Floating Ramble - Brown-Shoes

Summer 1963 was PCS and the Navy flew us to Japan after my graduation from the Univ of Michigan. Linda and the children had taken the train to Pensacola, leaving me in Ann Arbor for final exams then drive south. After a week in Panama City, we headed for San Francisco; overnight in New Orleans on Malinda’s fifth birthday. Next day we stopped in Sherman, Texas to visit Malinda’s godmother Marie Louise Hagler and family. Life there was interesting, in The Help style of old Southern elegance that my father liked to call “decayed aristocracy.” Cooks in the kitchen, Dorchester the butler formally serving the evening meal. You certainly did not serve yourself; Dorchester held the serving dish and spooned your serving onto your plate. What brought this to mind? Mr. Merdle in Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, his Chief Butler.

A day or so later we arrived in San Francisco, reported to The Presidio for processing, fearing we would be assigned to a prop plane that took days to fly to -- what -- Honolulu, Guam, ultimately Japan. But we lucked out and went on a Flying Tiger Line Boeing 707. San Francisco to Alaska, our first view of Mount McKinley out the port window of the aircraft. Refuel in Alaska, then on to Haneda, Tokyo. As we settled into the flight pattern for landing, me uniformed properly to report for duty in service dress blue bravo (white cap cover) holding Jody (shed Jody for Joe upon turning eleven), who started crying, then gulping, burping, urping, ultimately vomiting all over my blue Navy uniform as the wheels touched the runway. The host officer greeting us was a lieutenant who had been an ensign with me at a Navy school some years earlier. 

My Navy memoirs are not nearly so interesting as those of my friend Paul, same age, married the same year, same rank, retired within a year of each other, both CDR, USN. His sea stories are exciting and make Navy years great to look back on. What I enjoyed most about Navy years was the sea duty, a destroyer tour that included a month of reftra in GTMO hours in a 5”/38 gun mount, spending all night in the crypto shack as the decoding officer during GQ, and Saturdays sailing on Guantanamo Bay with my Harvard grad roommate Don Senese and a tub of iced down Heineken. Then years later a highlight of twenty years was an amphib tour serving with Marine Corps officers during Vietnam, and brown-shoes, a far more relaxed bunch than the surface Navy. 

On the other hand, that was also the tour that provoked my decision, first night at sea out of San Diego enroute to WestPac, Subic Bay, Okinawa and Vietnam, “too much time invested and too far at sea to jump overboard and swim home; twenty years and I’m out of here.” And I did.

Many years later, during the Gulf War, TRIPOLI hit an Iraqi contact mine. By then all our children were grown, and there were grandchildren, and we were living in Apalachicola, the gate of heaven, oysters and mullet.

While assigned to a MCM force sweeping toward the shore of Faylaka Island during the Gulf War on January 17, 1991, USS TRIPOLI and the other ships of the MCM force were targeted by Iraqi Silkworm anti-ship missile fire control radars. The MCM force moved out of the missiles' range and after coalition forces destroyed the missile site, the ships returned to the area on January 18, at 0240 local time.

At 0345, after operating for 11 hours in an undetected Iraqi minefield, the USS TRIPOLI hit a moored Iraqi contact mine creating an explosion and ripping a 16 by 20 foot hole below the water line. As USS AVENGER (MCM 1) and USS LEADER attempted to assist the damaged warship, USS PRINCETON (CG 59), while unknowingly heading along a line of Manta mines, continued to provide air defense for the MCM Group but at 0715, also hit a Manta mine in 16 meters of water. 

As damage control teams overcame fires and flooding aboard USS TRIPOLI and USS PRINCETON, the minesweepers USS IMPERVIOUS, USS LEADER, and USS AVENGER searched for additional mines in the area. USS TRIPOLI was able to continue her mission for several days before being relieved by USS LA SALLE (AGF 3) and USS NEW ORLEANS (LPH 11). USS TRIPOLI then proceeded to Bahrain for repair. (USN)