Here’s my take on all my old Navy ships sent to the bottom: No matter how deep she lies, in how many parts, the echo of me and my shipmates still pass along her decks and in her honeycomb of passageways, along with the currents and fishes… salt water still runs thru her veins, and her end is well deserved and peaceful.
I’d rather see her spray up a plume of bubbles and foam, noisily waving “Good-Bye!” thru fire and smoke…than see some picture of her in a Texas mud ditch, being hacked up by non-squids for a paltry palm-ful of pennies.
A hill in the Hiep Duc Valley of South Vietnam became the site of a ferocious battle between an estimated four hundred men of the North Vietnamese Army and eighteen Americans, sixteen Marines and two Navy corpsmen.
That hill was known to the American military as Hill 488, and to the Vietnamese, it was known as Nui Vu Hill. By the end of 18 June 1966, the hill took on a different name…“Howard’s Hill.”
Eighteen men of Charlie Company, 1st Recon Battalion, 1st Marine Division snaked their way to Hill 488 in the on 13 June 1966, to observe and report information concerning the large presence of two divisions of NVA soldiers and to call fire missions of artillery and air support on small elements.
As the men began to call fire missions over a period of two days, the North Vietnamese began to realize that they were being watched. The enemy determined that the men of First Recon had taken residence on Nui Vu Hill and they began an assault. The NVA crept slowly up the incline under the cover of darkness.
An American Marine spotted what looked to be a bush, realized they were being attacked, and opened fire. The battle began to rage at 2300 (11 pm) on 15 June 1966.
The Marines that occupied Hill 488 were defending a hilltop that was 25 feet at the widest point. Over time, the perimeter of the Marines slowly began to shrink due to those killed in action or wounded that were unable to fight.
The stress of being surrounded with only a few able-bodied men to fight became frustrating for the men that wanted to finish the fight and return to friendly lines.
The men began to fight back psychologicaly.
During one lull in fighting all the men began to laugh uproariously to let the enemy know that they had plenty of fight left. Later after the battle, some captured NVA enemy troops stated that the laughing of the unit had a devastating psychological impact on them.
As the night dragged on for the unit, their ammunition began to run low with each shot.
Gunny Jimmie E. Howard, leader of the recon team, knew that the men must conserve ammunition and instructed his men to throw rocks, which in the darkness seemed like grenades to the enemy.
The Vietnamese would move quickly from the thrown rock and the Marines would find their targets.
By morning, the Vietnamese withdrew and an American rescue force was able to break through to rescue the Marines.
In the end, only eight individual bullets remained. Six of the eighteen were killed in action. Each of the twelve remaining was wounded and only three could walk under their own power.
Gunny Howard was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon Johnson because of his brave leadership and courage while the men were surrounded.
First Platoon of Charlie Company, First Reconnaissance Battalion, First Marine Division, became the most highly decorated unit of its size.
Gunny Howard passed away on 12 November 1993 at his home in San Diego and was was buried in the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.
I remember going out to sea on deployments that would last at least half a year. Civilians have no idea of how this wears on the mind. They think being kept from restaurant meals is the end of civilization.
It’s a mind-bending thing, living on a navy ship. You lose all the normal references. There are no days or nights; there is no ‘place’ whatever. There is no soil, no grounding, no scenery, no direction. There is only an undulating line dividing water and sky, or water and stars, or no line at all. You stand a watch, partially awake. You sleep and dream of standing watch. You perform drills like a drowsy puppet, return to work or to sleep or to watch, or perhaps eat. They call the meals their proper names but you take them in the middle of a timeless dream. You forget to be hungry, forget when to bathe, forget the last time you wandered, loved, sat by yourself.
You become crazy. It’s best to accept it. You assign new meanings to ordinary words. You enlarge details of your world like a prisoner. Insignificant things take on absurd criticality. You arrange your few possessions and shine your shoes as if these were the most important duties on earth. You listen to the same song for days, then to another, their lyrics becoming a dramatic summation of your life, or an order from god. When you shave the black hollows of your eyes stand out above the lather like mine shafts in a snowfield. You talk too much, in a voice that becomes a mumble over time, or go silent and only think you are talking. You write unfortunate letters.
Watch follows watch until at last the scent of land interrupts and you are rudely thrust ashore for a few chaotic hours. But there was nobody you knew in that foreign port and it wasn’t home. You were only drunk and asleep in long stretches and then it was time to get underway.
Toward the end of a long cruise you have adapted to this confinement. Perhaps you read. Perhaps you play a lot of poker. Perhaps you recede into yourself and simply hibernate. The best thing is not to imitate land-life but to let work and watch set your routine. Nostalgia will kill you. It’s best to live in the still moment between heartbeats.
The hour of return arrives. The pier swarms with total strangers, people who you have either altered beyond recognition or forgotten to reduce sadness. In any event they will not be meeting the same man. They don’t know you and you don’t either. You will henceforth experience the world as a turbulent event between cruises. Eventually you will look to the cruise as relief from the land-life. You will lock in the mindset quickly, abandon place and time, and float on that undulating margin until they won’t have you anymore.
In my ongoing attempt to homeschool my shipmates on Facebook, you know impart some knowledge to the uneducated Mother Fuckers, I daily post a simple (simple is all they understand) question on my FB timeline and like a monkey trying to fuck a football, they manage to screw it up.
Example: Two days ago I posted the following:
If any of my Shipmates have to Google this one, I will kick their asses next year in Branson:
There is a total of 20 time zones in the world.
A. Yes
B. No
An innocuous statement followed by a simple question with a choice of answers. If they REALLY did not know all they had to do was go to Google to discover that the answer is NO! But no, the Flat Earthers had to go explaining that there is only one time zone, and all local times don’t count. I considered that their minds were addled by years of listening to DIT DAHS and PINGS. But if one believes in one time zone then, by default, they must be Lifetime Members of the Flat Earth Society.
If there is only one time zone, how do the local bars and clubs know when to open?
Then, they got me suspended from Facebook. A couple of them doubled down on their Flat Earth nonsense about there being only one time zone and one overachiever pulled the number 37 out of his ass. I replied to them in my self-deprecating and humorous way that I would, “run your ass over with my four wheeled walker in Branson next year.”
That was when a humorless, genderless thing named Neanderthalic Troglodyte, a Facebook Fact Checker, checked the list it had written on its basement wall with the contents of its diaper and discovered that I had violated one of its core tenets and banned me for 24 hours.
Chicken feed shit! I have been banned by the best, BM1(Ret), manager of the Windjammer Petty Officer’s Club at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan. And much like the asshole Troglodyte at Facebook, BM1(Ret) did not appreciate my highly refined sense of humor either,
I remember one particular Sunday morning; my shipmates and I were on the way to religious services when we stopped at said club for refreshments. We over-refreshed and missed services. One enterprising First Class Stewburner decided to conduct a Southern Baptist Revival service. Things were going well, an RD2 had come forward during the alter call and was on his knees praying for forgiveness when BM1(Ret) came in and said, “Knock it off Davis, this is not the time and place for this.”
He became terribly upset when I told him, “Any time you can bring a soul to Christ is the right time and place.”
That was one of the four times he banished me from the club for life.
Another lifetime ban was the evening I brought a Streetwalker into the Asshole Locker to measure and adjudicate a dispute between two drunk sailors who were arguing about which one had the shortest dick.
So, fuck you Facebook, I have been banned by better (though barely) than you.
And, if you think I am going to post this on Facebook, you are out of your rabbit-assed mind.
Tales of an Asia Sailor 