My brother and I were conversing last week about our time together in the Navy, and we came up with a whole list of subjects. Once I got to thinking about them, they all happend within a six week period, and instead of writing them up separetly, I’ll just convey how that period went. It’ll give you all an idea of how life really is during one of these cruises. I’m also going to do it one week at a time, ’cause it may take a while to read all this and it might be easier for me to write it.
We departed Norfolk, Virginia in mid-August of ‘70. The ship and it’s crew had just spent the last six months doing some of the lousiest work a man could take. The ship had been invaded by a crew of yardworkers to repair and update most of the ship, and they made a hellava mess doing it. It would be our responsibility to keep that ship looking like the weapon she was, and cleaning up after those guys got at the very least, tiring. On top of that, we had to preform our regular duties and responsibilities, so the thought of ‘getting back to the Med’ was foremost on our minds.
As the 1MC (The ships public address system. It operated on the 1 Megacycle frequency. The one I had in Radio Central was 32MC and I could talk to stations on the Bridge, Navigation, Weapons and Combat) announced to “Secure the special sea and anchor detail”, the Communications department went to General Quarters. We would not secure from General Quarters until we threw over the line in Norfolk, 6 months from now. The rest of the ship does not go to General Quarters until there is imminent danger to the ship, but as far as radio goes, there’s always imminent danger. We lived in a whole different world from the rest of the ship. Our life consisted of going on watch and going to bed. There were two crews manning three shifts. That means if you worked the day watch (8-4), you would be going back to work at Mid-night and work until 8. In the 8 hours we were off duty, we could eat, have free time, or sleep. The rest of the ship’s crew worked a normal 8 till 4 day except on Sunday’s when they could take the day off. In all fairness, I believe the crew’s in the Combat Information Center, may have been on the same schedule as us. I know for a fact those ’scope-dopes’ had the same blank stare in their eyes as we did. When we were in-port, we worked on a 4 section watch so each watch section would have one day off in 4. The rest of the ship had to stay aboard for one day in 4.
Our work crossing the Atlantic was pretty light, as we crossed alone. It was a good time to break in some of the ‘boot’s’ to the real world. The new personnel we’d received over the yard period were new to both the ship and the sea. One of the ways we use to amuse ourselves was to send one of these guys on a wild goose chase. We would call up CIC and tell them “we had a boot coming down looking for something, send him on”. Then we’d tell this kid to head down to CIC and pick up 50′ of chow line. Combat would send him up to Weapons, who’d send them down to Engineering. My brother Butch tells me of sending men out to pick up “Relative bearing grease” and they’d be gone for hours! To help out the guys riding the waves, Mother Nature brewed us up 3 different hurricanes to go through. THAT was a ride!
On our third day out, we were riding a 40′ sea when one of those waves broke over our bow and took out one of our transmit towers. It sat right up in the bow and it looked like a beer can with spokes radiating our from the top. Two inch thick glass insulators held up those spokes from the can and one of them snapped. Somehow, my name had been put on the ‘antenna maintenance crew’ so I went out on the weather decks with RM-1 (Radoman 1st Class) Coffee. We waited inside the quarter-deck hatch while the ship did a 180 so we’d have a following sea. ‘Coming about’ in 40′ seas is quite an adventure. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember if we were on the top of that wave or the bottom but the manuver was fast and scarry. They come on the 1MC to tell everone we were about to have some ‘heavy seas’ so everyone had grabbed something. We were standing in the passage way and had nothing to hang on so we just walked up the bulkheads as the ship came about. Once we had a following sea, that is the ass goes up before the front does, we stepped out onto the weather deck. We opened the hatch to a vision of a blue-green, as far as we could move our heads back, it was water. As we’d travel the bow began to shake back and forth as though it were a fish trying to throw a lure, in slow motion. After cresting the wave, it would drop 40 to 50′ into the trough below. There were times when I would weigh only 30lbs instead of the 160 I carried. Grabbing the life line we leaned forward and headed up. We’d moved forward about 20′ when we leveled off and I could just make out the bottom of the next wave. While we were walking up there, I asked Coffee why we were bothering to wear lifejackets, and he said it’s just easier finding the bodies. It took us 5 or 6 swells before we finally got to the antenna so I had a front row seat on some ‘Heavy Seas’. As soon as we returned and secured the hatch, the ship ‘came about’ one more time, and after walking on the other bulkhead, we were on our way.
It was about at that time that we changed from Norfolk being our point of communications, to Londonderry, Ireland. As a command ship, most of the ships that will be in our Task Force will send their messages to us, and we’ll send them on to the beach. The shore station will then put that message on a general broadcast which is received by all the ships. For a day or so, we had been copying transmissions from both places and now we were offically in the 6th fleet.
Our first port-o-call on my second cruise was Gibralter. We were there to ‘Inchop’, or ‘Releave the watch’ as they say in those Navy stories. The USS ALBANY had spent the last 6 months operating in the Mediterranian, and now it was our turn.
We had picked up the Admiral in Newport, R.I. on our way over here, and as himself he was the Commander Cruiser Destroyer Flotilla 8 (COMCRUDESFLOT8). What he was also becoming was the Commander; Task Force 60.2, which always stayed in the Med, or the 6th Fleet. At the same time, our Captain, was becoming a Commodore and responsible for a Destroyer Squadron (#2) or DESRON2. I mention all this orginization and ranking because where I worked, I would have to deal with these men on a personal level. Not that we got all chummy and all that, but when they got pissed, they would call me personally. I also mention it because without communications, they’re just two guys floating around in a target, just like me. Communications, to these men, is of the utmost importance, so we as a group were under a lot of pressure to fulfill our responsibilities.
I was standing the mid-watch on the night before we pulled into port, and the Flag’s radioman (an E-6) came by Central with an “anchor pool” and asked if I wanted in. I’d never seen one before but once I got the jest of it, I saw there were only two squares left. I put my chop (Initials) in the squares and gave him my money and he was on his way. About 20 minutes after they “Secured the special sea and anchor detail”, that E-6 was at my rack and waking me up. There in his hands was $200.00 in twenty’s, and then it was in mine.
Twenty years old, two hundred dollars, first foreign port, guess what I spent it on. Yep, and a lot of it! No, not that, there arn’t any ‘fleet maidens’ in the Gib, but they do have a lot of beer. Lowenbrau (with the two little dots over the u) Heiniken’s, Guiness Stout, and Courage. The junk we drink over here would cause a riot in Europe, and every pub and gut would be looking for new bartenders. I was introduced to Courage by a Sargeant Major in Her Majesty’s ‘Black Watch’. For some reason, he wanted to thank me personally, for my country’s aid during World War 2. He sailed on one of the Destroyers that the United States had provided with the Land-Lease program before we entered the war. I smiled and said “Hands across the Sea and all that mate” and shook his hand. Damn, but that guy could drink! After leaving the ship, we had walked down the Queensway to a gate that was probably older than our country, and then walked down Ragged Staff road and then onto Trafalgar st. The street is all cobblestone and runs right up to the doorways. All the doorways are recessed so when there is a car going by, you can jump into them and avoid getting hit. The store fronts are all glassed in, so it’s easy to see what’s for sale inside. One store was all products made from Ivory or Silver and I was pretty tempted to spend the two hundred bucks in there on a chess set, but I confused Dollars and Pounds Sterling so I came up a little short. It was then that I walked into the pub next door where I met the Sergeant Major. I was on the third beer and hammered and he was on his sixth without any effects, so I knew I was out of my league.
When I relieved the watch at 8 the next morning, I found out that one day was all I was going to get in Gibralter. We had received a “FLASH”, “T O P S E C R E T”, and we were heading East. None of our watch section knew where we were going or why, but we’d figure it out eventually. Not only do radioman not talk to the rest of the ships’ company about what is going on, we don’t even tell each other. Something might happen during the day watch, and you wouldn’t be able to tell your relief what it was. If someone didn’t have a “Need to know”, they wern’t going to find out. We were half way through our day watch when the “SECRET REPORTS” came in and we found out. The “SECRET REPORTS” was a little newspaper written up by the NSC (National Security Council) for it’s commanders at sea. It would give them information on the political and tactical situations going on around the world. It was the first time I’d read about Yassar Arafat. Arafat had hijacked a couple of passenger liners and was going to blow them up in the sands of Lebenon.
