Washington’s larger-than-life grin brought the house down. The entire well deck broke out in a roar of laughter followed by a few catcalls. “Hey, Sparky! Workin’ on them batteries, are ya?” Then, with an embarrassed grin, even Corporal Washington started laughing.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN the Marines and our Navy hosts became strained. One afternoon we ran into a major storm that pushed the tenuous Navy-Marine relationship to the breaking point. As the seas grew increasingly rough, we quit work and went back to our berthing areas. Scores of queasy men showed signs of seasickness. Then the PA system barked, “All Marines go below and dog down your tanks.”
On a rolling ship, a loose fifty-two-ton object becomes a serious threat. Fearing that the tanks might shift around in the well deck, the Navy wanted us to add additional chains, the better to secure them. We put on our foul-weather gear and reported onto the main deck, into the teeth of a driving rain. The Thomaston seemed to be rocking more than you would expect for a ship of her size. Later I learned that an LSD has a flat bottom, denying her the ability to right herself as she took on ocean swells, thus accentuating the ship’s movement.
All the tank crews were bent over the rail, staring down into the ship’s cavernous middle. Not one of us moved. Fifty feet below, our tanks swayed with each swell, straining against the chains. Suddenly—as if one had fired a main gun—a chain exploded and went flying across the well deck.
We all looked at each other, waiting for somebody to make the first move to go below. No one was that stupid.
A minute later, another chain below us let go. “All Marine personnel, go below,” the PA system repeated the same announcement, “and dog down your tanks immediately!”
Another chain flew across the well deck. Twenty tank crews looked down into the mayhem, then back at each other. No one budged.
Our commanding officer, Captain Morris, came out among us. “What’s the problem?” he wanted to know. “Why aren’t you going down as ordered?” Then he saw why. “Stay put,” he told us and strutted off toward the ship’s bridge.
Five minutes later, we saw dozens of the ship’s crew running through the well deck, dragging heavy chains behind them.
Later, we learned that our CO and the ship’s captain hadn’t seen eye-to-eye about whose responsibility it was to secure the tanks. The Navy captain—equivalent in rank to a Marine colonel—demanded that the Marines go below to tend to the tanks because his ship was in danger. The Marine CO countered that he wasn’t sending any of his men down there, that the Navy was responsible for chaining down its cargo. Fortunately, no sailor was injured down there that stormy afternoon—if the Navy didn’t hate us before, they sure did now.
Even so, evenings aboard ship were filled with monotony. Writing letters didn’t make much sense because they wouldn’t be mailed until we reached Vietnam—and no one had yet sighted the mail buoy! We were getting restless. We wanted this cruise to end.
Did I say “cruise”? What a ludicrous, misleading naval term for a floating jail, with us as its prisoners! With boredom coming out of our asses, we couldn’t understand how the squids could stand living on a ship. All they seemed to do was chip paint. Twenty or more squids would stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hammers in hand, banging on the side of a bulkhead knocking off the paint. Then someone would come along and paint the bulkhead again. When the squids weren’t chipping paint, they were tying pretty rope designs around the hand railings to afford a better grip. We Marines saw that for what it really was—busy work.
Some evenings, they showed a movie in the mess hall, which held only about eighty people—a fraction of those on board. Two weeks of boredom made for pushing and shoving as men tried to get in. By the third week, though, we were bored enough to just listen to the movie without seeing a single frame. What’s more, we came away satisfied!
Those Marines not listening to the movie gathered on the Thomaston’s stern to have a cigarette, because smoking below decks was forbidden. Still others got lost staring at the turquoise trail of phosphorescent foam stretching for miles behind the ship. It was the most peaceful time of day, and it gave us a chance to check on Heckle and Jeckle, who we’d picked up on our third day out of California.
It was the first time most of us saw an albatross. What was so remarkable was their effortless ability to fly without flapping their long, thin wings. The graceful U-2’s of the bird world, Heckle and Jeckle cruised about a hundred feet behind us—catching the air currents as the ship plowed through the sea—for the entire voyage. I don’t think either bird flapped its wings more than six times across the entire Pacific Ocean.
I wished I had actually read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” one of my many missed assignments in high school English. All I could remember was that a seaman killed an albatross and had to wear it around his neck forever. For what purpose, I couldn’t remember, nor could I recall what made the bird in the poem so special—but according to the squids, albatrosses were a good omen.
We were only a couple of days from our destination just as well, because this “cruise” had gone on way too long. Another tanker—I’ll call him Joe—and I planned a last act of defiance, to leave our mark forever etched on the Thomaston. We went down to the well deck, dipped into my tank’s tool kit, and found an open-end wrench of just the right size. For several days now, I had been eyeing the ship’s bell. I thought it would make a great souvenir of our three-week imprisonment at sea. Tonight, I decided, was the best time to liberate it.
It was 0200 on our last morning on the prison ship. Joe and I crept forward to the area outside the ship’s bridge where the bell hung. The bridge was manned continually, but its windows were waist-high, which allowed us to sneak around the outside without being spotted. Below the window was the ship’s bell, a sixteen-inch brass forging, held out from the bulkhead by a bracket with a single bolt—for which we carried just the right size wrench.
While Joe held the bell’s clapper to keep it silent, I unscrewed the bolt. It all took less than three minutes. We then stuffed the bell into an AWOL bag and took it down to the well deck. I wrapped it up in our tarp and placed the whole package in my tank’s bustle rack on the rear of the turret.
At daybreak, the shit hit the fan. Not only was the ship’s captain pissed off, the Marine CO was equally irate. Both of them demanded that if the perpetrators didn’t come forward and return the bell, the whole ship would be turned inside out until it was found.
Afraid that the captain would follow through with his threat, I ran down to the well deck. In a heartbeat, I was on my tank. I grabbed the bundle and threw it down on the deck between the rows of tanks. I quickly unwrapped the bundle and pulled out the bell. Where could I hide it where it wouldn’t tie me to the crime? Then I was struck with a brilliant idea!
Twenty-one days after leaving California, our “cruise” was finally coming to an end. We couldn’t wait to get back on the land that we saw beginning to grow from the horizon—even if it was Vietnam. Around mid-morning the ship dropped anchor. We started to unchain the tanks, getting them ready to disembark. I kept one eye on the bell, which I had wedged beneath the track of the tank ahead of mine. Yes, the Navy would get its bell back, but it would have a slightly different ring to it—a flatter sound, if you will.