As intense and exciting as a 6 month cruise was, the remaining 6 months were not, not by a long shot. It was exciting in that you’d get to go home and see your family, not have to stand port and starboard watch’s, and I could go fishing again. But, that was about it.
On the down side; I wasn’t married so the supply of poontang dropped to nil, wasn’t able to drink booze, so my fondness of Johnny Walker (Black and Red) and Wild Turkey went unfullfilled, and worst of all, the ship was put into drydock.
From NOB (Naval Operating Base) Norfolk, we were unceremoniously pushed and pulled up the Elizibeth River, to the shipyards at Portsmouth. All I remember about this ride was the shame I felt having to be pushed somewhere. Four weeks before we were a force to be reckoned with and now we had cold boilers, no nuclear warheads, and one VHF radio for Communications. After being gawked at by the sailors aboard Destroyers and Submarines, at the D&S piers, we were slowly moved into position at our dry dock. The Columbus was one huge mother of a ship and it always drew a crowd wherever she went. At 670′ long and with 10 levels (100′ + radar and antenna’s) above the main deck, it must have been a sight to watch. Before our arrival, shipyard workers (yardbirds) had placed huge chocks that would hold the ship in place as the water was removed from the drydock.
When I’d reported aboard ship the night before, the after brow (gangway, Columbus had two; one for officers amidships and one for enlisted, aft) was crossing water from the pier to the ship. When I left the ship that afternoon, it was over a cement floor, a loooong way down. It reminded me of an iceberg in that there’s a lot more under the water line, than there is above it. I wished I’d seen that before I made my first cruise, or I wouldn’t have had the reoccuring dream of it flipping over with me in it. It was hard to comprehend how large it was until I saw two guys standing below one of the brass props. Each blade was two of them high and three wide and that was just one of three blades. As I watched those two guys, I saw five or six more go down with baskets and they started picking up the soft shelled crabs that were always there every time they emptied a drydock. There must have been a zillion dollars in crabs in that hole.
The crew and yardbirds immediatly began dismembering the ship, as well as removing every square inch of paint. They used sandblasters on the hull and various tools from it’s water line up. Some had disc sanders and grinders, but the one noticed most where those using magic fingers. It was an air driven mechanism run by hand, where a series of small protrusions pounded the paint off of the steel and aluminum. The noise level was that of one sitting in the middle of a pack of Harley’s at full throttle, and the dust created by it covered everything, including us.
All of our Communications equipment had been removed and was being upgraded in the various shops at the yard, so we had to walk to the Communications station a half mile away. The messenger of the watch was required to walk to the yards’ main communications building to retrieve traffic every four hours unless there was a high priority message that needed to be distributed to the ship. The messanger of the watch also had to wear service whites to get in there and dress whites after 1700hrs (5pm). Picture yourself in a nice clean set of pure white cotton clothes, then take a walk through a dust storm, and be required to look good afterwards. We would have to take three seperate sets of whites on watch with us because they were only good for one trip. Everywhere we walked, there were pneumatic hoses running along the decks and hundreds of obsticals to get around and through. We would receive a phone call from Portsmouths’ radio room and told that there was an “Operational Immediate” waiting for us and by regulations we had very little time to take care of it. We’d haul ass over there, remembering the “Oboes” of times past where peoples lives depended on it, and find out it was about a hurricane a thousand miles away.
Until room in the bases’ barracks were available, we had to berth on the ship. The same ship that’s totally out of the water with nothing but mosquetos between the sun and the hull. The temperatures would rise to above a hundred degrees and sleeping was out of the question. Most of us slept out on the deck, and my favorite spot was the platform above the bridge. It was almost impossible to sit on in the daylight, but after dark it dropped down into the 90’s and almost tolerable. Once we were able to live and sleep in the barracks, life improved some, unless you minded the huge cockroach’s, but I got used to them too.
Every morning at quarters, we would be assigned a job that had something to do with the refitting of the ship. Some were assigned to cleaning up after the yardbirds and some to fire watch’s. There was arc welding going on everywhere, and it was required that each welder have someone with a fire extinguisher along side. Fires were always breaking out as the hot embers would set the paint on fire and we’d immediatly put them out. None of us were given protective glass’s, and instructed not to look at the arc; it would give us sunburned eyeballs. I remember one day RM3 Orton had an experience like that. He was working in Radio II along side a welder when summoned by Chief Hawkins who was irate when Orton told him he wasn’t going to come to Main Comm. The Chief hauled ass down there to kick some bootcamp butt but stopped short when he walked into II. Orton’s eyes were mere slits and his face was three times it’s normal size. Orton didn’t get his ass kicked but the welder did.
After the ship “knocked off ships work” at 1700, we could either go to the beach (liberty), go back to the barracks, or to the Navy Exchanges’ entertainment center. The building housed a restaurant (Ge-dunk), movie theatre, gymnasium, weight room, and bowling alley and was infinitly safer than trying to take a buss out of Portsmouth and go to either Norfolk or Virginia Beach. That old buss was riddled with bullet holes and traveled at night without interior lights. The one time I stood Shore Patrol during my enlistment, was held at this Navy Exchange. Normally, Radiomen didn’t stand Shore Patrol duties because of the hours we worked, but while the ship was in the yard, we had pleanty of time. I was issued an arm band with SP printed on it, along with a billy club and a belt to hold it. It was my responsibility to keep the peace within it’s confines, insure that everyone wore dress whites after 1700, and that everyone in the movie house stood up when the national anthem was played before the show. The nice thing about this was I was representing the Commander in Chief and could tell a chief petty officer to “Get his ass outta my building” if it was required. Not many times could I do this and hoped Cheif Hawkin’s showed up with dirty dungarees and a shitty attitude. It didn’t happen of course, but all day I waited for him to show up. I was able to evict one E-6 for wearing his baseball uniform after 1700, and he did have a bad attitude.
Inter-ship baseball was a nice part of the time we spent in the shipyard, but it wasn’t because of my love of baseball; it was for the love of Lowenbrau. The ship had purchased several hundred cases of beer while overseas and issued to the teams for every game. The baseball field was back at the D&S piers and we took a Utility Boat back down the Elizibeth River to get there. Once there, we were assigned an opponent and our ration of beer. It usually took two innings before the fun started and it wasn’t long after that, that we were trying to hit the beer bottles that usually sat behind the players on the field. I’m pretty sure someone kept score because at the end of the week there would be the Division standings posted outside the personnel office. How accurate those postings were, were dubious to say the least.
This was also the time when the ship, or it’s Divisions, would send some of it’s crew to various schools. My first school was on Crypto systems, which I shant get into, but the second was “Ditto repair school”. This was long before what we use now for duplicational duties, but back then we’d put on a “matt” over a drum and with each revolution, a copy would be produced. It was a wet and sometimes sloppy job, but in our line of work, it was a very important piece of machinery. Each morning we were taxi’d over to some office building in Norfolk and taken up to an old dusty equipment room and instructed on how to fix the things. There were four of us who went and I was the only one who passed the course. At first I thought these guys were a bunch of morons until the following cruise when I was awakened at night to fix one of them, in the personnel office. There were four of five of these machines on the ship and I was the only one qualified to fix it. Nine out of ten times, I’d look under the counter and plug the fuckin’ thing back in, and go back to my rack. At the time I was only getting 3 to 4 hours sleep every night and those duties took even that away.
After three of four months, the ship once again started to turn “Battleship Gray” and it was starting to look like a ship of the line again. Those sailors that had been sent to various “A” schools returned and we began to take on new equipment and stores. Those personnel that left were replaced with men from different commands and boot camp. Those that we recieved from boot camp were indoctrinated into the daily operations and the locations of our various work spaces. It was common to see some boot walking around the ship with a sketch of the ship in his hands looking for his assigned spaces. It was also common to have some kid walk up and ask where he could find “a hundred feet of chow line” or where they kept the “key” to the ship. We’d think up the most out of the way place, give him directions, and laugh as he’d walk off looking for it. I talked to a sailor from the Enterprise about this once and he told me they had one guy missing for three days, while at sea.
As we were taking on stores, we also took on fresh water and the ship had one embarassing situation because of it. While they were receiving the fresh water, they only filled up the bunkers on the startboard side of the ship. While the seawater returned back into the drydock, the ship as it rose, took on a nasty list to starboard. Soon an announcement was made over the 1mc for all hands, not currently on watch, report to the port side…..like that was going to help. It took an hour or so for the pumps to move the water over, but there were news crews in the area that caught it on tape, so we got to watch it on t.v. that night.
Another thing that happend during this time, happend at morning colors. Across the river from us, there was a Coast Guard cutter that raised it’s flag upside down, and as a curtesy, we asked them by signal light if they were in dire need of assistance. They weren’t, but they didn’t forget the gesture and gave the ship a $500.00 fine for polluting when they caught one of our sailors throw a pop can over the side. Shallow water sailors have no sence of humor at all.
Not long after that we were once again on our way down the Elizibeth River back to Norfolk, with dreams of Barcelona once again dancing through our dreams.
