At the end of the day, the night before my brother got married, the men sat down for drinks. I was there, my uncle the pediatric cardiologist, my father the lawyer who emancipated the travel agents, and my other uncle the fortune 500 CFO. I was... feeling inferior. Representing my brother's wife- to-be, the gorgeous Hildegard, were Uncle Albert the farmer and her father the baker. The baker was an Albert, too. What is with the Germans? Why do all of them need to be Albert?
God bless the Germans, though. When her friends told Hildegard she shouldn't go out with an Irish kid from New York, she was mystified. We're both Catholics aren't we?
Albert the farmer didn't have an inferiority complex. Neither did Albert the father, he'd been Eisenhower's cook (the Kansas Germans all stuck together I guess), but Albert the father was a kind little man who didn't say much. When you get up at 4:30 in the morning everyday to bake bread, donuts and Stollen for the Osage City farmers, by night you're ready for bed, not talking. Albert the farmer didn't have that problem. He talked and talked. It made you wonder what he was growing. It was alleged, however, that he was the soybean king of Paola, Kansas.
Albert the farmer and Uncle CFO had a lot in common. They both survived full tours of combat missions in World War II as B-25 and B-24 pilots. You never heard them talk about it until that night. Albert the farmer had been very careful not to bomb POW camps.
Camaraderie didn't slow old Uncle Albert one bit, though, when he really got goin. Late into the night, he surveyed the table. A doctor! A lawyer! An accountant! Albert! It looks like you and me here are the only people who work for a livin.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
The Return of the Dragon
Downtown Phoenix is busier now. Years ago it was empty and dark after five o'clock. The Catholic Diocese of Phoenix had yet to build its sparkling new headquarters and my wife and I used its old lot to park when we went to shows at the Herberger Theater a few blocks away. It was a lonely walk, but I'd been in worse places.
One night as we crossed Van Buren, a street with a bad reputation for loose women, a commotion started to our right. I stepped between my wife and the commotion. A very large black man was following a small man who was walking fast looking back over his shoulder. I could tell that the big guy man was one of downtown's resident homeless. He was shouting: "Get outta here! Go back to India!" I shouted back at him to stop. The little guy kept walking, looked at me, tried to say thanks, and kept on going. I stepped into the path of the homeless guy. My wife was horrified.
I stuck my finger into the big guy's chest and growled, "If you don't stop, I'm going to have you thrown in jail." With the big guy distracted, the little Asian guy escaped into the darkness. The big guy stared at me mumbling. With his prey gone and a large angry guy in his face, the homeless guy lost track of what was going on, stopped and then drifted off into the night, too.
My wife was not happy. Jim, you could have been killed! Yes, you're right dear, I said, distracted and numbed by the adrenaline pumping through my body. What I was really thinking at the time was that I might ruin my sports coat if I had to actually fight the big guy. I told her there wasn't much chance of thatt. The guy was probably someone I'd worked with at the homeless shelter downtown, Andre House. Most of them are mentally ill people who have been abandoned to the streets. Some are loud and vent a lot, but completely harmless and easily distracted.
Nowadays the Dragon is retired, takes out a cellphone and dials 911 when there's trouble.
One night as we crossed Van Buren, a street with a bad reputation for loose women, a commotion started to our right. I stepped between my wife and the commotion. A very large black man was following a small man who was walking fast looking back over his shoulder. I could tell that the big guy man was one of downtown's resident homeless. He was shouting: "Get outta here! Go back to India!" I shouted back at him to stop. The little guy kept walking, looked at me, tried to say thanks, and kept on going. I stepped into the path of the homeless guy. My wife was horrified.
I stuck my finger into the big guy's chest and growled, "If you don't stop, I'm going to have you thrown in jail." With the big guy distracted, the little Asian guy escaped into the darkness. The big guy stared at me mumbling. With his prey gone and a large angry guy in his face, the homeless guy lost track of what was going on, stopped and then drifted off into the night, too.
My wife was not happy. Jim, you could have been killed! Yes, you're right dear, I said, distracted and numbed by the adrenaline pumping through my body. What I was really thinking at the time was that I might ruin my sports coat if I had to actually fight the big guy. I told her there wasn't much chance of thatt. The guy was probably someone I'd worked with at the homeless shelter downtown, Andre House. Most of them are mentally ill people who have been abandoned to the streets. Some are loud and vent a lot, but completely harmless and easily distracted.
Nowadays the Dragon is retired, takes out a cellphone and dials 911 when there's trouble.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor
My commanding officer was a full Navy captain. By Navy protocol since he was in charge of a strike squadron, he was addressed not by his rank, but by his title, Commodore. He liked that. He was a real WASPy type. He was fond of reminding us that his previous tour of duty was at the White House where he worked directly for G. Warren Nutter, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Nixon administration. He was even more fond of writing letters to G. Warren Nutter (how's the weather today, Warren, by the way, can I come back to the White House anytime soon). I was responsible for proofreading the epistles to Warren. Fortunately for the Commodore and me in the days before laptops and spellcheck, we had an enlisted yeoman to do our typing who was very handy with spelling and English grammar.
Besides proofreading letters to G. Warren Nutter, my principal duty when we were not at sea was to keep the Commodore company when he went drinking. This sometimes was not pleasant as in when he decided to hold forth on the faults of other officers he knew including one who talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto." I sat there wondering if he thought I talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto", too. Perhaps he'd have been more impressed with me if I'd mentioned my grandmother's house on Carnegie Hill, but that thought never crossed my mind, and he probably had never heard of Carnegie Hill, anyway. Another story he liked was about his predecessor a very decent man and a good Irish Catholic from St. Peter's College, who had too much to drink and fell asleep on his shoulder on the ride home one night. I just listened and tried not to look annoyed.
Guam is the 7-Eleven of the Pacific Ocean. Coming back from Vietnam you could stop there, refuel your ship, and pick up all the duty free booze you could carry. The ships' supply officers started taking orders for booze as soon as you left the Philippines. Huge cargo pallets of booze would be waiting on the docks when the ships arrived. The booze was loaded, locked up and distributed to the sailors when we got back to the US. Absolutely, positively no drinking on a Navy ship.
Guam was also the base for the heavy B-52s doing daily strikes on targets in North and South Vietnam. I remember my first night at sea on station north of the DMZ. The sky was blazing far to the south along much of the horizon. I poked the officer standing next to me who'd been there before, "Look at that lightning storm." He turned, paused and said. "Mac, that's not lightning. It's a B-52 strike." We'd been pulled out of action, but the B-52s were still going full tilt.
Russian spy ships monitored the B-52s taking off from Guam, giving the North Vietnamese advanced warning about incoming strikes. If we spotted a Russian ship near Guam, we had to send a top priority message to fleet and air command giving the time and position of the Russians. We ran into the Russians on our way out of Guam. Since I couldn't sign a high priority message, I had to call our Commodore to the ship's bridge and get his authorization to send it. The man had spent the entire time in Guam drinking at the officers' club while we refueled. I'd passed on that opportunity to spend quality time with my boss. I was completely sober. My boss was barely coherent and could barely stand when he appeared on the ship's bridge. "What going on..." He babbled and slurred. This was a major, major problem. Drinking on a Navy ship is verboten. Being drunk on duty on a Navy ship is very, very verboten. My boss was very, very drunk in front of a dozen officers and enlisted men. What to do with a drunken sailor? I put my arm around him, told him everything was just fine, escorted him to his cabin and put him to bed. Then I signed the message myself and sent it to Henry Kissinger, W. Warren Nutter, the admirals and everyone else. No one ever mentioned the episode again. There'd been a lot of pressure and very little sleep, blissful sleep. Firefights with the PAVN every night for weeks on end. Rearm and refuel during the day. Tank battles, the wrong side of air raids, The Battle of Dong Hoi Gulf, the mining of Haiphong. Sometimes you've just got to cut a guy a little slack. Even the WASPs.
Besides proofreading letters to G. Warren Nutter, my principal duty when we were not at sea was to keep the Commodore company when he went drinking. This sometimes was not pleasant as in when he decided to hold forth on the faults of other officers he knew including one who talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto." I sat there wondering if he thought I talked like an "Irishman from the ghetto", too. Perhaps he'd have been more impressed with me if I'd mentioned my grandmother's house on Carnegie Hill, but that thought never crossed my mind, and he probably had never heard of Carnegie Hill, anyway. Another story he liked was about his predecessor a very decent man and a good Irish Catholic from St. Peter's College, who had too much to drink and fell asleep on his shoulder on the ride home one night. I just listened and tried not to look annoyed.
Guam is the 7-Eleven of the Pacific Ocean. Coming back from Vietnam you could stop there, refuel your ship, and pick up all the duty free booze you could carry. The ships' supply officers started taking orders for booze as soon as you left the Philippines. Huge cargo pallets of booze would be waiting on the docks when the ships arrived. The booze was loaded, locked up and distributed to the sailors when we got back to the US. Absolutely, positively no drinking on a Navy ship.
Guam was also the base for the heavy B-52s doing daily strikes on targets in North and South Vietnam. I remember my first night at sea on station north of the DMZ. The sky was blazing far to the south along much of the horizon. I poked the officer standing next to me who'd been there before, "Look at that lightning storm." He turned, paused and said. "Mac, that's not lightning. It's a B-52 strike." We'd been pulled out of action, but the B-52s were still going full tilt.
Russian spy ships monitored the B-52s taking off from Guam, giving the North Vietnamese advanced warning about incoming strikes. If we spotted a Russian ship near Guam, we had to send a top priority message to fleet and air command giving the time and position of the Russians. We ran into the Russians on our way out of Guam. Since I couldn't sign a high priority message, I had to call our Commodore to the ship's bridge and get his authorization to send it. The man had spent the entire time in Guam drinking at the officers' club while we refueled. I'd passed on that opportunity to spend quality time with my boss. I was completely sober. My boss was barely coherent and could barely stand when he appeared on the ship's bridge. "What going on..." He babbled and slurred. This was a major, major problem. Drinking on a Navy ship is verboten. Being drunk on duty on a Navy ship is very, very verboten. My boss was very, very drunk in front of a dozen officers and enlisted men. What to do with a drunken sailor? I put my arm around him, told him everything was just fine, escorted him to his cabin and put him to bed. Then I signed the message myself and sent it to Henry Kissinger, W. Warren Nutter, the admirals and everyone else. No one ever mentioned the episode again. There'd been a lot of pressure and very little sleep, blissful sleep. Firefights with the PAVN every night for weeks on end. Rearm and refuel during the day. Tank battles, the wrong side of air raids, The Battle of Dong Hoi Gulf, the mining of Haiphong. Sometimes you've just got to cut a guy a little slack. Even the WASPs.
A Sit-On-Your-Butt Job
Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Somewhere on the run back to Homer and Kachemack Bay from the Prince William Sound fishing grounds, I had an epiphany. I was going to find a nice safe sit-on-your-but job.
The US Navy is a fine organization, but driving a ship from one end of the Pacific to another involves endless hours of standing watch. Steer west compass heading 240 to Hawai'i for a week. Steer 260 to the Philippines for two weeks. If you're "lucky", the hours of watching the empty ocean may get interrupted by sailing right through the middle a big North Pacific storm, because somebody forgot to check the barometer, which had fallen almost to dead bottom, and weather satellites hadn't been invented, yet.
The Navy did provide planned excitement on occasion, though. For example, there was the morning we mined Haiphong Harbor. I will never forget Captain "Mad Dog" Walter Deal almost hopping up and down with glee as his ship attacked the Haiphong anti-aircraft batteries, taunting the North Vietnamese gunners who where shooting back at us: "You guys couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!" I was excited, too, but way less optimistic about our prospects.
A 20-year-old working as a deckhand on an Alaska fishing boat could make more money in a good year than anyplace else except Wall Street. It had its down sides, though. You're never bored, but no one could guarantee you'd always survive getting whipped across the deck the next time you grabbed a line you forgot to secure. Where would you spend all that money you were making and with who. You put into port for a weekend and the only people anywhere in sight were other fishermen (emphasis men). Is folamh fuar e teach gan bean.
The ride back to Homer made up my mind. I had the night watch, driving the boat alone while everyone else slept. Only the boat we were travelling with had radar, so I was just supposed to follow her stern light in the darkness. Every so often I'd lose track of the light. Which scared the crap out of me, because if we got lost in the dark out there transiting the sound we were really screwed. Please God, don't let me drive into a rock. Thank you God, there's the light again! I felt so good when the sun came up that I let the rest of the crew sleep and kept on driving for hours more.
My turn to sleep got rudely interrupted. Why the F... are you bothering me! I let you guys sleep. Go away! Calhoun wants you up on deck right now. F... off! Get up! So up I go and confront our fearless leader. What the F..., Calhoun! I let you guys sleep! Mac, didn't you feel us rolling around. NO, it's nice and warm down below. Mac, we nearly rolled over. I don't want you trapped below if we sink.
Yup, a nice sit-on-your-butt job's the life for me.
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
Somewhere on the run back to Homer and Kachemack Bay from the Prince William Sound fishing grounds, I had an epiphany. I was going to find a nice safe sit-on-your-but job.
The US Navy is a fine organization, but driving a ship from one end of the Pacific to another involves endless hours of standing watch. Steer west compass heading 240 to Hawai'i for a week. Steer 260 to the Philippines for two weeks. If you're "lucky", the hours of watching the empty ocean may get interrupted by sailing right through the middle a big North Pacific storm, because somebody forgot to check the barometer, which had fallen almost to dead bottom, and weather satellites hadn't been invented, yet.
The Navy did provide planned excitement on occasion, though. For example, there was the morning we mined Haiphong Harbor. I will never forget Captain "Mad Dog" Walter Deal almost hopping up and down with glee as his ship attacked the Haiphong anti-aircraft batteries, taunting the North Vietnamese gunners who where shooting back at us: "You guys couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!" I was excited, too, but way less optimistic about our prospects.
A 20-year-old working as a deckhand on an Alaska fishing boat could make more money in a good year than anyplace else except Wall Street. It had its down sides, though. You're never bored, but no one could guarantee you'd always survive getting whipped across the deck the next time you grabbed a line you forgot to secure. Where would you spend all that money you were making and with who. You put into port for a weekend and the only people anywhere in sight were other fishermen (emphasis men). Is folamh fuar e teach gan bean.
The ride back to Homer made up my mind. I had the night watch, driving the boat alone while everyone else slept. Only the boat we were travelling with had radar, so I was just supposed to follow her stern light in the darkness. Every so often I'd lose track of the light. Which scared the crap out of me, because if we got lost in the dark out there transiting the sound we were really screwed. Please God, don't let me drive into a rock. Thank you God, there's the light again! I felt so good when the sun came up that I let the rest of the crew sleep and kept on driving for hours more.
My turn to sleep got rudely interrupted. Why the F... are you bothering me! I let you guys sleep. Go away! Calhoun wants you up on deck right now. F... off! Get up! So up I go and confront our fearless leader. What the F..., Calhoun! I let you guys sleep! Mac, didn't you feel us rolling around. NO, it's nice and warm down below. Mac, we nearly rolled over. I don't want you trapped below if we sink.
Yup, a nice sit-on-your-butt job's the life for me.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Top Gun: North SAR
Flying low overhead the Navy Phantom jets looked like space planes in an old science fiction movie dispatched by Ming the Merciless to intercept Flash Gordon, their engines spewing trails of growling noise and black smoke. They were even more eerie at night as they circled low to cover us inshore, dropping flares to illuminate the darkness while we hunted the North Vietnamese. May 10, 1972 our jets swept in to bomb the Haiphong railroad yards and MIG-17s rose up to meet them. The Duke in his F-4J Phantom jumped the MIGs and shot down three. Maybe they should have called him Ming the Merciless instead of Duke. But before he could get away The Duke was hit by a surface to air anti-aircraft missile. There was no rescue for pilots shot down over Haiphong. It was suicide for our helicopters to try. Randy "The Duke" Cunningham and his radar operator had a long few moments trying to glide to the water in a burning Phantom and bail out over the Gulf of Tonkin.
We were listening to the fight and heard the pilot's distress signal as he went down. The helicopters were already airborne to support the raid. But where to send them. It's a big sea. We picked up a signal on our radar, a small green flash. It was Cunningham's wingman. Like Star Wars and its Siths, when there were Phantoms, there were always two. We were in contact with the wingman. He could see Cunningham in the water. He was over Cunningham. But he was very low on fuel and said he had to leave. I told him: "Hold your position. We are vectoring on you." Then I leaned on the radar man controlling the helicopters and pointed to a small green speck of light on the radar scope in front of him and said: "There."
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