Lt. Collins’ Flag Day Speech (from “The Sand Pebbles”)

“Today we begin cruising to show the flag on Tungting Lake and the Hunan Rivers. I want all honors rendered smartly.

At home in America, when today reaches them it will be Flag Day. For us who
wear the uniform every day is Flag Day.

Our Story

By:  Garland Davis

“May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends,
And many books, both true.”
― Abraham Cowley

The greatest thing about reunions, whether they be of ships, associations, crews, or WestPac sailors is the opportunity to renew friendships with old shipmates and find the old, long forgotten memories of a time when the future was something that would take care of itself.   We all had dreams and plans to become a Master Chief like the one we admired or to leave the Navy, get rich and marry a beautiful girl and we would live forever.  Reunions have a way of deep-sixing that bullshit. The wives have kept their youthful good looks, but your old shipmates have taken on a load of barnacles and appear to have missed a few yard periods.

So you end up with a bunch of old farts wearing “I am a Veteran” t-shirts and Navy Retired ball caps who spend a hell of a lot of time swilling beer and saying shit like,

“Hey, any of you remember the pretty boy Radioman from the old Dicky B. Anderson?  I can’t think of his name… You know the one that the bar girl in Kaoshung fell in love with.  Skinny kid…Called him Lover Boy after that.  He had that old three wheeler in Yoko…Couldn’t bring it on base.  He used to pay the Mama-san of a bar down by Shiori Station to let him park it in her alley.”

“Yeah, I remember him… Can’t remember his name… We called him ‘Sparks’… Good kid… Always good for a loan until payday.”

That’s the only kind of immortality worth a shit … Old shipmates remembering the good times from a time long gone.  Hell we were all idiots.  We went to sea and to a war, in old rusty craft, built for and worn out in a couple of earlier wars.   Moreover, there is not a son of a bitch amongst us who would not do it again.

We never gained that level of sophistication that other folks who had far less international travel experience had or pretended to have.

Wine is a good example. Most of the stuff we imbibed came with a screw cap and was vintage “Last Tuesday.”  It usually tasted like the waste from a pulp paper plant and actually tasted better when you puked it back up. Not one of us ever had a corkscrew… If a bottle of wine had a cork, you drove the son of a bitch into the bottle with a Phillip’s screwdriver and watched it float around until you had drained the jug’s contents.

Have you guys ever had the duty and shared a cup of coffee, that was fortified with something questionable that a shipmate had picked up ashore and smuggled aboard?  How many of you have ever brewed or attempted to brew shaft alley beer, raisin jack, lower level wine, and etc. to actually come up with a product that either worked as you expected, made you sick, or gave you the shits?  Hell we drank stuff that they cannot even make today. Anyone answering in the negative will probably grow a larger nose.

A benefit that the modern Navy has that we didn’t is the Surgeon General’s Warning… You know, the one that says, “This Shit Will Kill You”, on the label.  Hell, it was a crapshoot.  We found out what would kill you by dying.

Another thing…Second hand fucking smoke.  The smoke at the evening movie in the mess decks got so thick that you could hardly see the screen. We didn’t give a shit about a little smoke.  We lived in an environment filled with high-pressure water and, steam lines, electrical cables. We lived on an unstable platform that could suddenly heel over.  Our home was made of metal and was floating in water.  The dumbest son of a bitch in the world knows that steel doesn’t float.

At reunions, you recall all that stuff with men you shared it all with… No one else would believe it and if they did, they wouldn’t care. That is why writing this shit is so much fun. It’s a shame that there wasn’t someone with the proper writing skills to write it how it happened instead of some old Stewburner writing it as he remembers it.  We lived in a special time.  There was still a sense of professionalism and camaraderie among us.  We loved our ships and our lives.  Of course we bitched about the things we were required to do, but in hindsight would do it all again and in the same way. I guess someone could say that we never did anything spectacular…We know we did our jobs… Better than anyone other than us will know.

Was riding worn out haze gray steel out on the rim, fouling fishing nets, wearing out barstools, scaring fish, fighting one war and training for another that we never had to fight worth all we did.

Well, we were the ones who did it. No one made us…No one came to get us… No one drug us out of polite society forced us to do it. We were all volunteers and it was often shitty duty… That’s a truth. We kept our ships and our equipment serviceable… We did our jobs and were a proud group… We served with men we came to respect deeply. We all may be dumber than a Pop Tart but we can still recognize damn fine men when we see them.

It would be great if someone wrote our story, not as a Cold War or Viet Nam story but as a tribute to the life we lived and the happy-go-lucky bunch, we were. The days before the Navy became managed instead of led, before the new “book taught” and “leadership school” professionalism took away the life we lived and loved.  Now the only ones we can share our stories and experiences with are old beached sailors like ourselves and broken down, over the hill bar girls. It’s a fuckin’ shame.

A long time ago.  We were young… That’s fuckin’ it! We were young.

To follow Tales of an Asia Sailor and get e-mail notifications of new posts, click on the three white lines in the red rectangle above, then click on the follow button.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

This one has been around the internet for awhile.

Garland

“WHAT IS A VIETNAM VETERAN?”

By Dan Mouer-written in 1996

A college student posted a request on an internet newsgroup asking for personal narratives from the likes of us addressing the question: “What is a Vietnam Veteran?” This is what I wrote back:

Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.

Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit–or a great bit–closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, tough. All in a day’s work. Life’s a bitch then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, sad.

We are crazies dressed in cammo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless.

We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world.

We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate cloroquine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships’ berths at sea.

We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us.

Mostly–and this I believe with all my heart–mostly, we wish we had not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of “the world,” shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egoized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.

And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn’t been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands.

Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different–what makes us Vietnam vets–is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. But we appreciate your asking.

Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray; but in comparison with our numbers in the “real world,” we were more likely black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese.

We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change…or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows and houseboats and hooches and ranchers. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.

Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but never would be the same.

We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians and Buddhists and Atheists–though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.

We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want, desperately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror. Or we want never to see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could remember.

Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don’t know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask “what’s wrong?” We’re afraid we might have to answer.

Adam, if you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get in your car next weekend or cage a friend with a car to drive you. Go to Washington. Go to the Wall. It’s going to be Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there…no, thousands. Watch them. Listen to them. I’ll be there. Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. I will. I’m a Vietnam Veteran; and, after 30 years, I think I am beginning to understand what that means.

The Raid

By:  Garland Davis

He was awakened about three in the morning by the sound of his dogs barking, car motors running, and car doors slamming.  He could hear talking and the sound of someone giving orders.  He saw the flashing of red and blue lights reflecting off the trees in the front yard.  He was at the tobacco barn down behind the house….curing out the last of this year’s tobacco.

It was a raid…looking for white likker.  He was glad that he had hidden his stock yesterday.  He fumbled around for the pint bottle he had been drinking from last night to make sure it was empty.  A good swallow left in it….enough to get a man twelve months on the Road Gang.  He screwed the cap off and poured it into the rain barrel at the corner of the barn, threw the empty bottle into a tobacco sled, and began moving toward the back of the house. He just hoped that the twelve half gallon jars hidden in the wooden box under the hog pen slop trough was safe. He could only hope that Old Ben from Stokes County had picked up the other twelve gallons from the culvert down by the creek.

A deputy sheriff came around the house, stopped and called his name asking, “Theodore, how ya doing’?  We’re lookin’ for white likker.  We hear tell you got a load yistidy. The shurff’s in the front and wants to talk to ya.”

“Ya heered wrong,” he answered, shaking his head.  “They ain’t no likker around here.  I don’t take no truck with people brangin’ no white likker around here.”

“Well, the shurff wants us to look around.  I see smoke from the barn.  You curing a barn of ‘bakker? Kinda late aint’ it?  Must be the last pulling o’ the year.”

“Yep, low grade leaves, might be worth a little.  Hit ain’t been too good this year.  Not ‘nuff rain then too much rain.  No good year fer bakker.  Lookin’ fer better nex’ year.”

The deputy, thanking his wife for talking him out of farming tobacco, said, “Well come on up front, tha sh’rff, hisself wants to ask you some thangs ‘bout that likker run you got yistidy.”

As he followed the deputy around the house, he thought to himself, “The sheriff himself is running this.  It must be getting close to election time.  He is looking for, either, a big bust or a big campaign donation.”  If they found the likker, it would mean eighteen months on the road gang.  If they didn’t, it would probably mean two or three hundred to his re-election fund.

As they turned the corner and started across the front yard, he could see Ernie Wiles, the rotund sheriff standing in the headlights of a car talking to a group of deputies.  He remembered pictures of a slimmer Ernie when he was a star picture for the Boston Baseball Team.  After he got too old to play, he came back to North Carolina and ran for county sheriff, a position he had successfully held for almost thirty years. The people in town were talking about naming the new baseball stadium after him.

“Thidore, boy.  Come over here and talk to me.” The sheriff said as Theodore walked across the yard.

“What kin I do fer ya?”, Theodore warily asked as he neared the Sheriff.

“Thidore, how’s bidness these days?”

“Tha t’bakker bizness’s not too good this year.  Not anuff rain at tha start a tha year and too much at tha end.”

“Boy, ah’m not talkin’ bout t’bakka.  I want ta know how tha white likker bidness is doing.  A ole boy told us that ya got a big drop off here yesterday.”

“Sumbody is telling ya wrong.  They ain’t no likker anywhere round here.  Like I told Stanly there, I don’t take with nobody branging any a that stuff ‘round my propity.”  He said.

“Well, boy.  I got a paper here signed by Judge Ledbetter saying that I can take a look around.  If you got any likker ‘round here, it ud a lot easier on ya if ya told us ‘bout it up front like. Save my depties plunderin’ through all yer stuff.”, The Sheriff said, watching closely for reaction.

“I jist ‘membered, Shurff.  There is a little bit of bonded in the kitchen that my Ole Woman was using to dose the youngin’s colds last winter.” He replied to the question, drawing a glare from the sheriff.

“All right boys.”, the sheriff addressed the deputies. “Let’s git at it.  Me an Thidore’ll set up here on tha porch.  Ya’ll got yer radios.  Jist give me a holler when ya finds it. Thidore, do ya got a chew of t’bakka.  We might as well set up here and chew some and talk a little politics.”

As the deputies started around the house, the dogs started barking and making runs at them.  The Chief Deputy said, “Wait.” Came back to the porch and said, Thidore ya better call them dogs off or one er more of ‘em’s likely to git shot.”

The sheriff said, “Thidore, go put ya dogs up fore some of them gets hurt.  Then come on back here and keep me company.

He followed the Chief Deputy around the house calling to the dogs to get into the dog lot.  He corralled all them and locked the door, making a mental note to build an underground hiding box under the dog’s water trough.  The deputy watched as he walked back to the front of the house.

“Thidore, where ya wife ‘n younguns? I don’t see them around and Billy Ray said that ain’t in tha house.”  The sheriff asked as Theodore rejoind him on the porch.

“My woman’s mama is bad off and they went down east to tha Sand Hills to see her.  Ah’m sposed to go soon as I git this barn a bakker cured and packed down. Looks bad fer her Mama.  I reckin I’ll be goin’ to a funeral.”

“Tell your woman that she has my condolences.  That time comes fer us all.  Thidore, tell me true.  Are my boys going to find anythang or do I have em  jist wastin’ time.”

“They ain’t going to find anything, Shruff.  I told ya they ain’t no white likker around here.

The Sheriff started at him for a minute, then picked up his radio, and said, “Cancel tha search boys.  They ain’t nothing’ to be found around here.  I do believe we got some bad information, boys.  Yall go on back to patrol and thank ya fer the effort.”

The sheriff and Theodore sat on the porch, leaned back on to the rear legs of the chairs and watched as the deputies made their way to their patrol units and drove away.  The Chief Deputy walked to the Sheriffs’s car and waited.  The Sheriff heaved to his feet and said, “Well I guess I’d better be goin’. Elections is coming up purty quick.  I hope I can count on ya for support.”

“I’ll drop a envelope off at ya office to hep with yer re-lection.”

“Don’t bother with money. I got all tha financin’ I need.  I got to have a few parties tho.  Two er three gallons at the usual place would be helpful.”

“I’ll see what I kin do”, Theodore said as the sheriff walked toward his car.

“You do that”, the sheriff said as he reached the car.  He opened the door, paused and said, “By tha way Thidore. How are ya pigs doing this year?

To follow Tales of an Asia Sailor and get e-mail notifications of new posts, click on the three white lines in the red rectangle above, then click on the follow button.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Silent Mentor

By:  David ‘Mac’ McAllister

The first day I saw him was my first morning at quarters on my first ship. He appeared from nowhere, addressed the senior Petty Officers and in a matter of minutes was gone. After the soon to become familiar, “No dope, go to work”, I asked a shipmate “who was that?”, he answered – “The Chief”.

Although a brief encounter, it had a lasting impression on this young boot. My only previous encounter with a Chief was in boot camp at San Diego, CA as he either tried to climb down my throat, kick my ass or both. This guy was cool, aloof and appeared to be above that sort of intimidation. Dressed in clean immaculately starched wash khaki, his uniform was completely unadorned by anything other than those gold fouled anchors with the silver USN on them. No ESWS pins in those days. No name tag, didn’t need one, everyone knew his name – Chief.

Particularly interesting was his shoes, highly polished brown navy regulation oxfords – but wait. Instead of laces, these shoes buckled on the side, reminiscent of a sword toting swashbuckler. As he walked the heels of those shoes clip-clopped along the steel decks of that old tin can with the staccato cadence of a Tennessee walking horse. I was soon to realize that the Chief dressed on the very fringe of regulations.

Over time. I saw him in every prescribed uniform and variations thereof. Dress Blues, immaculately tailored. The blouse was lined in bright red matching the bright red crow and hash marks. Always a quarter inch of French cuffs extended beyond the blouse sleeve stopped off with gold cuff links fashioned in the form of a destroyer four-bladed wheel. Whites, long before the days of double knit, so white and stiff I think you would have to punch him in the middle in order for them to give to allow sitting – NEVER A WRINKLE. Black, brown or white, always those buckle down shoes that announced his presence long before you saw him. Row after row of ribbons awarded for achievements during the Korean War as well as the Viet Nam conflict were ever present. On the rare occasion that his presence was needed in the main spaces he dressed in starched and pressed dungarees, khaki belt and combination cover with well-blackened boon dockers.

I saw very little of the Chief as a matter of routine, morning quarters, or an occasional passing on deck that was it. He never spoke to anyone other than the First class and occasionally to a second class. I believe the division officer had to put in a special request chit for a word with him. The scuttlebutt was that this guy was a Machinist Mate extraordinaire, a supervisory expert and enjoyed a notorious service reputation of being a good shit. His antics ashore were legendary.

Through watching him I learned that sailors belong on ships and ships belong at sea; however, when those ships are in port, sailors belong ashore. Under him, we all learned to work hard in order to have time to play hard. I also learned by watching the Chief that if you were an excellent performer and knew your job, that you could just about write your own ticket. Nobody messed with a professional sailor and that service reputation was everything. You wanted to be known as a good shit.

Over the course of two years that I served with him, the Chief probably didn’t say half a dozen words to me directly; however, being in this man’s silent presence gave me an excellent example of what I wanted to make of myself and my Navy career.

I often wonder what I would have done had I not been privileged to have served with the Chief. Moreover, are there examples like him hiding out there for today’s young impressionable sailors to emulate? For their own good and that of the modern Navy, I truly hope so.

David “Mac” McAllister a native of California, now resides in the Ozark Mountains of Southwest Mo. Having served in Asia for the majority of his 24-year Navy career, he now divides his time as an over the road trucker, volunteer for local veteran repatriation events and as an Asia Sailor Westpac’rs Association board member and reunion coordinator. In his spare time, he enjoys writing about his experiences in Westpac and sharing them online with his Shipmates.

Funny Man

By:  Garland Davis

In 1992, I left a fast food franchise that was sold to a mainland franchisee chain.  They were bringing in their own management teams and there was no place in their organization for me.  I had become disillusioned with the pettiness in the civilian corporate world and was not unhappy to move on.

I became sales manager for a now defunct Kona coffee farm and roaster.  We sold green and roasted Kona beans throughout the United States and Canada.  The job lasted about a year until the owners of the company were charged with fraud and money laundering.  It seems they had a mainland branch of the company, unknown to us in Hawaii, that was buying Costa Rican coffee, re-bagging it and marketing it as Kona.

Suddenly I was out of work.  I signed on as a contract instructor in the on base program for a local University.  I was teaching Micro and Macro Economics and Personnel management to military personnel at the various bases.  One evening, I had to have my car towed because of a starter problem.  I took a taxi home and was talking about the taxi business with the driver.  I liked what he was saying about the flexibility of schedules and the amount of money a driver could make.  I wasn’t crazy about teaching and decided to give driving a try.

I went for a physical and studied for the CDL(Taxi) test.  Part of the test was an oral exam where an applicant had to correctly answer questions about streets and routes, etc.  Took a couple of tries on the oral exam, but in July of ’93 I became a taxi driver.  I never looked back and enjoyed the hell out of the next twenty plus years.  I eventually ended up starting a taxi leasing company, but that is a story for another time.

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1993, about four in the morning, I was in Waikiki hoping to get a tourist load to the airport, when a portly gentleman flagged me on the main street through Waikiki.  I stopped and waited while he got into the car.

He asked, “Is there someplace we could get breakfast?”

As soon as he spoke, I recognized the voice.  I said, “Uncle Buck!”  I had John Candy in my cab.  I told him there was a Denny’s nearby.

He said, “Let’s go.  I’ll buy you breakfast.  I hate to eat alone.”

I try to be funny and I enjoy making people laugh.  John Candy and I hit it off.  I spent a pleasurable two hours with him laughing and joking.  He finally told me he had to go to a PR thing.  I dropped him at his hotel. I thoroughly enjoyed and treasure that two hours at Denny’s.

I was saddened a few months later when I learned of his death.

A truly funny man.

To follow Tales of an Asia Sailor and get e-mail notifications of new posts, click on the three white lines in the red rectangle above, then click on the follow button.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Mercy

By:  Garland Davis

Jerome Bates is a retired Master Chief Petty Officer.  I was there at his house for a combination fortieth anniversary and granddaughter’s birthday party when his world came apart. Jerry’s wife Elizabeth had been his high school sweetheart.  They were married while he was on leave from boot camp.

There were a couple of years where they were separated because there was no way he could establish a home and support a wife on a Fireman’s pay.  By the time he was advanced to Second Class Petty Officer and brought Elizabeth to San Diego there were three of them and another on the way.  Jerry did a couple of tours on ships from San Diego and a shore tour as an instructor. Jerry was a Chief Petty Officer when he was offered a forward deployed ship. His first inclination was to say no, but Elizabeth thought it would be interesting and good for the girls to live in a foreign country.  Besides the other wives had told her how cheap it was to live in Japan.

Jerry served tours on two ships in Japan and a shore tour on the Yokosuka staff of Commander Surface Forces WestPac.  His job required doing ship inspections and frequent trips to Subic Bay

I had served with Jerry in a couple of those forward deployed ships out of Yokosuka, Japan.  He was typical of many sailors who had a wife and family in Japan and a plethora of girlfriends in the other Asian ports.  Like all of us in the Yokosuka fleet, he had spent a great part of the time deployed while his wife raised four girls in Japan.  Jerry was a gregarious individual who like most of us played the field in Subic and pretty much stayed away from any steady involvement with any one girl.  Oh, we might spend the weekend with a girl but never more than that.

The ship Jerry and I were serving  in suffered a major engineering casualty and would be in Subic for about forty days while repairs were done.  He decided the best way to operate during the inport was to find a steady girl, buy her “steady papers” and shack up with her.  He figured it would save him money and give him a place to live off the ship.  He shopped around for a couple of days and settled down with a girl named Mercy Hernandez whom he met in a bar off Gordon Street.  He said she had a nice place to live, near the front gate. He would bring her to the CPO Club for dinner.  She was a pretty young girl, barely out of her teens.

Jerry’s forty-day shack job ended up as a nine-year affair.  He would write Mercy and she would be waiting for him each time the ship arrived.  I know he sent her money orders at other times.  Jerry ended up with a wife and family in Japan and a quasi-wife in the Philippines.  If you didn’t know he was married in Japan, you would have thought he was married in Subic. Jerry maintained his relationship with Mercy throughout the years he was stationed in the Asia Fleet.

Leaving the Far East, Jerry was assigned as Command Master Chief at a shore facility in San Diego after which he retired.  He was employed by a Government contractor in San Diego.  After a few years, the contractor offered him an executive position in Honolulu at Schofield Barracks and Pearl Harbor.  Jerry’s oldest daughter had married a sailor, who was now a Chief stationed aboard a Pearl Harbor ship and another daughter had been accepted at the University of Hawaii.  Jerry jumped at the job.  He and Elizabeth were happy to be near their daughters and perhaps the others could go to UH as they finished High School.

Sometimes late in the evening when we were drinking beer someone would ask Jerry what had happened to Mercy.  He always said that he didn’t know.  He said he had deliberately lost contact with her.  I never mentioned it to him or others, but after Jerry left for the states I was told that Mercy was pregnant and had gone back to the Province to have her baby. I don’t know if he knew.  I suspect he did.

The anniversary/birthday party was going well with over forty people at Jerry’s house.  The living and dining rooms were crowded with children playing games devised and supervised by the adults.  Most of the men were out in the patio and back yard near the bar and beer coolers while Jerry busied himself at the charcoal grill.

Elizabeth was replenishing the plates of snacks and crackers as Jerry’s youngest daughter came from the living room with a young teenaged mixed-race Filipina.

The daughter said, “Dad, this is Essie Hernandez, she goes to my school. She said she needs to talk to you.”

Jerry looked at her and asked, “What can I do for you, honey?”

There was a lull in the surrounding conversations as sometimes happens where there is a moment of silence as if everyone was listening for something.

The girl said very succinctly for everyone to hear, “My name is Esmerelda Hernandez. I have been searching for you since my Aunt and Uncle brought me to Hawaii after my mother died.  My mother was Mercy Hernandez.  She told me that you are my father.”

To follow Tales of an Asia Sailor and get e-mail notifications of new posts, click on the three white lines in the red rectangle above, then click on the follow button.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Fog

By Garland Davis

Midwatch orphan, slipping through the passageway,

Come to taste the delights of a horse cock midnight,

Hurry to the starboard wing, it’s almost time,

Nothing to see, stare into the white mist,

Maybe a light, report it, probably nothing,

The minutes drag, the fog thickens,

Close on to starboard, a gray ghost slips by,

The flagship, Inches away, as if in a dream.

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A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Roles in Life

By:  Garland Davis

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts, – William Shakespeare

The name I’ll use for her here is Maria.  That isn’t her real name, but the name I first knew her by.  Recently my wife and I were invited to a friend’s birthday party.  There was quite a crowd to celebrate his birthday.  Most were people we knew with few that were strangers. I saw her come through the patio door from the living room to the lanai.

I last saw her in 1987, the morning, I left Subic for the final time.  It had been twenty years.  She wore the two decades well and was still very pretty.  The years had been very good to her.  Our eyes met as we recognized each other.  We both waited as our host introduced us and we pretended to be strangers meeting for the first time. I didn’t want my wife to know about her any more than she wanted her husband to know about me. I have since run into her a number of times at different functions.  Her husband is a retired Bubblehead Chief and knows many of the same people as I do.

A number of weeks later, I had business at a dealer’s auction for used and repossessed cars.  I was buying cars for my taxi business. I won the bids on a couple of cars and afterward went to the cashier pay for my cars.  Maria was the cashier.  She took my money and as she handed me the receipt and the ownership documents for my cars she asked me to wait for a few minutes until she was finished.  She wanted to talk.

This is her story as she told it.  After I left Subic she met and married a First Class GM in late 1988. He was ordered to a ship out of San Diego in 1990.  For one reason or another, the relationship fell apart and they were eventually divorced in 1991.  Her sister had married a sailor in 1990 and was living in Hawaii.  She left the mainland and moved to Hawaii where she worked as a housekeeper in a Waikiki hotel.  She met the Bubblehead in 1994 and they were married in 1997.

As far as her husband and all her acquaintances knew, she had been an elementary school teacher in the provinces.  She had never been to Subic and, from the things she had heard, she thought it was a very sinful place.  Her husband thought she had met her first husband through a pen-pal network.

I see her from time to time.  She is very prim and proper.  A devout member of St. Joseph’s congregation, a member of the PTA, and active at the local Philippine Cultural Center.  A stalwart of the community.

When I knew the girl, she could do more tricks with six inches of dick than a monkey can with twelve feet of grapevine.

To follow Tales of an Asia Sailor and get e-mail notifications of new posts, click on the three white lines in the red rectangle above, then click on the follow button.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.