Transit barracks and new alliances.

There’s a port on a western bay

and serves a hundred ships a day

Lonely sailors pass the time away

And talk about their homes

And there’s a girl, in this harbor town,

And she…

That was as far as the song got before a sailor laid aside his pool cue, strode over to the communal radio, and disgustedly snapped it off.  Romanticized versions of Navy life as envisioned by hippie musicians do not play well in a building filled with bored and irritable sailors.

It was my second day at the transit barracks.  I’d just come off of 30 day leave following a 15-month deployment to the Naval Communication Station at Finegayen Guam in the Marianas Islands.  It was great to be stateside again and it was with some anticipation that I awaited the arrival of my first ship, the destroyer U.S.S. Dehaven.  I was literally “waiting for my ship to come in”.

The Dehaven was out on a two-week reserve training cruise and I had arrived at the Naval Station Long Beach, the Dehaven’s homeport, midway through that cruise.  Upon reporting for duty at the Naval Station I was apprised of the situation and assigned a bunk in the transit barracks to await the return of my new ship.

A transit barracks is an earthly manifestation of limbo, or perhaps more like a very pleasant jailhouse, a jailhouse where the inmates can come and go as they please and order in pizza.  A sailor in transit, if clever, has no duties while in that status, unless, of course, that sailor carelessly announces his presence to the notice of the Master-at-Arms (MAA) the arbiter of law and order in a division or transit barracks setting.  The plan of the canny sailor is to evade being placed upon the MAA’s watch bill, that roster of unfortunates which assigns specific duties to those enrolled upon it.  Generally, a clever sailor can avoid the shackles of the watch bill by spreading the word that he is scheduled for oral surgery.  When morning roll is called and the MAA enquires “Where’s Smith?”  more than one witness will attest to Smitty’s preexisting medical/dental commitment, and generally the matter will be dropped until the following morning.  Usually, after two or three days of this, the elusive Smiths’ ship has come in and he affects his escape from the domain of the MAA, however, such  evasion grows increasingly difficult with the length of incarceration in the transit barracks.

(embiggen through clickage)

Characteristically, it behooves shirkers to stay away from the barracks during working hours, say eight in the morning to four in the afternoon.  Beyond four-thirty the coast is clear and all the prodigals return; swelling the ranks of the barracks residents considerably.  The evening is consumed in going to and returning from the mess hall, watching television, drinking ripple, or smoking tobacco or weed;  sleeping the hours away like stateless nomads, refugees in flight, orphans with nasty habits.

  

The very transient nature of the denizens of the transit barracks is not conducive to forming friendships, or in tipping one’s hand to any great degree regarding personal status or situation.  That’s sort of the jailhouse mentality part of the transit barracks.  However, if you run across another sailor who’s reporting to the same ship as you, that’s an entirely different story.  The two of you, now shipmates,  instantly bond into an unbreakable alliance against all “those other assholes”.   Find a shipmate in transit and it can be very “smooth sailing” indeed.

My shipmate, Rick, was just as glad to find me as I him.  Seems he had broken his glasses, quite severely, one lens was missing and the other was haphazardly held together with a band-aid.  He was a steward, essentially an officer’s valet and cook “I think I’m the only white steward in the fleet” was his bewildered self assessment.  I think he may have been quite right. 

(Rick the steward, lower right)

Rick and I joined forces on that second day and managed to form a fine alliance to get us through the remaining two days of our incarceration.  We’d watch each other’s belongings when one or the other had to leave the building,   we’d take turns making frequent calls to the harbor master’s shack inquiring as to the status or imminent arrival of the Dehaven, and we’d take turns providing each other with plausible alibi’s to explain each other’s absence at morning muster.  We were a working model of how to successfully navigate the rocks and shoals of the transit barracks milieu, a living embodiment of the phrase “shipmates stand together”.  A lone wolf in a transit barracks, a county lock-up, or a family reunion is the picture of vulnerability, easy pickings for the sharks and maiden aunts that patrol such places, shipmates, however are invincible in their unity.

On the fourth day, our deliverance, like Ricks new lenses, was at hand and we were summoned to the MAA’s office with the news that the Dehaven was clearing the breakwater and would be tying up at piers 17 and 18.  After delivering this welcome news, the MAA surveyed both of our faces and enquired, “How long have you two jokers been aboard my barracks?”  Rick swiftly replied for both of us;

“Just got in last night chief”.

Shipmates, stand together!

p.s.
For a really accurate depiction of the transit barracks lifestyle, check out the outstanding Jack Nicholson film, "The Last Detail".

Navy Odessy: how not to get killed

 How can you tell when an old sailor is lying?

his lips are moving.

Sometimes that's true but here's a tale from the high-seas that happened to me when I was a young sailor-boy on the USS Dehaven back in 1972.

Here I am on the good old Dehaven (DD-727) a Sumner class destroyer from World War Two.  It was a fine old ship with quite a  remarkable combat record.

Be patient, this will get more interesting as you go along.

The Dehaven

What a beautiful ship.  Note the gun-mounts forward (toward the pointy part)  each contains two five-inch guns.  They can hurl a 55-lb projectile up to ten miles or so with great accuracy. You can imagine that to achieve such a feat the gun must be complicated, well-engineered, and HEAVY

Here, Charlie Boothroyd stands at the rear of one of the guns, the sliding breach-block.  It weighs a couple of tons, and when the breech "clicks" shut the gun fires and the  block instantly (instantly) recoils about three feet rearward as the empty shell casing is ejected.  So you certainly would not want to be standing behind it when it fires, right?

Although I was a Radioman on the Dehaven, I found myself working in the forward five inch gun mount for a couple of weeks.  It was normally the battle station of the lowest ranking radioman on the ship.  Unfortunately he, and the next lowest guy were both on leave, so I was called down to fill in.  

At first I was down in the handling room sending projectiles and powder casings up into the mount.  The handling room is a small piece of hell on earth, where you try  to keep your balance on a greasy, moving deck, trying to not get your fingers crushed as you manhandle heavy projectiles from the magazine elevator into the ready racks and chain hoists which run them to the gun above. 

Sounds like fun, right?  Right.

As we were firing, from the small hatch above, appeared the grimy face of one of the gunner's mates up in the mount. While he was shouting the type of ammo to send up he spotted me, or actually, the petty officer insignia on my sleeve (the "crow") and inquired

"Hey a**hole, what the f@#k are you doing down there!?  You're a godd%##ed petty officer, get up here with us."

Seeing this as a welcome reprieve I  gratefully scrambled up the narrow ladder through the scuttle above and  emerged into the ear-splitting, bone shuddering, deafening, reeling and jolting world of the gun house.

My gunner's mate deliverer, realizing I'd never been in a mount before, gave me the simplest possible job - that of the "hot shell man".  Handing me one asbestos glove (instead of the required two) a glove, may I add, that had a large hole burned through the palm, and instructed me on my new job.

As the hot empty shell casings were ejected from the breach I was to grab them and toss them out a little scuttle that got them outside, out our way and out from underfoot.

They would pile up on the deck outside the gun mount.  Sometimes, after a sustained period of firing,  there would be hundreds of them out there, rolling back and forth with the motion of the ship

About ten guys worked the mount.  It was so noisy that the only communication was done with hand signals;  hand signals like the one I gave to the guy indicating that a casing had been lodged below the mount, impeding the elevation.  I gave him the "finger across the throat" signal and indicated the jammed casing.  He grinned, nodded, and gave me the "thumbs-up".  The fact that he'd been toking reefer all morning had some bearing on what happened next.

As I bent down, head behind the giant breech block, remember? the breech block that instantly hurtles rearward the moment the breach "clicks" shut and the gun automatically fires?  Yeah, that breech block.

Despite the smoky assurance of my shipmate of the "thumbs-up" signal, I heard that most frightening sound...

You know what happens at the click.

Instantly I felt myself flying backward; two huge, powerful, hands at my belt providing a jarring jerk clear of the breech block.

 

It all happened in the blink of an eye. I watched as the breech block rocketed before my eyes, filling the space where my head had been an instant before.

The guy who insured my continued future was a gunner's mate who I only ever knew as "Cracker".  A greasy, portly, and altogether unkempt sailor who was, for me, the man of the moment.

As I thanked him profusely, he shrugged it off with " You're lucky that was the last shot or I'd have been too busy to bother"

The guy with the bowl haircut: "Cracker"

And that's how I helped to defeat the commies.

Mannie

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Burt School, Mrs. Robertson, and the end of the steam era

I have always loved a particular little brick building I Burt Michigan.  Burt Elementary School housed grades K-2 when I attended in the late 1950s, and it was less than a decade before that the school was K-8, all in one little building...then came the Baby Boom and directly across the road was build the "new school" of three more rooms, grades 3-8.

The old school two big classrooms, one on each side of the building, and a third middle-sized room directly beneath the stubby bell-tower.

There was also a mysterious furnace-room in the rear of the kindergarten room, that was forbidden territory, though I did get a glimpse through the door once when the Boo Radley-like custodian was getting a shovel or something.

The building was surrounded by a huge "playground"...all grass and huge hardwood trees, mostly maple and oak. That custodian would rake up mountainous heaps of leaves that he'd let us play in before he burned them (I wonder if he checked for stray kids).

About two-hundred yards from the kindergarten side were the tracks of the C&O Railroad; a huge wall of windows faced those tracks. Twice a day the steam locomotive went barreling through and all of us would rush the windows to watch the spectacle. It was a regular thing...our dear Mrs. Robertson didn't even try and restore order, she knew that there was nothing so compelling as a locomotive with all of the smoke and steam and the long shrill whistle...usually she was at the window with us.

In second grade we were in the opposite side of the building, and sometime during that year, C&O switched over to all diesel, the end of the steam era in our area. 

I'm glad that I have the memory of twice-daily experiences with steam locomotives, and of a much beloved teacher.