The Long Escape Read online

  About two months after I reported aboard, I went to sea for the first time. We were enroute to Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco with a stop on the way to offload the ship’s ammunition.

  Going to sea started out as a real adventure as we pulled in the lines while the Skipper maneuvered the big ship away from the pier and out into the channel. We were, as was the norm in those days, all in our undress blue uniforms. We got the lines in, stowed them, and then fell into ranks along the ships rails where we stood at parade rest, watching the sights of San Diego Bay pass by us. To my young mind, this was truly exhilarating!

  When we passed Point Loma, we went below and got into work uniforms. About then I realized that not everything about this new adventure was sweetness and light. The ship was tossing around a bit more than I liked and my young tummy wasn’t caring for the sensation. To make a long story short, I was horribly seasick for the first two days at sea and nauseous for the remainder of the trip. I carried a bucket with me everywhere I went and I used it with gusto. The only thing I ate that entire trip was soda crackers, and even they ended up in the bucket. But I did my job and stood my assigned watches, bucket never far from my hand.

  When underway, we stood watches in a four-hour-on and eight-hour-off rotation in addition to doing our assigned work functions. I was assigned to stand my watches as a lookout, stationed on the port wing of the bridge. In spite of the misery that was roiling my innards, I loved this assignment. I was issued a pair of binoculars and had to keep a lookout over the horizon in front of the ship and down the port side 180 degrees to the stern. It was my job to ensure that nothing approached the ship without the Officer of the Deck knowing about it. Since we were at sea far out beyond the range of small craft, there was a lot of time spent in this job with absolutely nothing to watch. But, from the bridge wing vantage point, the Lookouts could see everything that happened in the bridge. I was fascinated by the give and take between the members of the bridge team as they exercised absolute precision in the operation of the ship. I watched and tried to memorize the commands, actions, and responses that they so casually performed. I literally dreamed of the day when I could be a part of the team that drove the ship. I was thinking, “This is where the action is and I want to be part of it”, as I barfed in my bucket for the thousandth time.

  The ship stopped for a few hours at an ammunition depot in Seal Beach, just south of Los Angeles, where we tied up to a pier and began unloading the ship’s ammunition. Immediately after tying up, we formed long lines and started passing the heavy 3-inch and 5-inch shells from the ammunition lockers deep in the bowels of the ship up to the main deck and then across heavy gangplanks to pallets on the pier where the ammo was carefully stacked and tied down. There it was inventoried by civilian workers and carried off to huge warehouses by forklifts. The long lines worked continuously for over six hours as we passed the ammunition off to the Depot workers. I was a happy sailor when it was over and we got underway again.

  The ship pulled into San Francisco in late February 1959. As soon as we passed the breakwater and entered San Francisco bay, my seasickness disappeared and my spirits lightened. Again we manned the rail, this time in our dress uniforms with our peacoats on. It was a typical blustery San Francisco winter day and it was fairly cold in the wind on the ship’s fantail. But we stood at parade rest and watched as we passed by Alcatraz and under the Golden Gate Bridge. My shipmates stood there and groused about the cold, but I was enthralled. I was seeing things that I had only read about. I was mesmerized.

  The ship tied up to a pier in Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and reality returned. We immediately changed our uniforms, putting on dungarees and then going to work in preparation for the influx of civilian shipyard workers that would start the next day.

  My job never changed much when we entered the shipyard. I still cleaned the After Head in the mornings and then chipped, scraped, sanded and painted bulkheads in the afternoons. But it was different. The ship’s crew had to live aboard the ship, so they had always been very careful about the cleanliness of their shipboard surroundings. The shipyard workers (we called them “Yardbirds”) were not nearly as fastidious as the sailors were. It probably wasn’t their faults, because the nature of their work, with all of its soot and welding debris, was just plain dirty. But, as a person that took great pride in the cleanliness of my ship and my work station, I really learned to hate the shipyard environment.

  I took the High School GED Test in March. The tests were graded off the ship, so I never learned the results for a few days. In the meantime I completed the Seaman Course and the ship administered a test for promotion to seaman.

  On the same day in mid-April, I learned that I had passed the GED and that I had been promoted to seaman. It was a major day for me, but there were no celebrations. I was on duty that day and stood a quarterdeck watch as the Messenger of the Watch. The OOD was a young ensign, and the Petty Officer of the Watch was my new friend, Bob Lawler.

  We had a terrific time on that watch in the middle of the night. I was so proud that I was bursting and my fellow watch standers were both amused and paternal with me. I think that Bob must have kinda-sorta adopted me by that time. He made it very plain that he was very proud of me. He advised me to start looking for an open vacancy in another field so that I could eventually work my way off the deck force. Both he and the ensign advised me to look into moving to one of the electronic disciplines aboard the ship. I took their advice to heart and started looking into the areas that Bob and the ensign suggested.

  I had just been aboard ship for about three months when I was promoted to seaman. The promotion jumped me ahead of several of my fellow Deck Apes who had been aboard ship longer than me, but who had not yet passed the test for promotion. Therefore, I was absolutely amazed when, raw recruit that I was, the Bos’n honored the promotion. I was taken off of the head-cleaning job and put to work on the real deck force.

  Once I was out working with the regular deck people, I found that our primary job was to maintain the appearance of the hull, decks, and outside bulkheads of the ship. This involved a never-ending cycle of chipping off old paint with its associated rust, scraping the metal, sanding it, applying a primer coat called “Red Lead,” then applying the new grey paint. It was not long before all of my boot-camp-issued dungarees were coated with red and grey paint. It was hard and thankless work, but at least it was out in the fresh air and I wasn’t cleaning a huge, nasty-assed, bathroom!

  With my promotion came a small pay raise. I could now afford to go ashore occasionally! Life was good!

  I went ashore a few times in San Francisco, where I walked for miles. I saw all of the local sights that I could find and ate at both Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown. By walking everywhere, and catching inexpensive busses, I could save enough money to see the sights, but there wasn’t much left over.

  It wasn’t long before I was bored with walking around the town. So I concentrated on my work aboard ship and even took out a couple of Navy Correspondence Courses. I studied Military Leadership and similar things; subjects that would help me regardless of whatever job I was going to end up with while I was in the Navy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  My Aunt, The Innkeeper

  I knew that I had an Aunt Ruth somewhere in San Francisco, but I didn’t remember ever meeting her. She was Dad’s sister and she had been in California most of her adult life. About all that I knew about her was from rumors I’d heard back home. I knew that she was a single businesswoman in her thirties, but I didn’t know much else. Just out of curiosity, I wrote my mother and asked her to see if she could get Ruth’s address for me. It took a while, but Mom was finally was able to get it, and she passed it on to me about six weeks or so before we were scheduled to leave the shipyard.

  I immediately called Ruth and talked to her. It turned out that she was very happy to hear from me. We agreed that I would come over to see her for dinner the following Saturday. She gave me directions, including
very specific directions on the correct way to approach her home. She told me that the address Mom had given me was correct for the large apartment house she lived in, but her apartment was on the rear of the building, so I should approach from the alley behind the building.

  On Saturday, I set out to meet my Aunt Ruth. I had seen pictures of her and knew that, like me, she was a redhead (but if the pictures were true, she was far prettier than me). She and her sister, my Aunt Mary, both boasted the same flaming red hair that Patty and I had inherited. I also knew that Ruth and Mary had both graduated from college in Spokane, with Mary pursuing Nursing and Ruth taking up Business. Mary had joined the Army during World War II and had been an Army Nurse before marrying an Army officer and starting a family. Ruth I had never heard much about, so I had no idea what to expect.

  Ruth turned out to be a gracious and lovely lady. She was very honestly excited to see me and greeted me effusively, even crying a bit. She told me that she remembered me from visiting us in Seattle during World War II. But I was the first family member to ever come to see her at her home, so I was treated as if I were royalty. She had prepared a spare bedroom for me, and I was made to understand that, whenever I could get off the ship, I was welcome to make my “home away from home” with her there. It was truly a welcome change from shipboard life.

  Ruth explained to me that she worked during the day at a local business and she supplemented her income by running the apartment house as a boardinghouse for other working women. Of course, this perked my sailor’s ears right up. But she explained to me that the ladies who rented apartments there were all much older than me and while they all worked in San Francisco, they all had families—in some cases husbands and children—outside of the city. So they were to be “off-limits” to me. My ardor dampened, I cheerfully went on with the business of getting to know my long-lost relative.

  That evening, I met the lady boarders at dinner. As with any boardinghouse of the day, meals were served to all of the boarders at a single setting. When it came time for dinner, Aunt Ruth took me to the dining room and introduced me to everyone. The only other male present was the person who cooked and served the dinner. He was a large black man who never seemed very friendly. In fact, during the month that I visited there, I don’t think that I ever heard him speak a full sentence. He just cooked and served and performed chores around the house as directed by Aunt Ruth. He lived elsewhere, but he was there in time to cook breakfast and he didn’t leave until after dinner was served.

  As the weeks wore on, I became a kind of a favorite pet of the lady boarders. They harassed me at mealtime, gave me friendly tips on the sights to see in the city, and even, on one occasion, bought me a set of civilian clothes so that I didn’t “always look like a lost sailor.” It was almost as if I had become their adopted kid brother. But Ruth was right. They were all older than me and they obviously had their own lives outside of the boardinghouse.

  I did notice one thing that bothered me a lot. Aunt Ruth, like my father, drank too much. She didn’t seem to have his temper, but she clearly had a drinking problem. She never made a big deal of it, so I chose to ignore it. But it did bother me. Ruth, like Dad, seemed to always have a drink in her hand, even when just relaxing at home. I thought a lot about this. If two members of my father’s family were so dependent on alcohol, did that mean there was a danger for the rest of us? I didn’t believe that this was just a coincidence. I firmly believed that such dependence could be inherited. It was about this time that I set a rule that I live with to this day: I never drink at home, or during the work week (unless it is a very special occasion), and I never, ever drink alone.

  I stayed with Ruth for several weekends and a few weeknights. I always walked and took buses to get there, but I would take a cab back to the ship in the mornings because I couldn’t walk the distance in time to get back without being late. When Ruth realized what I was doing, she introduced me to a local cabbie who was her friend. He agreed that he would bring me back to the ship in the mornings for half the price of the other cabs. That helped a lot.

  I had another of my nightmares while I was staying there. It was another one where I was falling through the earth, screaming. I woke to find Aunt Ruth shaking me gently, with a couple of her boarders looking on. I was embarrassed, but they weren’t overly concerned. “Just a bad dream,” was the comment at breakfast the next morning, and soon it was forgotten.

  Finally, I came to the end of my stay in San Francisco. The night before the ship was scheduled to leave San Francisco, I visited Aunt Ruth for a last time. In honor of my departure, the lady boarders put on a small celebration complete with cake and ice cream. I got a lot of hugs and good wishes. The next morning, Aunt Ruth cried all through breakfast and was still sobbing when I got in the cab.

  I had a really nice conversation with the cabbie that morning. I asked him how he knew my aunt, and if he knew anything about her that I could pass on to the family back in Montana. I had asked the same thing to the boarder ladies, but it seemed that they didn’t know much about her other than the fact that she was a good landlady and kept the apartment house in good shape.

  When I asked the cabbie about Ruth, he started laughing. He made me swear that I would never repeat what he told me. Then he told me something that shocked me to the bottom of my unshockable soul. He said, “Son, that place you been staying, that is the best damned whorehouse in San Francisco! I’ve been hauling guys there for over five years and I have never heard a complaint.” He went on, saying “I don’t think you want the relatives to know, but that Ruth is one of the finest Madams this town has ever seen!”

  When I didn’t believe him, he made a detour to the front of the house, which somehow I had never seen before. Sure enough, there was a red light over the door! The cabbie then showed me the advertisements that he kept in his cab for “men who are looking.” Sure enough, the advertisements were explicit and the address and phone number were right.

  Later, I looked it up in the San Francisco phone book, which again confirmed the cabbie’s story.

  I never told anyone in the family, nor did I ever tell Aunt Ruth what I knew. Ruth and I exchanged letters off and on for a couple of years before we let it taper off. I never saw her again, and I understand that she passed away a few years later when she was just forty-four years old.

  Thinking back on it, I really do appreciate the effort that she, and all of her girls, must have made in order to make her naive nephew innocently welcome in their lives.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Goodbye Deck Force!

  It was a beautiful sunny morning as the ship navigated its way out of San Francisco harbor. We manned the rails and watched the city fade behind us. When we reached the breakwater, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had no need for the bucket that had been my constant companion during the last underway period.

  The transit down the coast was, for me, uneventful and pleasant. We stood our watches and did our day-jobs before being lulled to sleep by the steady pounding of the ship’s screws. In the evening, I found that I truly loved watching the sunset as the ship’s widening wake churned the ocean behind us. Even on watch, looking out over the bow as it sliced through the water, it was obvious that the ship was moving me toward new horizons, new experiences and new adventures! I was starting to really appreciate the Navy.

  The Cogswell had a tight schedule for the next few months. We returned to San Diego and were only in port over the weekend before getting underway again. We spent the next two months in a training environment, getting underway on Mondays and returning on Fridays.

  During the first week of training, we actually fired the ship’s big five-inch guns. For the first time I experienced the shock of the massive gun’s firing and heard the ear-numbing sound as it echoed in the confinement of the ammo handling room. The heat and noise in this confined space caused my seasickness to return and, as I performed my job, the bucket was solidly placed between my feet. If I ever experience hell, I am con
vinced that it will have nothing to offer that surpasses that experience.

  During the next two months, we were drilled relentlessly on every aspect of making war from the deck of a destroyer. We had gunnery exercises where we fired our guns at targets pulled by airplanes. We had shore bombardment exercises where we fired the big guns at San Clemente Island. We had antisubmarine drills where we dropped depth charges and fired torpedoes. We had fire and casualty drills where we simulated disasters and trained in the ways to counteract them. It seemed like we had drills to teach us to have drills. But, by the time we were done, my seasickness was gone for good and the Navy instructors who rode the ship to train us decided that we were now able to fight the ship.

  When the training period was complete, we stayed tied up pier-side for about a month. This was a pre-deployment period that allowed the married sailors to have some time at home. The rest of us had a relatively liberal leave and liberty period. We were scheduled to depart for a six-month cruise to the Western Pacific in August, so time at home was important.

  I tried going ashore in San Diego during this period, but without a car, there wasn’t much to do. I even went to the USO, but the emphasis there was on saving my soul. Since I felt that my soul was doing all right without their ministrations, I didn’t stay long with the USO crowd. I must have walked a million miles that month, trying to find something to do. I even walked to the zoo, several miles from the ship, a few times. It was interesting, but I felt like a lost soul, wandering aimlessly from place to place, so I turned more and more to reading and studying aboard ship instead of going to town.