After departing Japanese waters three weeks ago; Carrier Division Seven had visited Manila in the Philippines, before conducting ‘shake down’ exercise in the Celebes Sea. There was talk of a ‘good will’ cruise down to Perth in Western Australia; Walter did not think that was very likely since relations between the Australian and New Zealand governments and the Kennedy Administration were still ‘strained’, according to the last letter he had received from his mother. She was in England now with Pa, and from what he gathered relations with the ‘old country’ were also somewhat ‘strained’ at present although Ma said she and ‘the Ambassador’ had already made a host of new friends ‘in Oxford’.
Half-a-dozen letters had caught up with Walter in Manila.
Gretchen Betancourt, whom he had once gently rebuffed, had sounded as if she was genuinely much more her old self. She had been very badly injured during the fighting in Washington DC in December; hurt in the explosion in which Under Secretary George Ball had died and later shot twice by insurgents. Not that she was the sort of girl to allow a little thing like that to keep her down for long. The only daughter of New England Democratic Party elder statesman Claude Betancourt — who had been the late Joseph Kennedy’s go to corporate litigator — Gretchen was a woman in a hurry. Notwithstanding she was hardly back on her feet and in no way fully recovered from her injuries she was, it seemed, now engaged to be married to Walter’s younger brother Dan, and about to start ‘defending’ the leaders of last year’s coup d’état!
As for Dan, according to Gretchen he had got himself a ‘nice little sinecure on the Warren Commission’. Dan had appended a short note to his fiancée’s long, chatty letter: ‘Try not to run the ship aground — we’ve only got the KH and the Independence until they fix the Enterprise and get the other big boats back to sea! Take care, big brother.’
The Brenckmann family was settling down; a second letter from Ma had conveyed the news that his kid brother, Sam and his girlfriend Judy had ‘tied the knot’ having produced a daughter, Tabatha Christa a fortnight or so before Christmas.
Gretchen’s letter had alluded to but largely brushed over the ongoing ‘situations’ in Chicago and the ‘mountains in the West’. However, she had not mixed her words about the ‘disgrace’ the ‘Administration has allowed to go unchecked in the South’. These were subjects that Walter knew little about and had passed over in his reply to the woman whom he had only met half-a-dozen times in his whole life but for whom, and with whom, he had formed a strange, possibly unbreakable affinity in the fateful December days before she went back to Washington DC, and very nearly died for her temerity. He was glad she was marrying Dan. Dan loved Gretchen in ways Walter knew he could not. Besides, Dan was in Gretchen’s thrall, and more than that Dan was the sort of ‘good man’ who would always be there for her when she needed him most.
Having served most of his career in the Navy in submarines where one never told anybody anything about proverbial ‘diddly squat’, it was a joy to be onboard the Kitty Hawk, and for the while at least, a part of the ‘visible’ Navy. This had enabled him to write back admitting that he was on the ship that he was actually onboard, actually naming places he had been and even sharing one or two pieces of harmless service gossip about his actual duties.
“ADMIRAL ON DECK!”
Every man snapped to attention as Rear Admiral William Bringle strode down the avenue of officers accompanied by the Kitty Hawk’s commanding officer, Captain Horace Epes.
Fifty year old Bringle had been the carrier’s first captain, commissioning the Kitty Hawk three years ago to the day at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The US Navy like to do things in style, and everybody in the compartment realised that on the commissioning anniversary there was a real possibility that the Commander of Carrier Division Seven might be about to make a big announcement of some kind.
“Stand easy, gentlemen.”
There were over a hundred and seventy officers, forty percent of them naval aviators from the Kitty Hawk’s Air Group, crushing into the Wardroom with latecomers arriving all the time, since the summons had been sudden and without any prior warning.
Bringle, the Tennessee born Commander of Carrier Division Seven had graduated from Annapolis in the class of 1937. His first ship had been the Saratoga; thereafter he had trained as a naval aviator at Pensacola. At the time of Pearl Harbour he had been CO of Cruiser Scouting Squadron Two operating off the cruisers Omaha (CL-4) and Savannah (CL-42). Later in the Second World War he had been involved in the invasion of Southern France in 1944, and the latter stages of the Pacific War, flying off the escort carriers Wake Island (CVE-65) and Marcus Island (CVE-77). He was the holder of the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre, had been CAG — Commander Air group — on the fleet carriers Tarawa (CV-40) and Philippine Sea (CV-47) before a spell as Executive Officer of the Hornet (CV-12) in 1953. Successively Head of the Operational Intelligence Branch of the Chief of Naval Operations staff and then Personal Aide to the Secretary of the Navy; he had been a shoe-in to command the Kitty Hawk in 1961, and his promotion to Rear Admiral in 1962 just before the October War, inevitable.
Walter Brenckmann had learned to recognise the type, the sort of driven, utterly competent, reliable leaders of men who naturally gravitated to the top of the service. Brindle was one of those guys. When he entered a room everybody knew he had arrived; and when he was about to say something you knew, you just knew, that you needed to be listening with every sinew of your being.
The Commander of Carrier Division Seven took the microphone.
“I’ll keep this short and sweet, gentlemen,” he declared. “You will have heard the Commander-in-Chief’s address to the nation last weekend in which he outlined the Administration’s ‘America First’ foreign and military stance under which the strategic interests of the homeland, and specifically the defence of and the economic wellbeing of the Union will heretofore be the primary ‘guiding light’ of the remaining months of President Kennedy’s term in office. In the last twenty-four hours the Navy Department has issued the following orders to all ships and sea and shore establishments.”
Walter Brenckmann wondered if he was about to hear that the ‘peace dividend’ u-turn was about to be reversed, again. That the Navy was to halt its re-mobilization and that the big carriers and cruisers were not after all to be retrieved from mothballs and sent back to sea. It would be the ultimate betrayal of the service but not entirely any kind of surprise given recent history.
“This is to inform all serving personnel in the US Navy that the ships listed for return to service under ordnance January/Re-activation/010364 will return to service as per the plans drawn up by the Department.”
Okay, there was going to be no immediate u-turn.
“Operations. General. All ships at sea and shore establishments will assume the lowest state of alert DEFCON FIVE until further notice or unless specifically warned to assume a higher state of readiness.”
The Administration had had a big bust up with the British over what was going on in the Middle East but nobody was reaching for their guns right now. Walter Brenckmann breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“Ongoing operations. Subject: Naval Operations against forces of the former Soviet Union and or, affiliated or co-belligerent forces. In the Mediterranean Sea current rules of engagement remain unchanged; that is, US Sixth Fleet will continue its peace keeping mission in support of the British Royal Navy and may at discretion of CINCMED take such pre-emptive aggressive action as is necessary to protect Sixth Fleet ships and vessels in company with same.”