Sea Stories -Page four
Nurse of the Year
by Robert Bussey 73-75
We had a corpsman, HM1 Robert MacAdams. This guy would wait until the XO came into the first class mess to mention something that I had screwed up on. I told him his day was coming.
Well, we were in Long Beach loading ammo and we were going out the next day to shoot. Doc and I went over on liberty and got split up and Doc didn't make it back in time and we left port without him. A big no-no.
Anyway, we came back in that afternoon and there was Doc. Doc went to mast but came out shining and the next month made Sailor of the Month. I told him I would never get that privilege as I had never missed ship’s movement.
Anyway, I took his letter of commendation and came up with a commendation of ‘Nurse of the Year." I even got the skipper’s and XO’s permission to make a radio message out of it informing a bunch of the ships that were in port Long Beach.
All of the Department Heads came by while we were eating in the general mess congratulating Doc. He didn't know whether to believe it or not. At the same time I took an old brass and wood lamp and removed the light socket. I put a white nurse’s hat on it and a brass plate proclaiming him Nurse of the Year.
We got all of the chiefs and first class personnel on the bridge and the old man read his citation. Needless to say nobody could hold back especially when the old man presented him with his trophy. He looked at me and said "When you get even, you don't mess around."
The best part about the whole thing is it was mentioned in his evals that he had been given a bogus award of Nurse of the Year and the next year he made chief
Working Party: E-6 and Below
by Dean Myers 71-75
In the spring of 1972 the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) started a major offensive across the DMZ which was later named the "Easter Offensive." Many stories have been told and written of the events of the first two weeks. Among them are Bat 21, The Rescue of Bat 21, The Bridge at Dong Ha, and The Easter Offensive.
This story about working parties is one of many I remember.
I was a Junior Third Class ET aboard the BUCHANAN. We were off the coast of Vietnam at the DMZ when it started. Our NGFS (Naval Gun Fire Support) was in very high demand because of heavy cloud cover that kept our aircraft from operating effectively. Our NGFS was needed to neutralize the NVA’s armor, artillery, and SAM (Surface to Air Missile) sites.
Our major problem was being able to get enough ammunition to fire. One time the magazines were completely empty and all we had left were the dummy rounds used for testing the handling equipment – so we shot them. I am sure they did little damage, but hopefully we made them duck. When we could go alongside an ammo ship we would take all we could, topping off both magazines and leaving pallets out on the ASROC deck. We would then fire missions until room was available in the magazines for the ammo that was still topside.
That Westpac we fired over 15,000 Rounds of NGFS and received over 1,000 rounds shot at us.
Between calls for fire we would run to sea and grab what ammo we could. So the routine was General Quarters, working party to handle ammo, couple hours sleep, and back to G.Q. The SPA 25 Radar Repeaters started crapping out one at a time, so for three days it was working parties, General Quarters, and fix a repeater. (I blamed the recoil from the guns’ firing so much. We had cases where tubes shook out of their sockets and fuses would fall out of the fuse holders).
The number of hours sleep I had in three days could be counted on one hand, with fingers left over. The port repeater on the bridge had died just as we finished a strike at sunrise, and I started to repair it.
Soon we were unrepping some ammo. Normally I would have to wait till after Unrep but the OOD liked to use that repeater on strikes, and I couldn’t work on it at night without screwing up the watch’s night vision. Now we had been doing this for several weeks. At first the working parties were E3 and below, then E4, then E5, as more people were getting OK to continue their work, as unrepping was a priority.
I don't know if was because they actually needed us Junior petty officers to keep the ship running or if we got better at making excuses to stay clear of the working parties. I was told by my Division Officer John Moore to work on the port repeater right through the unrep. When they didn’t have enough people in the working party, it suddenly became all E6 and below (I only saw that twice). When my first class Wayne Holden heard he was to report to handle ammo, it occurred to him that I might need his help to "fix" that SPA 25. I am sure if someone had pointed out that it only took one ET to fix a repeater, I would have been the one sent to handle ammo.
So here we are, two ET's with the repeater open working in the area between the repeater and the bridge windows. I had sat down on the deck with my back propped on the bulkhead beside the Port Captains ( Commodores) chair reading a schematic across my lap. Then Holden wanted to check something and took the schematic from me, and after several minutes he realized something was not right because I had not moved in all that time.
He realized it had been at least 15 minutes since he had seen me move and that I was sound asleep. So he put schematic back on my lap figuring that if no one including himself had figured it out in 15 minutes, he would let me catch some shut-eye. He was quite nervous because the CO and XO were within an arm’s reach of both of us. Finally, when the Skipper stepped over my legs to cross the bridge, Holden’s nerves could no longer take the strain and he woke me up.
Surprised on the Bridge
by Jim Darrough 76-78
I was attempting to qualify as JOOD underway for a few months while I was IC1 on BUCHANAN (until the gyrocompasses starting acting up and I couldn't maintain the watch hours).
One evening on the bridge, I was on the port wing, looking out at some other ships, and someone came up behind me and slugged me in the arm. Without thinking, I turned and punched the perpetrator in his arm. And got a shock. I
It was the CO, Roger Barnett. He was jolted back a couple steps, looking shocked. Soon, after realizing I thought my career was over, he started laughing so hard I thought he was going to have a stroke! Once he got his breath back, he told me "Well, that'll teach me to sneak up on a big guy like that!"
That incident showed me that the CO was an OK guy.
Quarters for Officers
anonymous
Dick Zimmerman found this from an anonymous department
head, USS WADDELL (DDG-24), under XO LCDR Later to be CDR Thearle CO 71-72
I was XXX Officer and LCDR Thearle would have quarters almost
every morning to read us the Plan of the Day. The department heads would line up
in the vicinity of the ASROC launcher and be waiting for his arrival. We would
stand under the front edge of the launcher if it happened to be raining, or in
other spots, so that he had rain on his head or the sun/wind in his face. This
went on for the entire time he was onboard and he never figured out what was
happening.
He was a good guy and very dedicated to the Navy but it was
our way (even
though somewhat inconsiderate) of putting a little humor into the daily
routine.