I was due to transfer from the INDEPENDENCE on October 1, 1974, and the ship was scheduled to "out chop" (leave port) on July 6th. In May, a directive from the Navy Department gave permission for people with travel orders that: 1. were within 90 days of the execution of those orders, and 2. that the orders did not contain an NET (No Earlier Than) that was outside the normal allotted leave and travel time, to request an early transfer. I did the math, it was 87 days between out chop and my transfer, I looked at my orders, there was no NET, I'd been Married for three months, and my wife would be alone in a strange city, so I thought to myself, "Why not?"
I filled out a Request Chit, citing the appropriate directive, and requested an early transfer. My LPO, LCPO, the LT in charge of Storage and Retrieval (my work center in the Intel Center), and the LCDR in charge of the Intel Center all thought it was a great idea, especially since I was recently married. Why not?
Why not turned out to be a punk Ensign from Upstate New York. Why not said I was so valuable to the OZ Division that I had to have a "contact relief" (meaning someone coming before I could leave). He was so persuasive, the LCDR in charge changed his mind. The Ensign then proceeded to walk the chit through the chain-of-command, getting denials all the way through the Fleet Commander. He comes in to my work center with the disapproved request, and tells me that I am such a valuable asset to OZ Division, and he's sorry he couldn't get my request approved. "Oh, and by the way, you'll be going to the Mess Decks tomorrow, for your last 90 days."
Homicidal thoughts raced to my head whenever I saw the little weenie after that. He'd intentionally come through when my Section had the watch, just so he could observe me in my misery. I'd fume for a while, and the LPO of the Mess Deck Master-at-Arms force would chuckle to himself. When I asked him what was so funny, he said, "You, man. You get so upset, you want to kill the little f-er, but you won't do Schmitt."
"Yeah, what can I do?" I asked
"You can get even."
"Yeah, and exactly how do I do that?" I asked sarcastically.
"Oh, there's lots of ways," he replied, "but you can't get there unless you stop letting the little pecker get to you."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking getting friendly with the mutt. Say 'Hello, Sir,' 'How are you, Sir,' butter him up until he'll accept an invitation to go out on the town. You tell him you're sorry for not giving him the respect he was due, whatever, just get him to think that you're not angry, you're totally dedicated to doing a good job wherever you're working..."
The plan was actually pretty simple, and as it worked out, the timing of everything was better than I could have ever hoped for. I'd go up to the Intel Center a couple of times a week to talk to my buds up there, and because I had received an "Exceptional" for my Section during a Departmental Personnel Inspection, I was allowed to return to my normal duties after only 80 days. I went right to work. The S&R Officer was very pleased at my getting right into things with so few days left before I transferred. So was the Ensign, so when I invited him to a dinner show with Morrie Amsterdam, and a few cocktails afterwards, to prove there were no hard feelings about anything. He accepted, having seen great improvements in my "attitude" (if only he knew...), and the way I reacted when my chit to leave the ship one day early because the ship left Naples on the 30th, and I transferred on the 1st, got refused because it would take too long to re-write the orders, and I couldn't take leave before taking leave.
So it was, on the evening of September 29th, I met with the Ensign at the Fleet Landing in Naples, we shared a cab to the NATO Base, and went in to the lounge to await seating for the Dinner Show. I asked the Ensign what he would have to drink (Southern Comfort and Coke), and went off to the bar to buy him a double. I was worried that he'd pick something really strong, and a double would be really noticeable, but with all of the sweetness of Southern Comfort, he didn't notice he was getting doubles. He'd had a couple before dinner, two during dinner, and two more during the show, all doubles. He knew I was LDS, and didn't drink, so he felt free to really hang one on, figuring that since I was sober, he'd get back to the ship before liberty expired at 0500, and the ship departed at 0800.
After the NATO Base club, we stopped at a bar he knew in town, since it was only 2230, we had plenty of time to get to the ship. He was on his third drink (he was buying, so he was probably only getting one shots), when he brought up the requests to transfer early. He admitted being responsible for getting the one done in June, to transfer to San Diego early, but he had nothing to do with the one asking to leave one day early, that was just a part of the regulations, however he thought it to be delightfully ironic.
I've come a long way since my younger days. I am extremely well versed in the meaning and use of certain Anglo-Saxon expletives, both from my experiences as a Sailor, and having been raised by one of the world's greatest practitioners of profanity -- who, just happened to be a Sailor himself. I know the words, I try very hard not to use them... OK, I swear on the golf course, but then... it's golf... I've gotten to the point where I try to convey the convection, but not use the actual words. Sometimes I like to be creative and try to show my PC side with stuff like "ca-ca de vaca," for BS, stuff like that... Sometimes I like to be metaphoric, like someone "choking his chicken," or even Biblical, someone "casting pearls before swine..." But enough of that...
I launched into a torrent of profanity that probably still lingers over Naples, Italy to this day. I called him everything but "Sir" or "Ensign," berated his lineage back to his ancestors in Israel, and stormed out of the bar. Sometime during my tirade, he had passed out. It was 0200, and the last boat(s) was/were at 0400. I didn't want to be on the last boat, so I hustled down to Fleet Landing, getting there around 0230, got on a boat at 0245, and was back on the Indy by 0300.
At 0600 the Sea and Anchor detail was called, and all hands were directed to muster with their Division Officers by 0700. I had checked out of OZ Division before I went on liberty the previous day, so I went down to Personnel, to let them know I had made it back and had the information on my flights for the following day. I went up to the Intel Center, to make sure I didn't miss saying goodbye to everyone, and started getting grilled... "Where's the Ensign?" I told them that the last time I saw him was at 0200, in a bar, and we had exchanged words, but nothing else, I came straight back. They asked if I knew how much he had to drink, and I told them somewhere between 8 and 10 since I first met him at about 1500.
The next morning, October 1, I boarded a C-2 aircraft (designated COD, for Carrier Onboard Delivery) and was catapulted off USS INDEPENDENCE on a short flight to the Naples/NATO airfield, had a 1 hour wait to board a plane to Da Vinci in Rome, Rome to Paris and a delayed flight, so I got to spend the evening with an international group of people heading to JFK. We stayed up all night, entertaining each other, talking, we tried sleeping, but the only things big enough to lay down on were the floor, and the ceramic tile sills on the windows, so the group slowly grew. We finally got to board at 0915, and took off sometime before 1000, JFK bound. When I left, I had no information on the Ensign.
About two months later, I get a card from one of my ex-shipmates, saying that the Ensign came back on the COD I had left on. He reported to the LCDR, saying he didn't know what happened, he woke up in the bar at 0800, and only remembered me yelling at him. That jived with my story, so he was asked to resign his commission in lieu of a Courts Martial.
My plan was to get him hammered and dump him at Fleet Landing. The CO had a policy that anyone too drunk to walk up the Accommodation Ladder would be placed in a litter, and potentially put on report. The idea was to let him get treated as a nobody. The intermediate stop was his idea. And while I knew that he had been single-handedly instrumental in the denial of my early transfer request, he's the one who literally bragged about it to my face. I got mad, rudely abased him, and left before I decided to punch his face in. He was such a weenie, tried to blame his problems on an E5, but I understand that he ended up "doing the right thing".
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