Deployed To WESTPAC On the day we left Norfolk for our western Pacific cruise, an interesting incident transpired, as if to remind us that there was another world outside the little steel cocoon of the Dean. The ship was ready to get underway, still tied up at the dock; the band was playing, and the well-wishers and families of the crew were waving to us from the pier. The crew was at attention on deck, waiting for the order to go to sea and anchor detail. Suddenly, a jeep with some officers and Shore Patrol people rolled up in front of the ship. They brought out a third-class petty officer in his dress blues, wearing handcuffs, and dragged him up to the quarterdeck, where one of the officers read to him from a document. The seaman responded by dramatically shaking his head 'no', the action was unmistakable. The officers and SPs put him back in the jeep and drove away. No one would answer my questions about the prisoner; I suspected he was refusing wartime duty. The entire incident had an unearthly "Reading the Articles of War to the Prisoner" feel to it. I learned later that he was the QM3 I eventually replaced. Soon we were underway, steaming out of Hampton Roads towards the South Atlantic and quickly settling in to our shipboard routine. I was very lucky that I did not seem susceptible to seasickness, so as much as I came to hate military life, I was able to enjoy the ocean. I had never been out of sight of land before, and our day cruises on the Beatty had not prepared me for life at sea. I loved the whole thing: the inky blue of a sunny sea, the glowing phosphorescence in our wake at night, the grays and waves of bad weather. The sea is a wilderness, and it is exquisitely beautiful. I even came to enjoy the rhythms of shipboard life, although I could have done without the work. There was always something to do: shipboard evolutions, maintenance, drills, or just getting ready for the interminable inspections. We sailed south into the Caribbean, taking the Windward Passage separating Cuba and Haiti, where I could see the lighthouse at Cabo Maisí beckoning to me from the land of my grandfathers. The Dean went through the Panama Canal and I saw the Pacific for the first time, stopping at San Diego, Pearl Harbor, Midway, Japan, and Taiwan, on our way to our base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. I can't resist briefly remarking on our arrival at Pearl. As we steamed down the channel, we rounded the point where the Arizona Memorial is located. All hands snapped to attention to render honors to the dead, and we simultaneously caught our first glimpse of the great base, where a hundred ships were nested six deep at the docks. The guy standing in line next to me muttered under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear, "They never learn, do they"? The Dean's mission was to conduct combat patrols on Yankee Station, that part of the Tonkin Gulf near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam. We would go out for several weeks at a time, and rotate frequently to our base at Subic Bay. We had multiple duties. Sometimes we escorted the aircraft carriers while they carried out their round the clock bombing of positions on the mainland. At other times we were sent in close to shore where our helicopter was used to pluck downed fliers out of the jungle; once we rescued a pilot ourselves who had parachuted into the sea. Another time we were assigned to investigate a small boat that was suspected to be making a supply run for the Communists, but we could not get permission from Headquarters to board and search. It was a very strange war. We never fired our own weapons except for training exercises, and no one ever shot at us, but several times during our patrols enemy aircraft would sortie, threatening either us or the ships we escorted. We would go to General Quarters and wait until the all clear was sounded. Supposedly, the enemy was probing our defenses; they would cancel their attack as soon as they detected our weapons radars tracking them, and head back to their own bases. The rumor going about the fleet was that our ships had bagged a couple of MIGs this way, and that one of our cruisers had gotten lazy and been shot up pretty badly. My GQ station was in the big 5-inch gun mount forward, where I operated the sight setting equipment and where Chief Dogget was the Mount Captain. My station was designated Left One Man Control, or LOMC, since my job was to help correct the sights for the ROMC on the other side of the mount, who was supposed to aim the gun in the event of a fire control radar failure. During our drills in the mount, Dogget was brutal with his criticism, giving everyone on the telephone net great entertainment at my expense. I couldn't do anything right, and his invective and colorful cursing was usually the talk of the ship for days afterward. When the alarm sounded for our first "this is not a drill..." GQ, I had been on the well-lighted mess deck having a cup of coffee. I ran out onto the blacked-out weather deck, completely blind, of course, and started running in total darkness towards the gun mount. I slammed into a hatch cover in the dark at full gallop, and went sprawling on the deck, I could hear the hydraulics in the gun grinding away nearby, but I was disoriented and couldn't see it in the dark. When I finally found it I had to feel my way by hand until I located the hatch, and opened it. Dogget reached out, pulled me in by my shirt collar, and then stuffed me into my little bucket seat at the top of the mount. He then passed me my helmet, headphones, flak jacket and life vest, all without saying a word. I waited there for an hour, staring out the clear plastic blister at total blackness, until the all clear sounded. When the Pueblo Crisis broke out, the Dean was sent to Korean waters, where we spent 56 days on patrol until a boiler casualty forced us to return to Japan. It was a record for a ship of our type. During that patrol, the daily helicopter from the aircraft carrier delivered a "Dear John" letter from my girlfriend; it couldn't have come at a worse time. I was convinced that the world was on the brink of nuclear war, and that ironically, on board ship, I might be one of its few survivors. But I was outraged by the audacity of the North Koreans, and I was ready to kick their ass personally. Those two months at sea were grim: the weather was rough and it was cold, and in the mornings we would have to knock the ice that had built up on the superstructure with fire hoses to keep the ship from becoming top-heavy. I had enjoyed Japan during our earlier stop there. I had even read up on it in the ship's library, since I didn't want to be an Ugly American type and betray my ignorance to our Japanese hosts. I remember going ashore with one of the older "China sailors" to a waterfront bar: "Hey, sailor, I love you no shit, buy me dlink." A pretty young girl sat on my lap and introduced herself as "Betty, from Kyoto." Recalling my studies, I remarked, "Oh, Kyoto, that's the ancient Imperial capital isn't it?" Betty looked at me for a long time, and then, puzzled, said "Huh?" I learn quick. I had patronized a prostitute in the Philippines, against my better judgment. I was quite drunk and remembered little of the incident except that for a while I was stumbling down a hotel hall of identical doors, in my underwear, trying to find my room. Now that I was returning to Japan, I was going to do it right. I was going to stay sober, find a girl I really liked, negotiate a fair price, and this time I was going to remember all the details. That's pretty much the way it worked out, and I never patronized another prostitute for the rest of my life. I realized that sex is all in the mind, and if the girl has to be paid it's really not much more than assisted masturbation. Now, it wasn't my fault, but soon I was an unwilling host to crab lice. My dalliance wasn't the cause of this infestation; the whole damn ship came down with them. For a week we fought the invasion with gallons of blue ointment and special laundry details. The shipboard gossip was that the plague had originated in M Division: everyone knew that the machinists and boilermen were somewhat lax about bathing and other hygienic precautions. Yes, you can get them from toilet seats. I liked Japan, and did my best to travel as much as I could while there. I spent time in Tokyo and toured the memorial museum in Nagasaki. I found myself fascinated by the people and the culture, and I found their art exquisite. But a sailor rarely gets a chance to really get to know the places he visits, and the Dean was making steam to go back on patrol. My private war with Chief Dogget was coming to a head. I had successfully passed my correspondence courses, and I had the Navigation officer sign my request for an examination. Navigation was desperately short-handed, and the Nav officer had only a few more months to go before he was out of the Navy; he really didn't care if he was on Dogget's bad side. He also had his men supervise Bloom and me while getting our Practical Factors signed off, a little ceremony which assured that we were bringing something more than book learning to the job. I had even stood a few supervised bridge watches, on my own time, to demonstrate my suitability for the job. A Navy quartermaster was expected to know piloting and dead reckoning, how to operate Loran-A and radar for deriving electronic fixes, and be familiar with aids to navigation, rules of the road, and lights and signals for maritime vessels. There was also a great deal of paperwork which had to be mastered; reports, logs and such, and the filing and maintenance of charts and navigational publications. I had even played a bit with a sextant, although I had by no means mastered the art of celestial navigation. Still, I was qualified and I was ready to go. My exam scores had been posted, and I was approved for advancement to Third Class Petty Officer. The promotion ceremonies were to be held on the last day of our stay in Hong Kong. On my first day ashore I had visited one of Hong Kong's legendary naval tailors and sprung for three sets of whites, tailored precisely to my frame, with my new crow proudly spreading its wings on my left arm. I looked squared away. By this time, the saga of the two First Division rebels was a topic of shipwide gossip, and when the time came for the promotion ceremonies, Bloom and I changed into our new uniforms, and waited until the very last minute before falling in for muster with the deck force. The Captain conducted a personnel inspection of the division, accompanied by Ensign Moss and Dogget, and when he got to us I could see that he was having a hard time to keep himself from laughing. After the Captain had departed, Dogget threw us out of the division with instructions that he never wanted to see us again. But he must have seen it coming, and I got the feeling his rage and bluster was more for the benefit of his men than any attempt to intimidate us. A few weeks later, I came off a late watch and ran into the Chief in a dimly lit passageway. He grabbed me, threw me against a bulkhead, whipped out his knife, and placing it against my throat growled "Damn you, shithead, you were the best damn LOMC I ever had." Then he spun around and disappeared into the darkness. PREVIOUS    NEXT       Back to Sea Story page