(Director of Naval Intelligence RADM Fritz Harlfinger)   When Admiral Rex served his nation, there were three Navies. The whole thing is enough to make your head hurt, and it is a good thing that the taxpayers don’t think much about it much. It is not unusual; after all, there were at least three Air […]

  I am a little cranky this morning. I was up early to see if I could find the pictures I took of Fleet Admiral Gorshkov’s tomb.   It was one of those serendipitous things. I  hadn’t been looking for him, and happened across the Admiral a decade after this death on a pleasant Spring […]

What a day yesterday on the journey to this Mother of Mondays.   I got up early enough this morning to be productive and wasn’t. I am still leveled and the emotion has only reinforced the somber mood.   I had a great scheme to transition the Admiral’s bio; it is good to have a […]

(Route Pack Exclusive Air Operations Routes Over North Vietnam) Controlling the Air War was an increasing problem. Theater Commander Admiral implemented a scheme called the “Route Pack system” to de-conflict air operations over North Vietnam. The system divided responsibility within North Vietnam into seven different geographic areas, with the Air Force and the Navy each […]

(Annpolis BOQ, Saigon, 1969)   Editor’s Note: this article would have appeared somewhere before yesterday’s installment, which featured some post-fu feverish enthusiasm. All episodes will be meticulously reviewed to remove outright hallucinations.   The first two days of the Vietnam experience began, for most of the people in this part of Rex’s story, at the […]

  The last full moon of the old decade still hangs in the Virginia sky as the world below is sleeping off the follies of the first morning. I have nothing social to blame on the way I feel. The sickness had come on suddenly, and the memory of the last three dozen hours are […]

(A Zumwalt-era Beard on USS Midway sailor) The drive home covered 768 Miles in 11 hours and 20 minutes. I was moderately interested by the pace, once I got the car parked in the garage, since it was the night of the same day I had departed the little town in Michigan, and I had […]

(Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt. Official Navy Photo.) It is colder than shit outside this morning, bone chilling even in the guest apartment where I stay when I am here in Northern Michigan. The wind is still hammering the side of the building and blowing the lake-effect snow around the driveway. It is time to start […]

My sons are roaming around the island where they were born this morning- or better said, they are asleep, six hours behind us in the Midwest, and they will rise, in good time, to gentle breeze and an embracing climate redolent with the smell of blossoms.   There is lakes-effect snow here, and the temperature […]

(The Brand New Ilikai Hotel, Waikiki, 1965)   The crunch of the snowplow outside- a few cursory passes by a man in a dirty white pick-up truck- signals the call to the breakfast table and the start of a new day with the folks. I am not far on Mom’s List, which includes printers and […]