Not Your Father's Navy

The Navy has traditionally exuded an image of discipline, great uniforms and professional competence - especially aboard ship.

My ship, the USS Bennington, an ageing aircraft carrier, didn’t get that memo. We were too old for jets, so we delivered mail to other ships and rescued downed pilots.

A gun director on a ship is a small rotating cabin containing an operator who locks on to a separate gun barrel which then mimics the movements of the cabin. Mike Ponto, my superior as head of Second Division (60 sailors), liked to fool around, and mistakenly thinking his gun director was not locked on, rotated his cabin just for fun, unfortunately swinging his gun barrel through the side of an airplane.

So I was catapulted to head Second Division.

I had spent the summer of ‘64 on capitol hill, as a writer of Republican propaganda for the Congressional Campaign Committee. The propaganda was easy; just tell the truth about the underlying problems with the war. I remember one article about gunfire being heard in Saigon, supposedly a safe place.

President Johnson was riding high at that point, so there was scant audience for my warnings, but I remembered them three years later, after law school, when I joined the Navy.

I graduated from Officers’ Training in the spring of ‘68, and went directly to the ship, which was about to set off on a six-month deployment to the western pacific.

Shortly after, I became head of Second Division.

Our job was general maintenance, care of the small boats aboard, the officers’ bathrooms, and the management of officers’ parking privileges ashore.

So my typical day was a comic trifecta:

1-    The officers were divided into two separate groups; the ship’s company, and the air wing, separated by function and culture. Parking places were prized, and I had to integrate all this into one parking plan, with individual signs, respecting rank. But the sailors, returning at night, often intoxicated, took pleasure in mixing up and throwing into the water the personalized parking signs. So the next morning, the officers were upset when they arrived, and it was my fault.

2-    The arriving officers then crossed the brow (gangplank) onto the ship, noticing the captain’s boat floating in between, which was supposed to be perfect, but sometime wasn’t. my fault again.

3-    Then arriving at the wardroom for breakfast, they stopped at the bathroom, which often had minor imperfections. My new boss, who was a perfectionist, was upset because the little screws which attached the soap dish to the wall rusted, leaving little streaks below them. My fault.

All that was before breakfast.

Back to my first morning as division head, I went to the muster on the large hanger deck, under the flight deck. All personnel not on duty were supposed to show up and be accounted for.

When I went to the appointed place, I noticed I was alone. No one else.

The department head, a Commander, fast approached. I had no place to hide.

I could only blurt out, “Sir, no one from Second Division is here,” expecting the worse.

“I’m not surprised!” he shot back, and kept moving.

I began to understand this new world. Welcome, Ensign Small.

Black on Black

The senior enlisted man under me was a man named Burns, who was intelligent but didn’t hesitate to loudly criticize senior officers in our department (Weapons). I was in an awkward position because I had to support official policy. Then, salvation seemingly appeared. The new officer over me was Black, like Burns. Surely Burns wouldn’t have an ‘attitude’ towards another Black person.

Ha

It made no difference whatsoever.

I had had little direct dealings with Black people, and saw them as a unified group.

My revelation; they’re just regular people, like anyone else.

Stop seeing color.

A lifelong lesson.

Fight fire with fire

Several months into my tenure, the sailors advised me our tool locker had been looted.

I was in shock; nobody had told me I had a tool locker, much less a looted on. 

Plus, an administrative inspection was looming. Nightmare.

Salvation came in the form of Salter, a petty officer who was quick to reassure me he would solve the situation.

I just needed to quietly approve his program to ‘cumshaw’ (steal) the replacement tools.

Which I did; it was time for ethics to take a back seat.

That night, as he left the ship (we were docked) I regarded him.

He had on civilian clothes, black shoes, black pants, black turtleneck shirt, black longshoreman’s hat, and he was Black.

A human shadow.

Replacement tools miraculously appeared, and even were stamped ‘property of 2^nd Division’ to boot.

Perfect.

A near miss

I was part of the Bridge team, assigned to drive the ship.

Early on, I was on the Bridge which was full of senior officers, who greatly intimated me.

I was assigned to watch the surface radar screen, peering through a rubber cone to foster darkness.

It was very foggy.

I noticed a blip edging closer and closer to us from ahead, but I couldn’t bring myself to bother those important officers. Surely they were aware of the situation, and I would appear foolish.

I froze

Finally, a trail of disturbed water appeared before us; we had just missed a collision.

The navigator gave me a break with a relatively mild admonition.

But I never got over it, especially after a Officers’ Candidate School classmate died when a carrier cut in half a destroyer he was on in similar circumstances.

I’ve been lucky in life.

Semper Fi 

We had a small Marine detachment aboard, mainly to guard sensitive spaces.

We became connected when one Marine came up for administrative discharge, accused of groping other Marines when they were in their bunks at night. Homosexual preferences were ignored unless others filed a complaint.

As a lawyer, I was assigned to his defense.

Inspired by this opportunity, I carefully measured the bunk layout distances, and produced a chart showing he could not have reached the others.

He was acquitted of the charges.

After that, I started to be known.

I carried that tradition with me when I was reassigned to a Navy legal office in Boston.

In my favorite case, I represented a highly decorated sailor who had left his station in California after a bad marriage and gone UA (unauthorized absence) for a full year before being caught in New Hampshire and sent to the brig in Boston.

I examined our judge. He looked like Truman Capote, even with a lisp, and lived with his mother.

So we pleaded guilty, and blamed the wife for everything.

Verdict; no punishment, returned to duty.

I was a hero in the Brig. A legend was born.

My kind of trial was no longer a court martial; it was a ‘Small Martial.’

A few highlights from other cases;

-         Twin female sailors who switched duties, impersonating each other.

-         Sailor who found a Brooks Brothers receipt in his attic proving his ‘dead’ missing father was still alive, and went UA to try to find him.

-         Only conscientious objector case was corpsman who worked in the obstetrics ward, delivering babies. About as detached from the war as you could get.

-         Writing a will for a terminal paralyzed sailor; I expected to be depressed but found I brought real comfort to the person, and emerged feeling surprisingly positive. She was tied into a rotating bed, upside down when I interviewed her.

-         Had a client, a Marine who lost hearing after an explosion in Vietnam; it turned out he had been halfway through Navy OCS but failed the tricky navigation test and washed out, and was then drafted into the Marines and sent to the war. Life was precarious and arbitrary in those days, and small events could have huge consequences.

   By and large, I have good feelings towards most of my shipmates, enlisted and especially junior officers. Not my perfectionist boss in the Weapons Department, although to be fair I was not ideal military material. I am grateful I learned to be relaxed and natural around Black people.

Bonus material: Proof of UFOs

Barney and Betty Hill, a married couple, returned from a Canadian trip by car back to New Hampshire in September 1961. Then they started to have disturbing feelings, and discovered they could not remember events over a significant portion of their return. Their time gap was identical.

They eventually were hypnotized by a Dr Simon, a Harvard physician who had specialized in treating GIs after the war who had emotional problems.

What was striking is that they gave identical detailed stories separately under hypnosis about being abducted and examined by aliens in a craft, while remembering nothing at a conscious level.

This became a national story.

Dr Simon’s son had attended Stanford, and was a friend there of our close friend Ed Penhoet.

So…during our Boston years, thanks to Ed, Ann and I were invited to dinner at Dr Simon’s home in Cambridge.

I knew the story, and was tantalized to think the tapes of the sessions were in that very house, tapes that could change everything.

I knew I couldn’t bring up the story directly, to get his personal verdict, which was not publicized.

He only mumbled something about hallucinations being somehow shared, but it wasn’t convincing or scientific.

I don’t know what he concluded, but he didn’t disavow or affirm the event.

Separately, I had another point of contact later, when I was working at the Portsmouth Naval Prison. One staffer there knew Barney Hill, a very bright merit scholar who worked at the post office, and spoke highly of him. The couple was interracial, which was unusual at the time. Barney was Black.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.