaut knows a woman who escaped from Vietnam that week with her parents- and I hope to get her side of the story. Dave’s words today stand exactly as he wrote them. We will circle back on Midway, and the role and function of the Mission Planning Spaces on the ancient mariner- but for now, come back to 1975 with Master Chief Dave.

Remember: I could be writing about politics, and then we would all be sick before lunch.

Let’s go back to the end of the American adventure in Viet Nam:

“The cruise started like any on Midway Magic.  The routine was Christmas in-port Yokosuka then head south to warm water and sun.  Once at sea and Carrier Air Wing 5 brought aboard from the air field at Atsugi we began to steam south, slowing doing doughnuts in the sea while the aircrews did refresher and carrier quals; touch-and-goes making noise to those of us working directly below the wire in CVIC.

News reports were the best source of intel as we steamed south.  The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was on the move in violation of the terms of the Paris Peace Accords, which prohibited the introduction of additional troops into the country.  The Republic of Viet Nam’s Army (ARVN) was disintegrating, soldiers were leaving to find their families and to try and find a way out.  The proud base at DaNang, once a major center of activity for U.S. Naval Forces-Vietnam and Marine Corps fell to the NVA. Overloaded South Vietnamese Navy and civilian junks moving refugees further south.

In addition to the situation in Viet Nam a parallel war was going on in Cambodia.  Midway changed course and we headed to Okinawa where a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) was flown aboard for a quick run south.  Japanese news outlets overflew Midway in rented aircraft and reported that we were heading to South East Asia.  As we approached the area of operation, the Marines flew off and Handjob-  USS Hancock (CVA-19)-  became a helicopter carrier.

Midway took a position off of Vietnam with orders to stand ready to supply air support in the event that the evacuation of Phnom Pen turned ugly, and the pragmatic Thais refused the U.S.A.F. use of its airfields to launch the evacuation.

Midway steamed off the coast while the evacuation went off without the need for air support.  We turned east and headed for a liberty call in Subic Bay.  As normal, the majority of the air wing flew off to Cubi Point to spend the ten-day in-port period.  On the third morning at pierside, my Leading Chief Pete asked if I needed to do anything ashore.

(Looking out the Main Gate of NavSta Subic. The famous Marmont Hotel is to the right. Pre-paved Magsaysay Boulevard beckons. Photo Dennis Clevenger.)

I took it as an offer of a “rope-yarn day”—a day off to run errands, catch up on sleep etc.  Instead, this was an “if you have laundry ashore, go get it and get back here we are going to sea.”  Consequently, there was a mad dash to the front gates though the MPs and SPs were only letting those with letters stating they were on the search for shipmates on or at liberty were allowed out the gates.

We left Subic with a number of Sailors holed up in barrios around the countryside and as we went to sea the remainder of the air wing flew ashore leaving us with just a few F-4s to sit on the catapult for emergency combat air patrol.  The air wing stayed behind in Cubi as the Midway steam towards Thailand to pick up a squadron of U.S.A.F CH-53 helos. Midway also became a helicopter carrier.

After the fly-on of the squadron off of Utapao, Thailand, the aircrews met in CVIC’s mission planning space to get briefed on life aboard Midway Magic.  One of the zoomies had scoped out the weight room located near the foc’scle, though he announced the location pronouncing it is correctly spelled: “fore-castle.”  Smirks emerged on the faces the squadron AIs and the Sailors listening to the brief in the back of the compartment.

We steamed around the South China Sea taking up station on what was called “Dixie Station” in contrast to the more common historical name for the northern op area for strikes against the North: Yankee Station.  As planning continued, the NVA continued moving south with cities falling without much of a fight and refugees clogging the highways and anything that could float putting out to sea.

Soon, Navy ships began taking on passengers from the overcrowded boats and flights from Tan Son Nhut Air Base began Operation Baby Lift: moving orphans and Amer-asian children to safety.

In CVIC, we were helping the Air Force pilots prepare charts for the mission and maintain map boards showing the NVA advances.  A message arrived announcing that UNODIR the airbase would be closed between 0000-0400 for runway maintenance.

A young AI went to the boss- the CAG AI, LCDR Jim- and asked him if he knew where UNODIR was located, next they were at my desk asking me to look it up I handed them a gazetteer and off they went back to Mission Planning to find the air base.  About an hour later LCDR Jim went back and told them UNODIR was the acronym for “unless otherwise directed” and since the message was from Cubi it meant Cubi would be closed.  We had a good laugh at the butter bars.

Planning went on. An issue with flying U.S.A.F. helos off of an aircraft carrier is that the Air Force usually operates with plenty of room and doesn’t go to the expense of installing foldable rotors on its birds.  This meant that they would be used to fly in and out of Saigon and Navy birds would move the refugees to the smaller-deck ships.

On the Midway, pneumatic air tubes were used to send “bunnies” containing flash and immediate precedence messages from the comm center to other parts of the ship.  The tube connecting Main Comm to CVIC passed thru one of the squadron skipper’s stateroom.  So, every night as the bunny ran thru the tube the skipper was in his robe heading to CVIC to see if the order had been given to launch.

NVA units on the outskirts of the city launched an attack on Tan Son Nhut Air Base, hitting the Defense Attaché Compound and damaging the runway. The fixed wing rescue operation was over.

After sitting off the coast near Vung Tau and watching the fireworks exploding ashore, the order was finally given to execute the evacuation of Saigon by helo.  The first thing was for Marines to land and supplement the Embassy MARDET Security Guards. Then the Air Force Jolly Greens started their flights, going feet wet over possibly hostile territory.  It was unknown if the NVA had shoulder fired SAMS (surface to air missiles) and if so, would they fire on the rescue missions?

As the first helos approached, the cadre of ship’s company personnel were on the flight deck poised to receive the refugees.   At the embassy compound in Saigon, weapons were taken from the refugees and thrown in the swimming pool, but upon arrival on the ship part of the processing was another search. Needless to say, a large number of weapons were confiscated.

(Iconic image of the Roof of the US Embassy, seen from the Caravel Hotel. Photo photo: Neal Ulevich/AP)

Along with the arrival of the Jollys an armada of RVN Air Force helos appeared: CH-47 Chinooks and UH-1 Hueys, mostly, along with the infamous Air America silver-and-blue UH-1s.  Many of the South Vietnamese pilots panicked and ditched the planes in the sea near a Navy ship hoping to be picked up.

Several officers who had ground time in Viet Nam (including LCDR Jim) tried to sort out the military and civilian refugees to identify those that had knowledge of the whereabouts of other Americans.   The squadrons AIs spent their time debriefing the aircrews regarding possible hostile forces, AAA guns or SAMs.  And enlisted Intelligence Specialists tried to keep track of everything on the charts in mission planning.  Today, CNN and the Internet broadcast what is happening in conflicts on the ground in real time. Then, we monitored the wire service teletypes to get the latest AP and UPI scoop from the ground.

The Miracle Plane came in during the afternoon. At first, it was thought that it might be a kamikaze aircraft heading out to attack the fleet.  A few RVN AF fighters had attacked the Presidential Palace.  The Miracle Plane turned out to be an O-1 Birddog FAC bird with a Vietnamese major, his wife and five kids.  He circled Midway and one of flight deck crewmen notice he was throwing something out of the window.  The miracle was that a paper page hit the windswept deck containing a scribbled note asking the deck to be cleared so he could land. It took seconds for skipper CAPT L.C. Chambers to order the ramp cleared and the crew pushed a couple of Hueys and a Chinook over the side.   The O-1 made the approach and came to stop in a near perfect landing.

Sometime during the evacuation Vice Air Marshall and former Vice Pres. Ngueyn Ky landed in a nearly new Huey sporting I think a lavender flight suit with a sporty neck scarf.  The refugees continued with a mix of Vietnamese, Americans and other nationals that had been able to secure a seat.

Reporters lined the passageway outside Main Comm trying to get a “class easy” message off the ship with the news of the evacuation.  The backlog started on board as the Navy birds carried fewer passengers than the inbound Air Force Jollys. The hanger deck was used to hold them until they could fly off, and the forward mess deck was opened up to feed the refugees.   Compartments vacated by the air wing who stayed behind in Cubi were opened for those that got to spend a night with us.

As night fell, the evacuation slowed and eventually stopped with the flight deck jammed with a wild assortment of Air Force, Air America and Vietnamese helos.

And of course, the lone O-1 Birddog.  Eventually the Ambassador was ordered to leave and Marines were withdrawn. That was not it, though. As I recall, the last two casualties of the war were two Marines killed at the DAO compound. Their bodies were temporarily left behind, but then recovered.

The newswires signed off and the war was over.   The last of the refugees were moved to the other ships and the task force and the Midway headed south to drop off the Air Force Jollys and head hopefully to grab some liberty!”

Copyright 2012 Master Chief Dave

Next: the trip to Thailand.

(The appendage in Question. Photo Socotra).

The Master Chief sent me a neat account of his participation in Operation Frequent Wind, and I was going to get to it this morning, but I walked around too many mental rosebushes to get it together this morning.

I was up way too early, so there really was no reason not to be better organized, but besterday was sort of a lost in a haze after the excitement of going to Walter Reed. I won’t bore you with the blow-by-blow. The Bethesda campus of the newly-consolidated flagship of the crown jewel of military medicine is not an easy place to get to, being at just about the twelve o’clock position on the Beltway, and me living at about eight pm across the Potomac in Virginia with a couple key choke points in between.

In my usual robust health, it did not matter much. But since becoming a (temporary) cripple, getting there has become a real production number. Right after surgery I had to rely on family and friends to help me get there and be wheeled around. You can only impose so far, and by the third follow-up visit, I had to manage on my own, on crutches, and yesterday, I nearly danced out of the apartment with my cane, thinking, I guess, that the Doc would tell me to cast it aside and go forth and start walking again.

I was wildly optimistic about the outcome, and the early journey served to buoy my mood. Traffic was not bad going there- Fridays are the best commuting days here, and I requested the early appointment for that reason. I got there without event, parked the car in the structure and hobbled over to the American Building, and up to Ortho. There they directed me to Satellite Radiology for x-rays to assess the state of recuperation, and I got the first of several unsettling revelations.

To take the images of the inside workings of my leg, I had to take the brace off and actually put weight on the leg for the first time since surgery.

“Whoa! That feels weird!” I told the technician, and got concerned that I would fall again. Almost made me giddy.

But we got through a series of views of the inner workings of the knee and thigh, and was embarrassed at the security I felt as I put the scaffold around back around the leg. The Tech directed me to head back to Ortho. I held on to the handrail in the corridor, and felt like I had regressed a week.

I got a seat in the waiting area after reporting back. I checked the watch and saw it was still only an hour in the facility- not bad. I barely got the iPad open and could not Tweet meaningless information before they called my name to go wait somewhere else, this time on a gurney in a line of five or six other patients separated by thin curtains that did nothing whatsoever to mute the conversation and diagnosis alongside.

Eventually I was seen by Dr. Hayes, a courtly African American in a long white coat. The only personnel I recognized back in the clinic was a pregnant Corpsman who was very nice, but it meant a nearly complete turn-over in people in the month I had been gone. Continuity of care? Non-existent.

Oh well, you get what you pay for and I was paying nothing.

I removed the brace again to save time for the doctor, and noticed there was a spot of inflammation on the mostly healed incision that had not been there the day before. Two deep spots with scabs- sorry for TMI- but they seemed to be progressing even if the third spot seemed to be erupting.

Doctor Hayes expressed his concern over that, and asked about rehab, and I told him I had an appointment to start next week- the power outage from the Big Storm and start-date of my company insurance plan (01 July) had conspired against a rigorous commencement to that.

He nodded and directed me to report back in another month, and watch the possible infection closely. I nodded in agreement and asked my questions:

“Can I get in the water?” The answer was “Yes,” and my heart soared. But that spot has to heal.

“Stay in the brace until I come back in August?” “Yes.”

He adjusted the dial-a-matic meter on the external knee joint to 65 degrees, a twenty-degree increase in range-of-motion.

“You need to continue the physical therapy,” he said, to which I responded “Yes,” and made a note to reconfirm my appointment for next Tuesday. Then the Doc was done and moved on down the row of gurneys to the next patient. I put the brace on and slung my OD-green sack over my shoulder and grabbed the cane. I tapped my way down the hall to the front desk to make my appointment and try to think about the rest of the day.

This was not quite what I expected, and less than I had hoped, but still good. And swimming and the water beckon. It is just a little mid-course correction.

The walk back to the structure was tiring, and I was glad to climb back in the Bluesmobile. Leaving the campus, I saw that ten o’clock meant something at the America Building. A dozen or more wheelchairs and kids on crutches were headed that way. The injuries ranged from single amputees, to doubles (the most prevalent consequence of being blown up by an IED while seated in a vehicle), to a couple of horrifying triples.

So, Walter Reed was what it was. A good report on a steady recovery entering a new phase that will have some challenges, but nothing like those kids. Nothing. I was embarrassed to be taking up space on the same campus with them.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(The famous Tower at Walter Reed from which the first SECDEF James V. Forrestal leapt to his death. It is said that he thought that Israeli agents were following him. Later disclosures indicated the Secretary was correct. Photo courtesy Historylink 101).

At the beginning of this process of healing, I used to try to remember the exact timing of it. It was early afternoon when I last talked to the Anesthetists gathered around the gurney on which I lay prostrate. Then it was something like five or so when I began to realize I was in some sort of fever dream in post-op, and eventually was wheeled back to the room on the fifth floor of the surgical wing.

So, I advanced the counter the marked my recuperation every day at cocktail hour. It only seemed fair.

I have tried to be a good patient. The pool has been tugging at me since the operation, the sound of children plunging in the water, muted laughter from adults on the pool deck. Now, virtually the whole nasty incision is closed up and covered with pink new flesh, and there are only a couple patches of scab where Papa Doc had to stick his gloved fingers way up under skin and muscle to grab the atrophied tendons and yank them down to re-anchor to the patella.

Depending on how you count- and it is too soon for happy hour today- it is right around fifty days since the operation. I have been hobbling around without crutches and can bend my leg well enough to get it completely inside the shower enclosure and really soak in glorious hot water while seated on my shower seat.

We will see what Papa Doc says this morning. I am optimistic about the possibility that I will be on the pool deck- and in the fresh blue water- soon.

Based on my age and habits, the Doc thought it might be 84 days to recovery, whatever that was. I think I am ahead of that pace, but I will defer to his medical guidance, of course.

But I think this is going to merit a glass of happy hour white at Willow this afternoon.

There have been some amazing events this week, from the revelation of a marriage to a huge contract win and maybe the green light to start walking again. There could be a lot to celebrate.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Perched on the lush coastline of Ocho Rios, Jamaica—this glamorous all-inclusive resort seduces with sweeping water views, a wide sandy beach and its very own namesake island. Discover the delights of snorkeling among the reefs or windsurfing on the waves. Enjoy a game of tennis, a round of golf or a tranquil afternoon on a lounge chair by the sea. The million-dollar kitchen and organic herb gardens serve as inspiration for our award-winning chefs to create the finest farm-to-table cuisine on the island. Or get married. Photo Couples Resorts.) 

Oh, I was going to write another one of those re-tread stories of ancient ships, and the days when men were iron and the boats were wood, but I am going to have to put that aside for a moment. I am sure it will wait, since the ship in question seems not to be in jeopardy like the rest of them, and there is something much more transient that makes my head light and my heart swell.

I had ventured out to physical therapy and a stop at the Apple Store to hand over my old laptop and see if it could be salvaged. The Genius (who is the whiz-kid in the Apple organization that comes up with the names?) who served me was nice enough, and he fiddled with box and announced they would have to keep it.

“Where do you send it?” I asked. “Guondong province?”

“No,” he said. “We do it all right here.”

I surprised, since it did not seem readily apparent that they did anything here. Have you been to one of the Apple stores lately? There are only people in blue shirts and no visible merchandise to sell. There are just little devices perched on sterile Lucite mounts around the periphery of the room with worshippers tapping on them.

Before I could leave, I had to sign a release on the iPad associated with my Genius that said I released them from harm if they accidentally mirrored the contents of my hard drive and sold the contents to Russian or Chinese hackers- I was not sure which, it was in fine print and I couldn’t tell- and then wobbled back to the Bluesmobile in the garage across the plaza.

I thought about stopping at Willow, and then decided to cool my jets and go home. I was puttering in the kitchen. I had about given up on cooking for the last 45 days, but my creative juices are starting to flow again, and there is all that empty space in the reefer that had been filled up with unidentified containers of left-overs, and some frozen items that dated back as far as the first Bush Administration.

Then the phone went off, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it was my older son, from whom I had not heard much since the funeral last month.

He called to announce that he and his bride had eloped last week and been married in a cool romantic ceremony on the lovely of Jamaica. Actually, to avoid any problems with overseas records, they had been previously joined civilly (one man and one woman) here in Virginia.

I told him that was a smart thing, since if he ever winds up running for the Senate, his opponents would doubtless attempt to portray him as being married (and probably been born) in a foreign country.

He nodded gravely, a married man grappling with the myriad of possibilities and new certainties.

I presume this means there will be grandchildren coming along presently.

There is so much at which to marvel this morning. So many impossible things to believe before breakfast. To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.

I heard that somewhere. Seems true.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(VADM Bob Kirksey, Mister Indian Ocean. Official Navy picture.)

I remember an endless line period on the Good Ship Midway a long time ago, when the world was young and I was a sailor. We had been gone from our home port in Yokosuka for an endless time, and had no idea when we would return to the Home Islands.

The Admiral who ran the show- Mr. Indian Ocean, Bob Kirksey, decided we needed a morale boost, since the eternal now of being at sea was starting to feel like the comfort of a wet sandy blanket.  There was no past except the opaque sky, and no future beyond the next no-fly day.

Kirksey was just the sort of leader we needed, and Midway had come to expect over the years in the Far East- or Far West, where we had spent an amazing amount of time out of sight of land. I remembered some low hills that had been Oman on the horizon, but that was months ago. Since the return of the Ayatollah to Iran, the ships over which Kirksey was lord and master included thirty-five unit Seventh Fleet Battle Force in the Indian Ocean, and would be there (like us) a hostage to the Hostage Crisis.

The Admiral had a good sense of humor, and he was personally responsible for not squashing me like a bug. I was writing a serial detective story for the Midway Multiplex, which was sort of raunchy and sort of fun, and thoroughly non-regulation. I took pride pounding out the daily one-page on the IBM Selectric typewriter in Mission Planning, normally after the fourth event brief (two hours prior to launch) and before debriefing had really got rolling to collect the numbers for the day.

The story was as important to me as the summary sheets we filled out at the debriefing table in the back of mission planning: “Modes and Codes up? How much Fuel did you use? See anything interesting? Thanks, see you later.”

On the routine Combat Air Patrol missions, tanking, and regular exercise profiles provided to exercise other ships in the Battle Group there wasn’t a lot more to talk about then how much fuel the aircrews dumped, or whether the crypto boxes worked on the secure radios and IFF.

Writing a detective story in Midway’s Mission Planning seemed reasonable. In fact, it may be the only science-fiction noir crime novel ever transmitted by electronic Naval message since one of the Small Boys was going to be detached and would not get helicopter delivery of the broadsheet Battle Group newspaper.

There were others- probably Shoes- thought the stories might be dangerous and subversive, which of course they were.

Admiral Kirksey told the Shoes to back off. That was the sort of guy he was- and I never heard a discouraging word that I- or my fictional detective and his Girl Friday- had become an issue in the morning meeting.

Admiral Kirksey was a guy who did not sweat the small shit- and he realized that everything was exactly that, getting large only in the aggregate. He was a veteran of more than 240 combat missions over North Vietnam, and got his Silver Star going downtown to Hanoi. He got nailed by an SA-2 telephone pole that blasted out of the haze, invisible until it was right there and nothing could be done except ride it out- and continue the attack profile.

As the CAG- the carrier Air Wing Commander- he led the other pilots in his heavily damaged plane. The aircraft fire eventually burned out, and as he attempted a carrier landing, he discovered that the entire front of the plane had been blown away. He had to crash-land at Danang or one of the fields feet-dry in South Vietnam.

He was a shrewd judge of men, Mr. IO was, and he decided we needed a morale boost somewhere in the endless sand-colored days. He authorized an air-show for the entertainment of the crew. I was selected to do the narration from the tower- I have no idea why, but an Air Intelligence Officer in those days was mostly a clerk-orator.

It was cold that day in the North Arabian Sea, an odd recollection in this summer humidity that feels like Manama-on-the-Potomac where I write.

The wind from the northwest brought a fine dusting of Iranian sand to the flight deck. The airplanes made tracks through it on the black non-skid surface and it reminded me of Michigan in an early snow, the look of the blacktop on the first trace of snow in the winter.

The sea was choppy and white capped, the bow was coming around into the wind as the Midway prepared to launch aircraft. I wandered up to The Tower in CV-41’s island and stood respectfully behind the chair where The Air Boss ran the flight deck. He turned to me and said: “It’s going to be a freaking wonderful show. The Russians are in the landing pattern, the starboard catapult is down, and the weather is disintegrating.”

The Boss smiled his wolfish Fighter Pilot smile.

The Russian IL-38 MAYs- poor copies of our P-3 Orion ASW turboprop- appeared out of the haze and passed astern. We watched the four-engine representatives of the Global Communist Conspiracy disappear into the sand cloud. Somewhere up above our fighters patrolled on their wings.

The broken catapult had slowed the launch. We had twenty aircraft to get airborne, only some of them dealing with the morale issue, and there was a frantic burst of activity on the flight deck to accomplish the mission. Heavily armed aircraft trundled forward, launch bars attached, salutes exchanged between the Shooter and the Pilot, and then they were gone in clouds of oily steam and the roar of jet engines.

When the last aircraft was gone, the flight deck crew left their stations, removed their float-coats and helmets, and formed a long line down the port side of the ship to watch the show. The red and green and purple of their jerseys lets The Boss know instantly what their jobs are from his perch high above: Blue for aircraft handlers, white for the Landing Signals Officers, yellow for plane directors, green for the cats and arresting gear troops, red for Ordies and purple for the aviation fuels guys- “Grapes.”

I got in the Air Boss’s seat and the Mini Boss stood up to stretch his legs. Nice view, I thought, and started to read the introduction to the show from the script, and then looked up to see four A-6 Intruder medium bombers saunter past in a diamond formation, followed closely by the in-flight refueling demonstration. The light-attack and fighter diamonds were not far behind in stately formations.

“There it is!” I said into the microphone. My words reverberated across the flight deck “The entire first half of the airshow for your viewing pleasure!” The tanker was about four seconds in lag pursuit of the bombers, and the re-fueling basket was a stately thirty feet in front of electronic warfare aircraft, who was frantically trying to catch up. I didn’t have time to comment, though, as the fighters and the light bombers roared on by.

I threw a dozen pages of the script in the trash and relaxed. The show was so out of phase that the words didn’t matter, and besides, it was only for us and I had the best seat in the house.

The crew didn’t seem to mind. Snipes up from way below in the engineering spaces blinked in the unexpected sunlight, even though it was cloudy. The flight deck bubbas just wanted to see their airplanes, and just for a moment, play the carefree tourist. For a moment, they are free.

(Obsolete aircraft on a retired aircraft carrier, San Diego)

Suddenly a haze-grey F4-J Phantom II dropped out of the sand cloud astern, driving very low and slow, hook down, nose cocked up, flaps trailing, right on the edge of a stall. His high-speed partner is still lost in the haze, but suddenly breaks out, no drop tank, clean as a whistle and moving at about warp eight.

He grew from speck to real airplane, roaring toward us at 550 knots, then 650 and BOOM he leaves trans-sonic, shattering the sound barrier close aboard, dead abeam. He passed under the slow Phantom and pulled hard; almost a thump and then up he goes, speed of heat, opening the fuel dumps and spiraling straight up, leaving a delicate sugar-candy swirl as he vanishes vertically into the sand-colored sky.

I can still hear the cheers and shouts of delight even through the heavy glass of the Tower and across the years. It was a magic moment in an endless series of gray days, a little dispensation courtesy of Admiral Bob Kirksey, and the pilots of Carrier Airwing FIVE.

And then the Boss took his seat again. His voice boomed like the sound of God. “I need all hands in complete flight deck uniform! I need a ready deck! We’ve got airplanes to recover!”

I wondered what was for lunch in the dirty shirt wardroom. There really were only two things to do on Midway at sea: work and eat. Well, three if you counted being unconscious. The Intruder guys had a saying for how a JO was supposed to get through first nugget cruise: “Eat till you’re tired, sleep till you’re hungry.”

There was nothing like Midway humor. Well, that would be the fourth thing you could do. Laugh about it, and then get back to work.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com