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.
