Commissioned Officers Club, Mayport Naval Station; Friday, 11 April; 1830
Mike stood at the main bar in the Officer’s club, nursing a beer. He had come prepared to be bored, and had not been disappointed. The large reception room was already getting hot and stuffy, its air conditioning overwhelmed by the growing crowd of officers in summer whites. The crowd was a mixture of aviators and surface ship drivers. Two thirds of them were trailing wives, and Mike, having nothing better to do, conducted a faintly indifferent appraisal of the women as he scanned the room.
The Admiral, a tall, ascetic looking man in his mid fifties, had just arrived with his wife, creating the appropriate stir amongst the faithful. He was followed closely by the Chief of Staff and his wife. The Admiral’s wife was a kindly looking lady, with a ready smile for everyone she met and the ability to convey the impression that she remembered each and every one. The Chief of Staffs wife, on the other hand, was something else again. Mike remembered her from previous official functions. In her case, one could not be indifferent. He was intrigued by her fine dark eyes, which she focused neutrally on a point about five feet ahead of her husband as she accompanied him through the crowded room. If she was conscious of the stares and glances of the room full of men, she gave no indication. He watched her progress through the crowd with her husband, moving with a cool, detached grace, causing almost a ripple effect, like an elegant yacht entering a marina through the crowd of smaller day boats. He wondered how a woman who looked like that had ever hooked up with J. Walker Martinson, III, cold fish non-pareil.
“Now that’s worth staring at,” said a voice behind him. Mike turned to see who it was. A Commander wearing gold wings on his shirt was looking past him at Diane Martinson.
“Amen to that. Too bad she’s taken,” he replied.
“I see that look on her face, I have to wonder how often
she’s being taken. That guy looks a lot more interested in the Admiral than in giving her the time of day, and she’s definitely scouting.”
Mike laughed. “You can tell all that from twenty feet and a port quarter view?”
The commander smiled. “That dolly is transmitting on the SEX band, my friend. I have a permanent watch on that band, even if I am married.”
They both turned back to the bar as the Martinsons disappeared into the crowd of officers and their ladies clustering around Admiral Walker.
“Name’s Don Pringle, by the way; I’m skipper of VP-4.” Pringle was a handsome man of medium height, with a fierce-looking moustache sprouting aggressively from his tanned face.
Mike shook hands. “Mike Montgomery; CO of Goldsborough.”
“Is that one of the Spruance-class ASW ships? I don’t recognize the name as one we work with.”
“No, we’re not really in the ASW game. We specialize in AAW, like in shooting down aircraft. Goldsborough is a straight-stick tin can, with guns.”
“Shooting down aircraft! Bite your tongue! No wonder we don’t play with you. You guys are dangerous!”
Mike laughed. “We don’t shoot down P-3’s unless we absolutely can’t help it, and then we always pick up the survivors, so there’s no break in their per diem …”
“Only communists and other undesirables would have the gall to shoot at, much less hit a P-3, Blackshoe,” Pringle responded amiably. “We’re much too valuable. Bad enough that the Sov subs are supposedly putting SAMs in their periscopes; we don’t need our own tin cans getting hostile. Ready for another beer?”
“Ready as ever. What do you think of this little gathering?”
They moved together down to the bartender’s station, snagged two beers, and then made their way to one of the French doors opening out on to a veranda to escape the rising tide of cocktail party noise.
“I think it’s an OK idea,” said Pringle. “We never really see you guys, except at sea, or on a radio net, or maybe at an exercise prebrief. It gets kinda impersonal, you know? I talked to one guy, skipper of one of the Spruance DD’s, and he’s going to set up an exchange day, my officers aboard his ship for a day at sea, and then we’re gonna let his guys come fly on one of our patrols. Walk a mile in the other poor bastard’s moccasins, you know?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah, that’s good stuff. We’ve got all the heloes out here at Mayport, but you guys are all the way over at NAS Jax. Besides, Goldsborough does ASW as sort of an add-on mission; she’s a quarter of a century old, and her sonar is strictly an active beast. We’re out of it when it comes to sophisticated passive work, and that seems to be the game these days.”
Mike was scanning the crowd as he spoke, hoping to catch another glimpse of Diane Martinson, but she was not in sight. He wondered what made Pringle think she was on the prowl.
“Yeah, well, of course, that’s all we can do from the airplane,” continued Pringle. “Unless we drop a pinger buoy, but we don’t do that until we’re pretty freaking sure we got the sewerpipe in a box. We use an active pinger, we usually drop a torpedo on the next pass. But before that, we’ll work a guy for hours on end, getting him localized. It takes lots of sonobuoys and lots of time and lots of patience.”
Mike turned back to the bar. “Yeah, I hate that about ASW. From the ship’s point of view you spend hours and hours processing ambiguities, all the time wondering if you really got a guy or a whale.”
Pringle nodded. “You know what they say: ASW means anti-submarine warfare; it also stands for awfully slow work.”
Mike finished his beer. “Roger that. Look, nice talking to you. I’ve got to let my boss see that I actually came, and then, with any luck, I’m outa here and on the beach.”
“You single? I thought all you blackshoes were married.” Pringle looked surprised.
“Free and easy, as the song goes. Which is why I feel the urge to blow this popstand. See you on the radio.”
They shook hands again, and Mike turned to find the Commodore. He needed to make his manners to the Admiral, and then convert a trip to the head to a sneakaway into the parking lot, the Commodore’s instructions notwithstanding. He pushed gently through the crowded room, careful not to take advantage of his relative bulk, and oblivious to the buzz of conversations and the thickening atmosphere from the smokers, greeting fellow CO’s as he headed for the second reception room. There he found the Commodore, the Admiral, and the Chief of Staff clustered in one corner, surrounded by mostly surface officers who were trying to look extremely interested in what the Admiral was saying. Since this was business talk, there were no wives in the group. He noticed that the alluring Mrs. Martinson was not around as he joined the small crowd, and eventually worked his way close enough to nod to the Commodore, who acknowledged him with a brief nod of his own, and to say good evening to Admiral Walker. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Captain Martinson eyeing him, but he decided to ignore him for the moment. The Admiral was asking him a question.
“Well, Captain, did you find any submarines out there last night?”
“No, Sir.” He went on to describe the search, emphasizing the wretched sonar conditions in that part of the operating areas, as the officers around them listened attentively. “I think maybe somebody was seeing things,” he concluded.
The Admiral nodded. “I suspect that’s possible; fishing can be a tedious business.”
Captain Martinson broke in. “So can ASW; are you sure you looked hard enough,
Captain
Montgomery?” Martinson pronounced the word “Captain” in a manner designed to let everyone know how improbable he found the title. An officer was always called “Captain” if he were actually in command of a ship, even if his actual rank was only a
Lieutenant. Mike turned his head to look directly at Martinson.
“We looked as hard as the report warranted, Chief of Staff.”
There was a sudden pause in the surrounding conversations. The Commodore shot Mike an exasperated look from behind the Admiral’s right shoulder, confirming Mike’s own sudden realization that, once again, he had gone a little too far. The Admiral, aware of the unintended impertinence, gave him an amused smile.
“I’m sure you did your best, Captain. If there really is a sub out there, we’ll probably be hearing more about him. Gentlemen, I need a refill. Eli, you look like you’re out, too. Come on.”
The two senior officers moved away, breaking up the attending circle. Mike turned with the rest of the officers to go, but Martinson wasn’t finished.
“Smooth move, there, Montgomery. You just told the Admiral that you make the decisions as to which missions are important and which aren’t. How clever of you,” he said, with a superior smile on his face.
Mike flushed with anger, mostly with himself for letting his mouth run without his brain being engaged, but he held his tongue. By Navy protocol, Martinson, being senior, could call him by his last name like a sailor if he wanted to, even though it was a deliberate insult for the Chief of Staff to do so. Martinson finished his drink. He was almost as tall as Montgomery, with a receding hairline, and fine, aristocratic features which were marred by the perpetual, faint sneer on his face when talking to subordinates. He was known in the surface ship community as a “killer,” one who promoted only his favorites and who killed off their competitors with exquisitely crafted fitness reports. He spoke with an acquired New England accent.
“I understand,” he said, “that you live in the actual village of Mayport. As I remember, that’s right next to the commercial fishing piers. Perhaps you can speak to some of the commercial fishermen this weekend, and perhaps see
what that was all about.” He pronounced the word perhaps in the British style, p’raps.
“The Coast Guard,” Martinson continued, “was less than forthcoming. It might be useful to explore the antecedents of this report. Think you can manage that? I mean, if I ask you to do it, will that be sufficiently important?”
He stared down his nose at Mike, as if peering haughtily over reading glasses that were not there. The effect was diluted somewhat by the fact that Mike was taller than the Chief of Staff.
“I think I can manage that, Chief of Staff,” said Mike, evenly.
“Oh, very good. Do let us know what you find out.”
He gave a frosty smile, turned and walked away to find the Admiral. He had said “us” as if there were a royal triumvirate to whom this minion would report on Monday. Another ship CO who had been standing nearby and listening wagged his index finger gently at Mike as the Chief of Staff strode away.
“You do have the gift of gab, Michael,” he said sympathetically, albeit with just a hint of professional relief that someone else was on the Chief of Staffs list. Commander Brian Thomas Duffy had command of a Perry class frigate. He was of medium height, red haired and had a round, red Irish face.
“Win some, lose some,” shrugged Mike. “That guy’s been on my case since the first time I sent out a message saying the basin gave the ships lousy support.”
“Yeah, I remember hearing about that,” Duffy said with a chuckle. “That was like, what, over a year ago, wasn’t it? It needed saying, but I was glad you said it instead of me.”
Mike looked down at him, trying to keep any hint of contempt out of his voice. He had little respect for the goalong guys, the Commanding Officers who chose never to criticize anything, although in his more reflective moments he realized that they were going to get along a lot better than he was. Duffy caught his look.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said, finishing his drink. “If more of us bitched, maybe things would get better. But let
me ask you—did you get any better support from the base after you blasted them? I’ll bet you didn’t.”
“If everybody keeps quiet,” replied Mike. “It never gets better.”
“Nope, I think you have it wrong,” said Duffy, shaking his head. “It’s peacetime. The shore establishment is never going to support the Fleet in peacetime the way they should. It’s you that has the unreasonable expectations. All you accomplished was to get yourself some instant notoriety as a troublemaker, and now the big guys treat everything you do with suspicion.”
“Perhaps,” said Mike. “But I think it’s our job as CO’s to call a spade a spade.”
“Again, I disagree,” said Duffy, looking past Mike at someone across the room. “It’s our job as Commanders in command to conform to the expectations of our superiors, not piss them off. That way we stand a chance of getting promoted, and thereby gaining a chance of fixing some of the things that are wrong once we get senior enough to do it. I have to go. Take care, Michael.”
Mike finished his beer as Duffy walked away. He knew that Duffy was probably right, but it still rankled him. One of his CO’s during his XO tour had said the same thing. The Navy is monolithic; it is neither bad nor good—it just is. It succeeds because it makes its officers, especially its commanding officers, conform to a professional standard. You can buck the system if you want to, but be prepared to experience some pain for the privilege.
It was time to go. The Commodore most certainly knew that he had been there. Mission accomplished, sort of, he thought wryly. He made his way through the crowd to a side door, and out into the hall. Some of the party had spilled out into the hallway, slowing him down as he headed for the main entrance to the club. He made a pit stop on the way out. Coming out of the men’s room, he spotted the destroyer squadron Chief Staff Officer standing by the front door, in animated conversation with two aviators. He reversed course, and trying to look inconspicuous,
walked back down the hall, made a right out through a side patio door, and collided with Diane Martinson.