Good Eats

A long time ago, I was in Barcelona, Spain. This was before they had the Olympics and cleaned the place up. We were supposed to go ashore on the buddy-system, but I had a job with some weird-ass hours, so I just went ashore by myself, whenever the frak I wanted, and nobody said anything to me.

There was a wide plaza up from the waterfront that was called "the Ramblas", or something like that. It was sort of like being on a street with a median that was 100 meters wide; there were outdoor cafes along it. The entertainment was limited to people-watching, which on at least one occasion, included watching some dude slap his girlfriend around until the Guardia Civil showed up and hauled him off.

The Guardia wore some goofy-looking black lacquered hats that looked like pillboxes with a flat piece behind them. Some of the Guardia carried submachine guns. The Police Militare also patrolled the streets and they had SMGs of some flavor. Word was that only a fool messed with any of the Spanish cops.

A lot of the buildings had dark-grey stone facades. Whether the facades were that color because of decades of smoke or that was the natural color, I never knew. When I looked up at the buildings, especially on the side streets, I could see pockmarks from bullet impacts, presumably from street-fighting during the Spanish Civil War.

So anyway, in my meanderings, I found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that, among other things, served half of a chicken, a big plate of steaming hot French fries and a beer for 250 pesetas which, if memory serves me correctly, was about three bucks American.

Maybe my taste buds had been hammered by the long- frozen French fries and blasted chicken that was standard fare in the Navy, but that fresh chicken and fries which that restaurant served up was unbelievably good. I made at least four trips to that little place and each meal was as good as the one before. I never saw anyone from any of the Navy ships in port then at that place and I kept my mouth shut, believe me.

Admin

In this case, it is not shorthand for "administration". An "admin" is a hotel room that is booked by all of the officers of a ship. It can serve as a crash pad or as a place to have a few drinks in private or as a place to change clothes or, if one is lucky, as a place to have a little quiet sex.

All of the officers chip in to pay for the cost of renting the admin for the duration of a port visit. The ones who make the most use of it are the no-loads in the Supply, Administrative and Operations departments. The officers in the Weapons department are usually neutral about it, as some may have the free time to use the admin and some may not. Generally, the engineers are against the whole idea, as they work longer hours both in port and at sea. Junior officers who are behind on completing their SWO qualification may also be against it.

Usually those who are against it get out-voted during the wardroom meeting. After several of those, the engineers can (and do) develop hard feelings about it.

"No Jews Allowed"

This story took place in the early 1970s. A Knox-Class FF, home ported in Norfolk, was on duty in the Persian Gulf. A port visit was arranged in Saudi Arabia. This was a big deal at the time.

The frigate pulled into port and made up to the pier. After the brow ("gangplank" to you landsmen) was rigged, three officers from the Royal Saudi Navy came aboard, accompanied by the U.S. Embassy's naval attache. They met with the ship's officers and the command master chief to give a port visit briefing. Those briefings were usually pretty much standard fare, focusing mainly on the "dos and don'ts" for a port visit.

During the briefing, a conversation along these lines took place:

Saudi Officer: "Captain, do you have any Jews in your crew?"

CO: "Yes, a few. Why do you ask?"

Saudi Officer: "You will have to restrict them to your ship."

CO: "Why?"

Saudi Officer: "Jews are not allowed to set foot in the Kingdom."

CO: "I see. XO, make preparations to get underway. Engineer, begin preps to light off the second boiler, let the XO know when you expect it to be ready."

XO, Cheng: "Aye, aye, sir."

Saudi Officers, Naval Attache: "Wait, wait, what are you doing, why?"

CO: "I'm not going to restrict anybody to the ship because of their faith. Everyone goes ashore or nobody goes ashore. And if nobody can go ashore, then there is no reason for my ship to be here. So we're getting underway as soon as we can."

The Saudi officers conferred and then ran off the ship to make some phone calls. Within an hour, the Saudis dropped their demand that Jews be restricted to the ship. The port visit went ahead. Not that a port visit in a country with no liquor, bars or discos was any great treat to the crew. As one sailor was said to have put it: "If all I fucking wanted to fucking see was fucking sand and fucking camels, I could have fucking gone to the fucking San Diego Zoo."

Alcohol

I've written before about the peculiar dry status of Navy ships. This post is about the use of alcohol away from the ships.

Decades ago, it was considered almost an indicator of how good a time a sailor or naval officer had ashore if he came back to the ship knee-knocking,puke-stained drunk.A certain amount of rowdiness was expected from drunken sailors (officers, even if drunk, were expected to maintain some decorum). "He got blasted like a real sailor" was one way to put it. I saw sailors come back so drunk that they were lashed, face-down, into Stokes litters, which were then secured into the overhead near the Quarterdeck, so that the Petty Officer and Messenger of the Watch could keep an eye on them.

The sailor who was the Duty Corpsman in a liberty port could pretty much expect to get no sleep. If the ship was anchored out (using boats to send liberty parties to and from the beach), it would not be unusual to have at least one clown break a limb during a port visit from falling down the accommodation ladder from the main deck to the boat.

Things started to change in the latter half of the 1970s. Drunken sailors ashore in foreign ports-of-call were creating incidents that the State Department was getting tired of having to smooth over. In some ports, the local cops took a very dim view of drunken shenanigans and some sailors would up being extended guests of the local criminal justice systems.

The word went out: Crack down. Ships who had reportable incidents would end up having liberty for sailors and shore leave for officers curtailed. No ship captain wanted to be told by the group commander or the fleet commander that the entire ship was on "cinderella liberty" (everyone had to be back aboard by midnight).

The next crackdown was on drunken driving. But first, a little bit of a discourse on procedure:

Whenever there was a serious accident or death, two parallel investigations were commenced. One was a safety investigation to find out what happened and what could be learned from it. The other was a "JAGMAN" investigation, usually conducted by a line officer and conducted in accordance with the Manual of the Judge Advocate General (hence the name). JAGMAN investigations were more concerned with fixing responsibility so that appropriate disciplinary action could be taken.[1]

The two investigators (or teams) did not talk to each other, though both often reported the results of their investigation to the same convening authority. Theoretically, not cooperating with the safety investigation was a chargeable offense, there was no right to remain silent. (One did have rights when interviewed for the JAGMAN investigation.) In the event of an accident, there were three findings that determined benefits: In the line of duty; not in the line of duty and not due to one's own misconduct; and not in the line of duty, due to one's own misconduct.

The fixes were these: First, it was decreed that any Commanding Officer, Executive Officer or Command Master Chief who was charged with DWI would be immediately relieved of their jobs. That effectively meant the end of one's career.

The second "fix" was if someone was injured or killed in a drunk driving accident because that person had been drinking, a finding of "not in the line of duty, due to one's own misconduct" was to be entered. The impact of that was that the Navy could go after the injured sailor to recover the costs of treating him. If the sailor was killed while driving drunk then the finding would mean no survivor's pension from the Navy.

There were also moves to de-emphasize the serving of liquor at Navy clubs, but I don't know how effective those were. Alcohol was a serious profit center for the clubs and no doubt the clubs fought back.

But regardless, the day of heavy intoxication being accepted was drawing to a close.

[1] The investigation of a death in which criminal charges would be brought was normally performed by local law enforcement or the Naval Investigative Service (when they could be freed up from their usual duties of investigating the break-ins of ship's stores or busting druggies and gays).