In this memoir, I recount the tumultuous end of my tour of active duty in the Navy and the conflict of emotions that can accompany a big transition in one’s life.
My friend, Petty Officer Third Class Doug Honspberger took the photo at left as we were going ashore at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan.
Having just been issued a pink military ID, I could barely contain my longing for freedom while looking out one of the U.S.S. Ticonderoga’s portholes as she steamed into San Diego Harbor.
Along with about 2500 sailors, airmen, and marines of this World War Two-era but still formidable aircraft carrier, I was completing a 28,000-mile voyage. In almost five months of 1971, we traversed the Pacific Ocean and the Philippine and South China Seas and made significant forays into the Indian Ocean and the Bering Sea. All with the intent to track and harass Soviet submarines.
The North Island pier appeared as we rounded the channel’s bend. Although still bathed in the golden light of dawn, it was jam-packed with my shipmate’s loved ones, who cheered and waved welcome signs as we drew near. Most of their fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers were soon to join them and go on leave.
My seabag was packed. I was eager to go home for good.
I wasn’t getting out of the Navy. I still had almost three years to go in the reserves back home in Texas. That’s what the pink ID card was about. But it replaced the green ID card of a serviceman on active duty.
Pink or green, all military ID cards are critical to a serviceman’s ability to go on and off bases and ships. After forgetting my wallet in a grocery store near Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan, I experienced the harshness of this requirement.
Getting hassled and detained for that sort of thing was just one of the many ways a regimented system dumped indignities on its personnel, enlisted and officers alike. Sometimes, I thought a long-forgotten planner engineered the entire military for irritation. Everybody I met who intended to serve only one hitch, myself included, endlessly complained about it. To no avail, the Navy didn’t care.
As one of my Chief’s said: “A bitching sailor is a happy sailor.”
Those few moments not consumed by useless carping were spent imagining idyllic civilian life. After years of griping and dreaming, the end of one’s enlistment would draw near. Then, the one-hitcher entered a state of time, space, and mind called “being short.” It was a psychologically fragile time when the short-timer wound a little tighter and tighter every day, hoping nothing would go wrong.
Ah, but their faces when the waiting was over!
A commotion in the shop pulled me from my reverie at the porthole. I turned and saw a posse of master-at-arms wearing sidearms taking ID cards from a couple of men in my division. I knew one of the M.A.A.’s, but he was curt when they came for me. I handed them my card as ordered while Chief Roney, my immediate boss, loudly demanded an explanation.
“It’s an investigation” was the sole response.
Suffering a gut punch of dashed hopes, I felt like I was slipping into shock. Still, I was aware enough to see that most of the guys in my unit were trying to console the detained while a few raged at the M.A.A.’s.
I felt such fondness for these men at this moment. Witnessing their display of concern and aggressiveness demonstrated the affection and loyalty a bonded military unit exhibits when their brothers are under threat.
Of all the detainees, the guys in our division sympathized most with the short-timer. They knew the anticipation of slow-coming freedom was hard enough on me without some ominous twist of fate.
We suspected that this as yet mysterious occurrence was just such a convolution.
The M.A.A.’s vacated our shop as the gangplank swung to the pier. The other detainees and I wished our shipmates a pleasant leave, and I said my last goodbyes to close friends as they left to join their loved ones.
Among the hardest to part with was Chief Roney. He had become like a father at sea.
Although I was trying to hide it, he felt my turmoil. He even volunteered to stay aboard with me. Bless him, but his wife and daughter, who I knew almost intimately from his stories, were on the pier. There was no question about where the Chief needed to be. I thanked him and wished him well.
Soon, almost everyone was ashore while I sat stunned, silent, stewing.
At this moment, of course, my subconscious dredged up and started dwelling on the tragic memory of another short-timer.
Killer was an aviation electrician in my department crushed by a ten-ton hatch while we were docked in the Philippines a mere six weeks before. At the time of the accident, he only had four days left before the end of a six-year tour of duty. His story * summed up any short-timer’s greatest fear.
The M.A.A.’s came back about an hour later and rounded up me and the guys in my division, plus a few others. They led us ashore and marched us across the base to a small, single-story building.
Once inside, we were ushered one at a time into a stuffy interrogation room. Before and after questioning, we were kept separated and silent.
When it was my turn, I sat at a table in a small room with two men wearing civilian clothes and the practiced, icy demeanor of professional lawmen.
One of them stood. Thin and sallow, he wore a black suit, white dress shirt, and black and red striped tie. I thought it was crazy to dress like that in this muggy chamber.
Seated across the table from me was a chunky, southern-sheriff-looking man with a ruddy face. He wore a sensible open-collared, short-sleeved shirt, but was sweating more than his partner.
Only chunky guy spoke to me. He asked about my jobs and duty stations.
I told him about my time with a squadron before being transferred to the Ticonderoga and described my jobs in both assignments.
He then nodded towards a small, open, screw-top jar on the table. There was black goo inside with what looked like a popsicle stick embedded in it.
“Do you know what’s in the jar?” he asked.
We had just been to the Far East. Remembering the Opium Wars in China from high school history class, I guessed: “Opium?”
OK, I was more than a little naive and over a hundred years out of date. After news reports on the subject years later, I realized it must have been black tar heroin.
The investigator pressed on: “Do you have access to the utility space just forward of your shop?
I did not and told him so.
“Do you know an Airman Neale?”
Yes, I knew Neale. I said that before we met again aboard the Ticonderoga, Neale and I spent a few months with VRC-50’s detachment at the Da Nang Airbase in Vietnam.
I also told them about the time we took refuge in the same sandy ditch near our hangar during a rocket attack; how as we hugged the ground, he cracked me up with exaggerated mock fear by screaming: “These buttons are too thick!”
However, I didn’t mention that we had smoked a joint minutes before that night’s attack, which may have made Neale’s antics seem more funny to me than they were.
When the investigators completed all the interviews, we unlucky few were marched back to the ship and ordered to stay on board until further notice.
At least we now knew what the stir was all about.
Still packed and ready to go hours after we docked, I sat alone at my desk in the division office on a ship that only had the barest skeleton crew still aboard. All the other detainees had gone to forage for lunch or something, or maybe they were sitting on their bunks stewing. Having nothing to do with the black goo, whatever it was, I was finding it easy to brew up some righteous anger.
I knew how inconsistent and potentially ponderous military justice could be, just as I knew there was no hope that some sort of cavalry would ride in to rescue me from this nightmare. Desperate to be free but seeing no way out, my anger began to dissipate into the cold weight of helplessness.
Mercifully, before drowning in self-pity, I recalled the antics of my funny, system-defying corpsman friend Ferguson **.
While having a muted chuckle about the way he altered his name and demeanor to change how he was perceived, I remembered who I was and what I had learned about how the military works.
Ferguson was the white-hatted hero who came to save the day. I now knew what I had to do.
But first, I needed to gin up the courage. For this, I called upon an exclamation I learned from John Schofield, my best friend on board.
Leaping from my chair, I yelled: “I’m a Third Class Petty Officer in the world’s largest nuclear navy!”
I grabbed my gear, stepped outside the shop, and shouted with everything I had into the cavernous, near-empty hangar deck: “I’m a veteran of a foreign war, and I don’t have to take this crap!”
Hoisting my seabag onto my shoulder, I strode to the master-at-arms office.
There, behind the counter, a bored seaman was reading a paperback while reclining to an impossible degree in a taped-up office chair. He looked up as I approached.
What little rank I had was easily visible to him in my dress white uniform. More to the point, he would immediately notice my service ribbons.
These brightly-hued pieces of cloth tell other members of the armed services where you’ve been and hint at what you’ve experienced. Having “color” on my chest when I reported to the ship earned me special treatment from the personnel office and a little extra respect from my shipmates.
Not wanting to give him time to think, I barked:” You’re supposed to give me my ID”
“Uh,” he replied, not getting up. He looked just as confused as I hoped he would be.
I leaned over the counter and glared at him with stony, unforgiving eyes, like the interrogators had done to me.
“S. M. I. T. H., Daniel B,” I said.
“Ah, OK,” he said, rising.
He looked around, thought about it, and unlocked a steel cabinet. After nosing around, he opened a small wooden box with index cards inside. A little shuffling through its contents produced my precious pink ID card.
He checked my face with its picture. “This you?” he asked, placing it on the counter.
Feeling wildly over-caffeinated, I replied as calmly as I could muster: “Yes, thank you.”
I wanted to run, get off the ship, and leave the base before someone realized I was officially in custody. However, I was able to slide the ID into my chest pocket with casual indifference.
Proud of my ruse, but with a substantial knot in my gut, I walked to the quarterdeck and approached the Officer of the Deck. As required, I saluted and requested permission to leave the ship. He inspected my ID and returned the salute.
Bless his lack of curiosity; he didn’t ask why I was going ashore so long after everyone else.
Having passed a formidable gauntlet, I saluted the ensign, traversed the gangplank, and strode down the pier to a launch that took me across the bay. After a nervous wait, I took a bus downtown and grabbed a cab to the airport. I booked a plane home with the last of my cash and called my parents.
A pair of shore patrolmen passed through the terminal while I waited for my flight. Their presence seemed odd, and a bolt of fear raced through my body. I held my breath as they came near. One of them nodded at me, and I nodded in return. As they passed, afraid my noticeable relief would tip them off, I kept myself from exhaling with an audible “Whew!”
My folks met me at Love Field in Dallas around two or so in the morning. It was good to be home, but the specter of imminent arrest haunted me.
Almost three tense weeks later, I received a letter from Chief Roney. Along with two handwritten pages, it contained my final active-duty paycheck that I had left in my desk’s top drawer in the stress of the moment.
Naturally, the Chief ribbed me about being so wealthy that I could afford to walk off without it.
He also filled me in on the convolution. He said there had been some static from the investigators about my disappearance. But, he added that our department’s officers successfully argued that I must have misunderstood the directive to stay aboard the ship.
“I think they like you just because you worked hard and set a positive example for the younger men,” he wrote. “Maybe they had you confused with someone else. (haha!)”
After some news about his family and my closest shipmates, his letter ended with: “Have a nice life, Smitty. — your friend, Chief J.P. Roney.”
The Chief’s sign-off hit me like a 500 lb. bomb. As if looking into a mirror for the first time, I became aware of what I had experienced in the Navy, which had passed without examination while I lived it.
Tears filled my eyes as I stared dumbfounded at the letter, amazed that I could be such a blockhead.
The places I visited and lived! The fantastic, wonderful, and horrible things I saw! The people I met, befriended, and served with!
So blinded by my fervent short-timer craving to get out, I hadn’t considered the inevitable torment of never again living a life so crazy, frustrating, and rewarding, and never again working and playing with my shipmates and squadron mates, my brothers in arms.
* Killer plays a part in Solemn Mysteries.
** Noms de Guerre was written about Ferguson.