This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental. Some chapters also contain explicit sexual activity between males. If such is objectionable to you, or if you are below the age where reading such material is legal, please read no further.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated, pro or con. All emails will be answered. macoutmann@yahoo.com
BEFORE "DON'T ASK DON'T TELL"
by Macout Mann
Chapter 10
Morgan was escorted to the cabin of the executive officer, an affable lieutenant commander named Warren. He accepted Morgan's written orders and turned him over to the operations officer, a more senior jg named Sandy Westinghouse, who would be his department head. He in turn saw Morgan to a cabin in forward officers' quarters, which he was to share with a junior engineering officer. Forward officers' quarters consisted of two compartments, each shared by two officers. It was just below the wardroom, which was on the main deck, and convenient to CIC, which was just above the wardroom and just below the bridge. Sandy was also berthed in FOQ, which was also convenient, since he and Morgan would be working together very closely. His bunkmate was a junior gunnery officer. The third officer in the operations department, the communications officer, was an ensign named Eric Johansen. The fourth was in charge of sonar. He was Carl Clunney, also an ensign and a former merchant mariner. They were berthed in aft officers' quarters, where the majority of the ship's officers bunked. The logic was that if the front part of the ship was blown away, there would be officers from all departments still alive aft, and if the back end was blown away, at least one officer from each department would be alive forward.
After Morgan had stowed his gear, navalese for belongings, Sandy took him on a quick tour of the operations areas and aft officers' quarters, where he met several of his mates. (It was odd, but in the almost eighteen months Morgan was aboard the Stough, he never set foot in either the engineering or gunnery spaces.)
It was dinner time before he met the captain, Cdr. John Richardson. Gruff, stern, a man's man from the word "go," he was also one of the finest, most understanding, and smartest men Morgan would ever know.
On larger ships, the captain dines alone. In fact on the other side of the nest, where the Spencer, "flagship" of DesDiv 17, was berthed, the commodore, Commander Destroyer Divison 17, dined alone. In the wardroom of large ships the executive officer was the senior member of the mess. On destroyers and smaller vessels, however, it was the custom for the captain to dine at the head of the wardroom table. And that's where Morgan met Capt. Richardson. He was asked to sit to the left of the captain, so he could be properly quizzed. The exec sat to the captain's right.
The food, Morgan thought, left something to be desired. Again on larger ships the wardroom generally ate better than the general mess. At least it was different. On destroyers and smaller vessels officers still paid their monthly mess fee, but ate the same fare as the enlisted men. Stewards mates did serve it from pewter serving dishes, however, and it was consumed on china plates. The exception on the Stough was a monthly dinner of Polynesian Curry, which Morgan came to consider the culinary highlight of his naval career.
At quarters next morning, Morgan officially became the O Division Officer, the person to whom the enlisted men with operations ratings would report administratively. He found most to be "good guys." The big majority were radarmen or electronics technicians with whom he would be working closely in CIC. The senior radarman was Henry Bonner, a quiet but very intelligent RD1, whom Morgan would learn was called "Tender" by all his mates. A second class, Egerston, was a boisterous, outgoing guy. But the fellow that really caught his eye was Cockrill, RD3, a really hot blond, handsome and well-built, who seemed to be poured even into his navy dungarees.
After provisioning, the division got underway for exercises. After two days they were to join a carrier for flight operations. Morgan was surprised to learn that his first watch would be on the bridge as Junior Officer of the Deck. He had thought that all his watches would be stood in CIC, but it was assumed that all officers of the line would qualify as Officer of the Deck Underway. Morgan had no desire to achieve this lofty position, and very soon another problem presented itself. Most of the OODs on the Stough were ensigns. Since Morgan was a "jg," the enlisted personnel on the bridge assumed that, since he was senior, he was the OOD. This caused special consternation to Mr. Johansen, who, as the son of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, was especially full of himself. (In fact his father was already working on a shore billet for him, which came through before the Stough returned to the United States.)
Morgan conferred about this with Westinghouse, who conferred with the exec, who conferred with the captain, who in turn conferred with Morgan. Convinced that Morgan was not going to remain in the Navy beyond his present assignment and that he really had no desire to become an OOD Underway, Capt. Richardson agreed that Morgan could stand all his watches in CIC, which freed other officers from that responsibility and which pleased the radarmen, because someone who really knew what he was doing would be supervising them more often. And Morgan demonstrated very quickly that he had learned what he was supposed to have learned at CIC School and that he was also a capable leader of his men.
Capt. Richardson had a quirk, which Morgan found interesting. Normally the Primary Tactical Radio Channel is guarded on the Bridge and monitored in CIC. On the Stough, it was guarded in CIC and monitored on the bridge. That is tactical messages were acknowledged and originated from Combat. A secondary operational channel, linking all the CICs in a formation of ships, was also guarded in Combat. Having run a land-based communications center, this peculiarity didn't bother Morgan, but it gave CIC greater responsibility in the operation of the ship.
Morgan readily adjusted to the ship's, the division's, and the carrier group's routines. He got along well with the other officers, and had only one man in his division that was a problem. Mason was an eighteen-year-old seaman who behaved like a fourteen-year-old. Normally the more senior enlisted men could keep such little boys under their thumb, but Mason was heedless of their jibes.
Upon their return to Yokosuka, as was to be expected, patterns of association among the crew became apparent. On some occasions the entire cadre of off-duty officers would go out together. On others groups of two or three special friends would "hit the beach" together. Some officers, such as Morgan's cabinmate and Ens. Johansen were loners. Morgan could detect no "relationships," however.
One evening several officers, including Morgan, went to the same whorehouse, where he and Pas had dined during his first R&R. The Deck Division Officer, Lt(jg). Searle, had a regular girl there and it was apparent from the beginning of the meal that he would stay the night. A cute Japanese girl had joined each of the seven officers. The dinner was excellent. And for reasons unknown Morgan was more amorous than he'd ever been with a woman before. Maybe it was that he'd been celibate since coming on board. Anyway, when dinner was over, he joined Searle in remaining, while the others left for other pursuits.
Unfamiliar with whorehouse protocol he skipped foreplay for the most part, but found inserting his dick in a pussy to be surprisingly pleasant, so much so that when he woke up in the middle of the night he tried it again. Come morning, his companion awakened him in time to get a cab back to the base before quarters.
He discovered that the escapade gave him some extra clout with many of his peers, and that somehow news of it even reached the enlisted ranks. So the next time he was Officer of the Deck as liberty expired, one of his radarmen came onto the quarterdeck with one of his seaman and proudly announced that the seaman had lost his cherry that night.
Morgan became good friends with the only other Ivy Leaguer on board, Roger Hamilton. A Harvard man, Hamilton was from St. Louis, destined to join his father's medical practice after going to the Harvard Med School upon separation from the navy. Hamilton was straight, but shared Morgan's other interests and sense of humor. He also stood half his watches in CIC and was the ship's Gunnery Liaison Officer, whose post at General Quarters was also in Combat. They went on liberty together and a couple of times went to Tokyo, where Morgan showed him some of the places he'd enjoyed before. Dinner at the Nikkatsu was a real treat.
Back at sea, the routine continued as it had before. When the division was operating alone, there was a nightly exercise among the four CIC watches. In rotation a designated watch officer would devise a maneuvering problem starting from a fixed point, and test to see if each ship had arrived at the correct end point at the end of the exercise. When it was Morgan's turn, he always added spice to the problem by describing all the maneuvers in terms of tactical signals, as if it were a real situation. Soon, all the ships were doing this with the result that although the problems were more complicated, the watch passed much more quickly for everyone.
Then the Stough was detached from the division. She was to make a formal call on the Philippine Island of Cebu. This was highly unusual, but a most welcome break from routine. And more important from the crew's standpoint, it would mean liberty someplace where navy ships didn't ever call.
Morgan was looking forward to the enterprise, until he learned that once at Cebu the uniform of the day would be Dress Whites. It had never occurred to Morgan to retrieve his Dress Whites, when he was home; so now he would be the only person on board without a uniform. And since it was not common at the time, in the Pacific Fleet anyway, for officers to have more than one pair of whites, there was no place he could borrow any. He was sure to be "put in hack" for god-knows-how-long, once the exec found out.
Since his duties in CIC were especially strenuous as the ship maneuvered its way between the thousands of islands of the Philippine Archipelago, however, he decided to wait and not face the music until the last possible moment.
Fortunately, when they were within a day's sail of Cebu and Morgan was on watch in Combat, the ship suddenly made a one-hundred-eighty degree turn. At first Morgan was annoyed. The bridge had violated protocol by not informing CIC and asking for a new course recommendation. Before he could raise the issue, however, Westinghouse appeared to say that a message had been received from Seventh Fleet ordering everybody to the China Sea. The Chinese Communists were threatening to take some insignificant islands, which were claimed by Taiwan, that is Nationalist China, and the U. S. Navy was to prevent that from happening.
Thus, the uniform crisis was averted, and Morgan got to participate in the largest naval operation since the Second World War. The assembled armada stretched forty miles across, contained four aircraft carriers, two cruisers, and god-knows-how-many destroyers. For over a month it steamed in a square within radar contact of the Chinese mainland, probably much to the amusement of the ChiCom government.
Of course, the whole operation was taken very seriously at the time. Flight operations were conducted around the clock. The entire formation was at "darken ship" from sundown to sunrise (shades of World War II). And the destroyers were especially alert for submarines that might try to penetrate their twenty mile radius screen, and in CICs they searched diligently for unidentified surface ships or aircraft that might pass nearby.
Just by chance a squadron of Atlantic Fleet destroyers on an around-the-world cruise happened by, and was ordered to join the task force. Also by chance the squadron commander of the Atlantic Fleet destroyers happened to be most senior, so he was designated screen commander of the task force. No matter that the Atlantic Fleet seldom if ever conducted carrier task force operations, their mission being much more aligned to joint NATO exercises, as often as not under British command.
After the task force had been conducting air operations for more than two weeks, a group of supply ships arrived to replenish it, and Jupiter—that was the task force commander's call sign—declared that the replenishment was to be done at darken ship. So began the most significant night in Morgan's sea-going career.
Morgan told Westinghouse that he suspected there would be chaos during the replenishment and asked if he could have all his CIC guys on duty during the operation.
"Not unless the ship goes to general quarters," the operations officer replied.
"Maybe we ought to," Morgan rejoined.
"I'll tell the captain about your concerns," Westinghouse said.
As it happened, the First Lieutenant, whose deck hands would bear the burden of taking on both fuel and stores had similar worries, and he was a full lieutenant. So it was decided that the ship would go to general quarters just before the operation began and would remain there at least long enough to assess the situation.
Hamilton had the watch, and as Gunnery Liaison Officer would remain in Combat at GQ. Morgan watched the radar scope as the replenishment group approached. The image was picture perfect. As the two formations began to merge, the ship was called to general quarters. Morgan put a radarman on each of three scopes and assigned each man a sector. He told them to mark each of the ships in his sector and to keep track of them whatever happened. The voice of Jupiter began the instructions that would culminate in the carrier task force becoming a bunch of ships taking on whatever feul and supplies each needed, in order to continue the patrol.
"Execute!" Jupiter said; and Morgan watched in horror as the picture perfect image he'd been looking at disintegrated into an unrecognizable blob. He was sure CICs in most of the other half-a-hundred ships present shared his amazement.
"O.K., guys," he said, "be sure you know where your ships are. Don't worry about anything else."
Bonner, his senior enlisted man, had plotted on a large sheet where Jupiter had told everyone to go, and based on information provided by the men on the scopes, he was able to determine which ships actually got there, and to plot where those that didn't, did wind up. Three of the division's destroyers had initially remained at their screening station. The fourth, whose call sign was Cattail, had been assigned to a lifeguard station near one of the supply ships. That is, she was to cruise aft of the supply ship in order to pick up anyone who might fall overboard while supplies were being transferred.
Things seemed to be moving fairly well. Task force ships would go along side supply ships, take on stores, and go to their next assigned station, to be replaced another ship to be replenished. All of the ships knew where they were, even if others didn't. Generally the larger ships were the first in line, and the voice of Jupiter kept everything on keel with precise instructions read from a carefully worked-out plan.
The voice of Jupiter, who was the staff operations officer seated in flag plot on the flagship, presumably with Jupiter himself at his side, could easily have been a radio announcer in the heyday of network radio. His round, pear-shaped tones were legendary. Morgan had amused himself and everyone else in CIC throughout the operation by using his Yale Theatre experience when talking to Jupiter. He put on what Radarman Cockrill was fond of calling his "important voice" in radio exchanges with the flagship. Thusfar tonight he had had no call to answer.
Suddenly, "Jupiter, this is Aztec." Aztec was one of the supply ships. "Rasputin's important cargo has fallen overboard!" Aztec went on to say that Rasputin, one of the carriers, had pulled away to try to recover the important cargo and that it would be sometime before another ship could come alongside, because Rasputin had torn away all the rigging on the starboard side of Aztec.
"Very well," replied the unperturbed voice of Jupiter. "Advise when ready to continue. Cattail, Moultree, assist Rasputin in recovering her important cargo."
"Rodger," replied Moultree. On the radar, Morgan saw a destroyer leave the formation in pursit of Rasputin. Cattail did not answer, nor did she move.
"Damn," Morgan said, "their PriTac must be out." He waited for several minutes, but no one spoke. Finally, he tried to contact Cattail on the CIC net, but got no response. So he waited until Jupiter ordered another destroyer into Lifeguard Station 2.
"Jupiter, this is Copperhead," he intoned. "Cattail is in Lifeguard Station 2."
"Roger." It was evidently only now that flag plot realized that a ship was in fact there.
A very long minute passed.
"Copperhead, this is Jupiter."
"This is Copperhead. Over."
"This is Jupiter. Do you know where all the ships are? Over."
"Affirmative. Out." Everyone in CIC burst into laughter.
Another very long minute.
"Copperhead this is Jupiter. Please tell us where all the ships are. Over."
"Sugar station one...," Morgan began, reversing the normal order to give the "small boys" their due, and he recited the entire formation at dictation speed in order to give everyone the benefit of knowing where the ships really were. He ended with "Rasaputin and Moultree aft of the formation." He often wondered if classified information had been compromised by his recitation, but, after all, he'd been commanded to do it. He also never found out, but he always thought the "important cargo" had to be a nuclear device.
After Jupiter's "Out," Morgan thanked his men for their good work and everybody again had a good laugh. They all figured that now things might run like the manuals said they would.
The executive officer's general quarters post was in Combat. Same thinking: if the captain was taken out on the bridge, the exec would be in CIC and could take command. At GQ drills, he was hardly ever at his post, however; he was checking on everything else. Tonight, although "This is not a drill" was not stated, when GQ was ordered, everyone knew that the task force wasn't under attack. So Morgan and everybody else in Combat was surprised when the exec suddenly materialized.
"We've been listening in up on the bridge," he said. "Seems like you saved the task force commander's ass, Morgan."
"It was these guys that kept track of where the ships were, Sir," Morgan responded.
"Was still an unauthorized use of PriTac," the exec laughed.
A little over a year later LCdr. Warren would write in a letter of recommendation to the Wharton School, "Mr. Bowen was the most brilliant and innovative naval officer with whom I have ever served." He added, "Regrettably, had he remained in the navy, these same sterling qualities would have prevented him from ever becoming an admiral."
Once everyone, including the ChiComs, had rediscovered where all the ships were, the operation continued smoothly. The Stough was finally sent alongside one of the supply vessels and was replenished without incident. Shortly before the ship was to pull away, Morgan went to the bridge for some reason, turning the CIC watch over to Hamilton.
On the bridge the captain was present, but the Officer of the Deck had control of the ship, when it slipped out ahead of the supply ship and its radar mast cleared the supply ship's superstructure. The bridge talker, a seaman manning the telephone to Combat, said "Combat reports ship off the port bow at constant bearing and closing range."
As it happened, in the turmoil of maneuvering away from the other vessel Morgan was the only person on the bridge that heard what the talker said. Terror almost overcame him. Above everything else drilled into him at CIC School was "Constant bearing and closing range means collision."
"Captain!" Morgan shouted. Then to the talker, "Repeat that to the Captain!"
"Combat reports ship off the port bow at constant bearing and closing range." The young sailor had no idea of the impact of what he was saying.
"I have the conn!" Captain Richardson announced. "All engines stop! All engines back full! All engines back emergency full! Right hard rudder!"
Out of the darkness appeared another destroyer seemingly sliding to the left. The two ships passed so close to one another that bridge personnel could almost have shaken hands. "Fucking Atlantic Fleet," Morgan heard the captain whisper as the ships drifted apart. The Atlantic Fleet destroyer in passing in front of the formation had set course without maintaining the required distance from the main body of ships.
The captain brought the Stough to formation course, then turned the conn back to the OOD, who maneuvered the ship to its next screening station. The captain went to the 21MC, a speaker system that could be directed to any compartment on the ship, and commended the engineers on their quick action in reversing engines. "You saved us from a collision!" he said.
Morgan thought he'd saved them from a collision too, but then one "attaboy" a night was plenty, he figured.
Copyright 2011 by Macout Mann. All rights reserved.