I think the senior officer Flip mentioned in his narrative was probably LTt. Markel. He was a mustang GM and the Executive Officer early on during my tour in Spangler. He was a bit of a smart ass but he was a pretty good guy. To illustrate : You'll recall, I'm sure, if you were going to be more than 50 miles from the ship on liberty it was required that you turn in a chit requesting an " out-of-bounds pass.
The hardest part of that was dreaming up a reason for the pass. It didn't really seem to matter what it was, but you damn well better have one. When I wanted to go to Phoenix for a weekend I always used the same reason : " My sister is getting married ". I always got the pass.
But one morning I had just gotten back from a quick trip to Phoenix and we got underway for somewhere. After sea detail was secured I was told that Mr. Markel wanted to see me on the bridge. I dutifully reported. He was leaning on the bulkhead and returned my salute without bothering to straighten up and said, "Uh, how many sisters you got, Beach?"
"Two, Sir".
" What's the matter, " was his reply, "marriages not working out? " And he dismissed me.
It seems that one day a detail led by a very young Ensign was ordered to lower the motor whale boat while the ship was underway ( probably five knots or less). I suppose it was just some sort of training exercise. Mr. Markel, the Exec. was observing from the flying bridge. I am not enough of a seaman now, nor was I then to tell you exactly what went wrong or why, but suddenly the bow of the whale boat was much lower than it's stern and it hit the water. One of the lines was broken, one davit was damaged and the boat was hanging vertically by the stern line. While those BMs and the Ensign were running around like bbs in a pinball machine came Lt. Markels voice yelling at the Ensign:
"Mr. _____ , how many mistakes is it possible to make in this man's Navy?"
When the probably scared-to-death Ensign managed to stammer, " I don't know, sir." , Mr. Markel roared "WHY THE HELL NOT? HAVEN"T YOU BEEN KEEPING TRACK?"
Spangler was a turbo-electric drive ship which I suppose accounts for the fact that we used EMs as throttlemen. My GQ station was throttleman in the forward engine room. LTJG Gulde was the Engineering Officer and his GQ station was also the forward engine room. More specifically, his station was in the middle of the steel bench directly in front of the throttle board. He never moved from that spot as far as I know.
Now the throttleman could not move around the space as everyone else could for the obvious reasons, so he was the one who wore the battle phones. That would be me.
Mr. Gulde was also the Damage Control Officer, so reports of any damage anywhere in the ship came to him through me and his orders concerning said damage was passed back through me to the proper station I didn't have anything else to do anyway but I took it seriously.
One day , I have no idea when or where, we were at GQ and everyone was getting into it pretty good, I guess. I kept getting reports one right after another about make-believe damage, major or minor, all over the damned ship it seemed. I would repeat each incident to Mr. Gulde with as much urgency as the reporter had passed to me. Hell, once I was convinced we were sinking! But cool-hand Gulde was unmoved. He just sat there, his cap pulled down partially over his eyes, unlit cigar in his mouth, nodding occasionally. All these blown-to-bits stations yelling at me wanting to know what the Damage Control Officer wanted them to do. So now, after just so much of this crap, I'm yelling at Gulde: "Hey! Rise and shine, Tex! These guys are all over me. Whaddaya want me to tell 'em?"
He leaned even further back on his bench plopped both feet on the throttle board, clasped his hands behind his head and around that stupid unlit cigar said, " Beach, uh tell 'em....tell 'em 'war is hell' "
The Great Whale Boat Race!
I guess this must have been 1955. We were station ship in Hong Kong. Frank Hill, a young EM who had come aboard the same day as me ( we had gone to "A" school together at Great Lakes), was relaxing on the fantail one Saturday afternoon when, I suppose most of the crew was on the beach. I spotted him and stopped to see what he was up to because he was always up to something.
He pointed out across the harbor and said, "What do you see out there, son?"
I looked out in the direction he was pointing. "I see a bunch of guys rowing a boat."
"Wrong!" he corrected me, "what you see is a challenge." He went on to tell me he had done the research and that that was a British pulling boat crew and that they were always looking for competition. Not only that , but also that he, Frank Hill EMFN, had decided that the Spangler's rowing crew should challenge them. I thought that I should let him in on the secret that Spangler had no rowing crew. "She does, now", he said, "starting with you and me."
So now he gets up off his backside and says he going up right now to tell the Captain what he has in mind. Now, this is Captain O'Connel he's talking about so I figured I would never, ever see ol' Frank again.
I guess it was about twenty minutes later when He came back, grinning like the proverbial possum and told me, "The Old Man bought it". He said the Captain thought it was a great idea, but he didn't like Frank's plan to recruit the crew from the engineers. So the Captain told him that each division would form a crew and they would race against each other and the winner would challenge the British. So, that's the way it was.
I don't know how the other divisions fared, but didn't take Frank long to round up enough of us to fill a boat. Frank was our coxwain, of course.
On the appointed day the several crews from Spangler went to the Hong Kong Yacht Club to get boats. I'm told that Captain O'Connel, being a mustang GM was alittle disappointed when the gunners sat down in their boat backwards, but I heard that he took it pretty well.
Anyway, after all the Fol de rol and preliminary races were finished the engineers were the winners. Frank got his way.
I have not a clue about the machinations of issuing an official challenge to HMS what-ever-it-was but I know it was isSood and accepted and we, the crew began practicing every morning after a breakfast of steak and eggs as per The Captains instructions. Life was good, except for the practice. I don't remember who was in our crew except for Dick LeGendre, a BT named Archey, Frank Hill and myself.
I was the smallest one of the oars, and during one of the early practice sessions Frank became disenchanted with my usefulness as a galley slave and began yelling at me at the top of his Kentucky lungs and then I got mad and told him he should take my oar and I would sit back there and holler "stroke!" And that, children , is how I became coxswain of the brave little whale boat.
The day of the race arrived and the course was laid out from some point at the yacht club to the bow of the Spangler. I think it was a mile. Both boats were in place, both crews at the ready and Captain O'Connel was observing from the British Admiral's barge.
Bang! "Stroke!" I screamed and eight pumped engineers heaved on the oars. We were off. I kept hollering, one hand on the tiller and one eye on the British boat which seemed to be getting further away from us. Not that they were leaving us behind, actually it appeared to be a very close race. It just looked like the distance between our parallel courses was increasing, as if one of us was moving off course.About that time I heard Frank yelling at me again, calling some kind of dirty name. I think it was "doody head" or something. You know how sailors talk.
It seems that sometime during the previous night an APD had come into the harbor and anchored some distance directly to port of the Spangler. I remember being told later that day that an APD is a "converted" , what ever that means DE and bow on, they look alike. Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Yes, we were off course and had been for most of the race. But, quick as a cat, I shoved that tiller over and we finished the race albeit a little later than the Brits.
Well, you can imagine the verbal abuse that stupid crew of engineers heaped upon their coxswain all the way back to the ship where, no sooner had we all gotten aboardthunderous voice from the heavens: "NOW THE COXSWAIN OF THE WHALE BOAT CREW LAY UP TO THE CAPTAIN'S CABIN."
I knocked on the Captain's door with my forehead, I think and once in side, he said, "I want to congratulate you on a nice little piece of seamanship that I never expected." I'm thinking, 'yeah, yeah, you sarcastic,,,,,,,,, just get it over with...' "I mean" he continued, "the way you kept that strong wind off your starboard quarter all that time and then put it at your stern for the last stretch. Amazing, for an engineer. If you'd had any oars you mignt have won."
When I got back down to where the guys were waitng to find out what was to be my punishment, I'm pretty sure they didn't believe what I told them the Captain had said. But I could tell they didn't hate me.
You know how it's tradition in rowing circles to throw the coxswain of the winning crew over the side? Well, they extended that honor to me.
I have no idea where we were when this happened and I can't even recall the year. I do remember the sailor involved, but I won't mention his name. I'll just say he was a young seaman from Tennessee; a MM striker, I think. Also, when he came aboard he weighed about the same as an empty pea coat. He was, as were many of us, assigned to mess cook duty. After three months in the mess hall he could have held his own in a wrestling match with the motor whale boat.
Anyway, one day over the squawk box,"Now, all hands stand by your lockers for locker inspection beginning immedietly". We all did as we were told, of course, but since this had come as a complete surprise, there was much talk in the engineer's living space, and I'm sure, through-out the ship as to what was going on. Time passed and rumors were flying. Finally somebody said that a forty-five had turned up missing from the armory and that's what they were looking for. I don't know why we believed it, but we did.
As the inspecting party, led by the Exec. got closer, our little seaman (or rather our BIG seaman) seemed to be getting more and more nervous. His locker was only a few feet from mine and I started thinking, "He's got that damn gun in his locker!" I couldn't believe he would do a stupid thing like that, but as the inspecting party approached his locker, he looked as if he might vomit.
"It's in his locker!", I thought.
"Open your locker", said an inspector. The young man slowly raised the lid of his foot locker and there, right on top, for all to see , was a bowl of mashed potatoes he had stolen from the Chief's quarters. I loved it!
When I joined Spangler in 1954, with my two little red stripes on my left arm and found out I was something called an "electrician's mate striker", I pictured myself up the mast, out on a yard arm, or maybe down in some dark little nook, possibly even a cranny deep in the bowels of an actual United States Navy Man O' War making delicate adjustments to absolutely essential electrical equipment while the ship rocked and I rolled.
Like many others, though, I found myself on mess cookin'. And after the first day or two, it was great. I ate really well, got to a major portion of the crew very quickly. All-in-all it was not an unpleasant experience. It lasted three months, I think. So, those first three months I was fat and happy and comfortable. And safe.
Then I went back in Repair division where the Electrician's Mate Chief, a great guy named Abe Jantzen, told me that I'd be standing watches in the engine rooms , learning to be a throttleman. Great! I couldn't wait for my first watch and I loved it. Couple of Machinst's Mates down there, two other electricians (a throttleman and a boardman) and me. Terrific! Safe and sound.
Then, toward the end of the watch I was informed that. as the new guy, it fell to me to wake the relieving watch. Oh, oh! I couldn't have seen it coming. They drew me a little map so I could find where everyone slept. Then they told me that one of the relievers, a guy named Horton, was "kinda hard to wake up".
"You'll think he's awake", they said, "but he might not be. You got to make sure".
okay! Now I'm fat, DUMB and happy! I go to Horton"s rack first. "Horton, time to relieve the watch!"
"Yeah, got it", he almost hollers back. Great. No prob, Bob. I wake the rest of the guys. Where's Horton ? Still in his rack. Hasn't moved.
"Horton! Get up! You got the watch, man.
He didn't stir. I walk around for a few seconds. Nothin'.
I go back, take hold of hi shoulder and say, "Hor....." He flips the blanket off, grabs my left wrist with one hand, my left elbow with the other, bares his teeth, snarls with the greatest Lon Chaney impersonation I've ever seen, and he bit me on my left fore arm.
The guys in the engine room said, "Oh yeah, we should have told you not to touch him.
But it's okay! John (that's Hortons human name) and I became buds after that. I've even run into him twice in the past fifty years. But he still refuses to put me in for hazardous duty pay.