Other Memories I arrived at a new duty station in Hawaii for the second time in my Navy career on November 22, 1972. This time I was assigned to the USS Coucal (ASR-8). The Coucal was a Chanticleer class submarine rescue ship built during World War II. Her primary mission was to rescue trapped personnel from a sunken submarine, and she also had the capability to salvage the stricken vessel. Several submarine tragedies had occurred in the early years of the 20th century, and the Chanticleer ASRs were designed based on the lessons learned from the famous Squalus rescue of 1939. About one third of her 100-man crew was dive qualified. Coucal could also provide other towing, salvage, and diving services to the fleet.
I checked in during a maintenance period, and the entire exterior surface of the ship was painted in red lead. Since it was also approaching the Christmas season, the Deck Department had also painted the four 20-foot long salvage buoys, called 'spuds,' in a white and red candy cane pattern (they are normally a bright 'international orange' color). I was assigned to the Salvage Department, which was responsible for maintenance and repair of the diving equipment. We had over a dozen Mark V ('mark-five') helmets set up for either air or heliox operations as well as lightweight Jack Browne and scuba. The Salvage Department was located aft, below the fantail area of the ship.
Most of the divers were 'divers first class,' having passed an additional 17 week course in Washington, DC and qualifying in salvage, McCann Rescue Chamber Operations, mixed gas ((helium-oxygen), recompression chamber operations, and explosive demolition. Second class divers, also known as 'common air breathers,' were truly second class. ASR operations were so important to the diving Navy from before World War II to the early 1990s that a career navy diver would have served on at least one during his career, and indeed, it was mandatory for Master Diver Candidates to have extensive ASR experience. Many years later I learned through the Internet that Master Chief, Master Diver Carl Brashear (made famous as the subject of the movie 'Men of Honor') had served aboard Coucal ten years earlier than me.
The old girl displayed quite a few battle ribbons and commendations. She served during World War II, Korea, and the Vietnam wars. She also participated in the Bikini Atomic Bomb testing in the late 1940s. She spent time in Turkey training Turkish divers submarine rescue techniques. She never, however, fulfilled her primary mission, because after the Squalus, no submariner rescue operations were ever successfully attempted. I learned many years later that Coucal was decommissioned in 1977 (only 2 years after I left her), and her last service to the fleet was as a target for a ship-fired missile in 1991. The last of the ASRs were also decommissioned in the 1990s, so the entire class of ship is now extinct (I'm not there yet, but I'm sure getting creaky and grumpy).
Berthing was a little different than I had been used to while attached to the Naval Undersea Center or at various schools. E-5 and below berthing was open bay with the racks stacked 3 high. The sleeping surface was the thin mattress-covered hinged top of a thin aluminum box, which was your personal clothing locker. Ah, so that's why they make you learn how to fold all of your clothing in boot camp! A metal barrier separated me from the man next to my rack, and there was a privacy curtain running on a bar the length of the other side. About 2 inches separated my nose from the metal of the rack above me. On my first night aboard, the red emergency light was out, so at lights-out, it was pitch black. I remember waking up in the middle of the night covered in sweat on the deck beside my rack. I had been dreaming that I was in a coffin. Of course, I put my hands up, felt cold metal, then rolled over to my right... more cold metal, gave a shout, and rolled off my rack. This happened one more time a few days later.
After New Year, the ship was back in active status, and we put to sea. My at-sea watch station was in CIC. OS2 Dan Aguilar was my usual co-watch stander. Mostly we tracked contacts on the radar screen and reported their movements to the bridge, taking periodic range and bearing readings. Sometimes the OOD would run a man-overboard drill, and the BMs would toss a dummy, called Oscar, over the side. Then, we'd have to track the ship's movement using a plotting board.
During peacetime, not a lot of submarines or other ships sink, but we spent a lot of time at sea anyway. When a submarine first went to sea after a major overhaul for sea trials, the Coucal would accompany her for a few days. Also, we played 'target' during war games or to give prospective submarine COs and XOs practice stalking their prey. Since submarines are not designed to moor at standard piers or to anchor easily, Coucal also provided rafting services. We would tie up at a pier or anchor offshore and a sub would tie up to us. Then, the submariners would use our quarterdeck to go ashore or our utility boat would ferry everyone to "the beach" for a well-deserved liberty.
On one occasion, Coucal performed a burial at sea a few miles off Pearl Harbor. Members of the deceased's family and a clergyman (can't remember if he was a civilian minister or a Navy Chaplain) were onboard. All crew members not on watch were in dress whites, and an honor guard stood at attention on the voyage out. The Deck personnel had installed a temporary platform. The deceased was shrouded in what looked like a weighted white canvas bag, and all was covered in a large American flag. We all stood at attention in ranks during a brief service, and then the board was raised and the deceased slid over the side under the flag. I remember that the sound of the canvas sliding was very unnerving.
Once a quarter, the ship steamed over to Lahaina, Maui to practice submarine rescue operations. A few years before I came aboard, the Navy had prepared and sunk a decorated WWII submarine, the Bluegill, about a mile or so off Lahaina in 130 feet of water. All of the hatches had been welded shut to keep curious sport divers from entering, and the sub had been perfectly laid right-side up on the bottom. During the trip over, the entire crew rigged the ship to perform a four-point moor. The heavy mooring chain had to be hauled from the chain lockers, inspected, set up, and laid out on the deck. There were four chains, one for each salvage anchor that made up the four-point moor. Each length had to be a certain length, depending on the depth of operation. The basic lengths, or shots, were 90 feet long and were secured together with removable links. Then, one end of the chain was secured to the anchors while the other was secured to a heavy nylon mooring hawser, which in turn was secured to the spuds. The spuds were hollow steel cylinders rounded at each end, painted 'international orange,' and clad with wood sheathing. It was hot, exhausting work that took between six and eight hours to set up. The ship steamed a cloverleaf pattern and dropped each anchor in a perfect box around the downed submarine. The spuds were not yet connected to the ship, so the utility boat was launched to connect mooring lines to the spuds. Once attached, the ship was a stable platform from which to search and conduct rescue and/or salvage operations. Instead of using the propeller to maneuver, the ship could be precisely maneuvered over the wreck using winches and capstans to let out or take in mooring lines.
As soon as Coucal was securely moored over the submarine, a team of scuba divers was deployed to clean off the escape hatch and install a cable. If there was a real emergency, the submarine would deploy an emergency buoy at the hatch, but we had to install a connection each time we practiced on the Bluegill. All divers then set up the surface-supplied dive stations. The hats, weight belts, dresses (yes, the canvas/rubber hard hat suits were called 'dresses') were carried up from the Salvage Locker, umbilicals connected and figure-eighted on deck, and the divers' stage was assembled. The first part of the dive operations used the air helmets, so all of the second class divers dived first. Diving operations used a lot of people to get one team into the water. Each diver had two tenders, who dressed/undressed the diver and tended his umbilical. A standby diver was 'hatted' first, seated and his helmet tied off to relieve the weight from his shoulders. Of course, the standby diver had two tenders. Then, there was a phone-talker, who communicated with the divers and wrote down data. In charge was the Master Diver. When everything was ready, the divers were guided to the stage, stepped in, and held onto a bar for support. The stage was lifted over the side and lowered into the water by winch (requiring a winch operator). If everything checked out, the stage was lowered to the bottom (or to the deck of the practice submarine) at a certain speed. The second phase of the diving operations was mixed gas using a helium-oxygen mixture specially formulated for the depth. Because the heliox Mark V helmets were much heavier than the air hats, the divers had to be hand-winched to the standing position so they could shuffle over to the stage.
Dives were usually conducted using "SUR-D" procedures (surface decompression), in which the decompression stops in the water were shortened, the diver brought to to the surface, stripped of his gear and brought into the chamber in less than 5 minutes, and decompression completed in the relative comfort and safety of the recompression chamber. Coucal carried two recompression chambers.
Nobody liked to be the standby diver. In an emergency the standby diver had to be ready to enter the water quickly, so he was completely dressed and hatted. Since it was inefficient to keep changing the standby, once you were hatted, you generally were in the suit for up to four hours. The Mark V helmets were heavy, and they painfully pressed down on your shoulders on the surface (the hat was buoyant underwater because of the air space). There was a cushion you could put over your head onto your shoulders, but nobody used it because it was considered a weakness to use the "pussy pad." So, your tenders would use manilla line to tie your helmet to the overhead. The little front port of the helmet was left open, but it still felt like you were encased inside a tiny cage. Many of the divers smoked. It was impractical to smoke in the usual way because you couldn't easily reach into the helmet while fully suited up, and you couldn't easily flick the ash outside. To satisfy nicotine cravings of the addicted, the tenders would light a cigarette and insert the base into the secondary exhaust port (spitcock). The smoker could then make a seal on the little hole on the inside of the helmet and inhale. Unfortunately for those of us who were nonsmokers, the stink lingered inside the helmet for a long time, so being hung up as a standby diver meant smelling an ashtray for several hours. You could, however drink from a cup by yourself, so if your tenders were kind (remember, you'd be their tender at some time), they'd bring you a cup of coffee. However, you had to be stingy with your liquid intake, because it wouldn't have been pleasant to pee inside your deep sea dress!
The third phase was deployment of the McCann Submarine Rescue Bell down to the escape hatch of the submarine for simulated rescue operations. All of this would take place over several days. When everything was completed, the utility boat ferried those not on watch to the 'beach' for liberty.
Lahaina was an especially popular liberty port, and everyone enjoyed the famous Pioneer Inn. The waters off Hawaii were once important whaling grounds for ships from New England. I was surprised to see the old whaling port of New Bedford, just across the Acushnet River from my home town (Fairhaven, Mass.) noted in a map on the Pioneer Inn walls, half a world away.
Although we spent a lot of time off Oahu and Maui, we also operated off Kaui as well. On my first cruise aboard the Coucal we anchored off the south side of the island and did some snorkeling and scuba diving. Unfortunately, I had duty the only night we had liberty there. I had shore patrol, though, and rode a police cruiser all around the island. Unfortunately, it was a pitch black moonless night, so although we drove just about everywhere, I saw nothing of the island. I think I still have a key chain from the Kaui Pizza Palace, though. Another time (March 1975) we were involved in multi-nation war games, called RIMPAC, north of the island, involving ships from the U.S., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Coucal's mission was to pretend that it was a Russian fishing trawler spying on the fleet. A contact on the radar turned out to be an abandoned life boat drifting at sea. We recovered it and returned the boat to Oahu.
We didn't always lay a four-point moor when we steamed to Maui. On one occasion, we anchored off Lahaina, and the Barbell tied up next to us while on a dependents cruise. Another time, we docked at Kahului for a few days and a Canadian submarine, the Rainbow tied up next to us. She was an ex-U.S. diesel sub. Those of us who toured the boat were in awe of the British Commonwealth alcohol policy on their ships. There was a beer machine aboard! In the evening while in port, the forward torpedo room was transformed into a bar! One night, I stood the 8 - midnight quarterdeck watch while the sub was recharging its batteries. The diesel smoke was blowing directly across our quarterdeck, and it was miserable until the watchstander on the Rainbow took pity on us and brought a few beers over for us. Well, it was after 10, and the duty chief and duty officer had already made their appearance and disappeared below, so what the hell. It made the rest of that stinky watch tolerable. A few of us chipped in the next day for a rental car, and we drove around the island. The road to Hana was a two lane country road with great views, but it often skirted vertical cliffs so it kept you on your toes while driving. We stopped and picked up passionfruit and guavas which grew alongside the roadway for snacks. Our rental agreement specifically forbade driving on the unimproved path past Seven Sacred Pools, but we were young & dumb and continued anyway. The terrain turned from tropical rainforest to grassland with horses and cattle and then into desert. A few sections were barely passable, but we finally made it to the highway on the other side.
We didn't always steam to Maui to lay a moor and to practice surface-supplied diving. One time we conducted diving operations off Pokai Bay, just north of Pearl Harbor. As I was kicking around the bottom in an air Mark V helmet, I spotted the most beautiful head of coral, and I decided to put it in the stage and clean it up later. After my tenders removed my gear, I went over to the fantail to inspect my prize. The master diver had thrown it overboard. Damn! What did he do that for?! Someone then explained to me that the coral head had grown up over a couple of dozen live rounds of ammunition! My buddy Wayne Aaberg took a photo of it and sent me a digitized copy a few years ago. Another time, we motored away from the ship for some scuba diving. It was a great dive, and I spent a lot of my time poking my head under coral heads looking for shells. When we ascended to our decompression stop line, I looked down and saw a very large shark patrolling the very spot we were in a few moments before. I poked my buddy and excitedly pointed. He was nonchalant. When we got back on the boat, I asked him if he had seen the shark, and he said, "Yeah, it was down there the whole time. You were closer to it, so I didn't worry."
Since I came aboard as a petty officer 3rd class, I didn't have to endure mess duty or become the butt of the many little practical jokes played on rookies. One fellow in particular was as dumb as a box of rocks, and he got tagged with just about every trick in the book: standing mail buoy watch in full battle gear on the bow; requisitioning a yard of waterline from the Deck Department; being sent to the engine room to get a bucket of steam. One day at sea, I heard the word passed over the 1MC, "A sea bat has just been captured. Anyone interested in seeing this creature lay aft to the fantail."
"OK," I thought, what the %&**@!! is this?" When I emerged on deck, there was a large group clustered about the fantail, most of them wearing ear-to-ear grins. There was a large cardboard box on the deck. I noticed that one sailor on the edges of the pack held a broom. The mark bent over the box to get a better look. WHACK! The broom landed squarely on his buttocks. Everybody howled in glee. But not the mark. "Hey, cut it out, I'm trying to see the sea bat." He bent over again. WHACK! This was repeated a few more times until the poor sap finally got the message.
Occasionally we practiced going to General Quarters. My station was as a phone talker for the gun mount. Coucal was a noncombatant ship, but she still carried two WWII-era 20 mm anti-aircraft machine guns. The Gunners Mates were happy that they actually had something to do in their rate. It must have been very hard during the last war to actually hit anything from a small vessel such as Coucal. First of all, if there was any swell, the ship would be rocking up and down while the gun crew was trying to aim. After the first few rounds were fired, there was a great cloud of white smoke which made further sighting impossible. The pilots who fly the planes that tow practice targets must be very, very brave. Another time we dumped bags of garbage, steamed off a distance, and practiced shooting at the bags. Sharks came up to investigate the bags, and seabirds deftly flew about while the bullets splashed nearby. I don't remember anything being hit.
Many of the younger sailors were Filipinos. One time, at noon mess, I was sitting at a table with a couple of other divers when one of these kids gingerly sat down with us. He had never been to sea before in his life, and he spent several days flat on his back in his rack unable to take any sustenance. He was a skinny beanpole of a kid to begin with. This was the first day he was able to crawl out of bed and bravely attempt to seek nourishment. He sat down, unaware that this was a divers' table, and stared glassy-eyed at the food on his tray. BM2(DV) Dave Terrell looked slyly at each of us divers, took a mouthful of peas, chewed for a few seconds, and made a noise in his throat which caused the poor skinny kid to look up. Just as he did, Dave spit the masticated green mush onto his plate. The kid turned white as a ghost and bolted out of the mess decks. Although we still had a couple of days left at sea, we never saw him again. (Dave has a profile on this site, but apparently he doesn't answer his messages!)
My hobby at the time was fancy sailors' knotwork. While I was waiting to go to boot camp, I bought a copy of "The Ashley Book of Knots," which is the Bible of practical and decorative knotwork. I carried the book with me during my enlistment. When I was in Saigon at the EOD villa, I noticed that some of the decorations at the rooftop bar were wine bottles covered with square knot netting and ending in a tassle. Hell, I can do that! So, I often traded full wine bottles for empty ones tied up with macrame and turks heads. One of the guys on the Coucal, RM2 Bob Faries, was a newlywed, and he claimed that his wife was a good cook. "Hey Bob, I'll trade a home-cooked meal for one of my fancy bottles." To my amazement, he said "Sure." I can still remember, after nearly 40 years, that she made scrumptious chicken Kiev. A year or so ago, through the wonder of the Internet, Bob and I touched base again. Not only did he remember the bottle, but he still had it tucked away in his garage. His wife, though, has no memory of that night. They've been married now for over 38 years!
Everyone who has worn the uniform is familiar with standing at attention and saluting the flag during morning and evening 'colors.' The Pearl Harbor Naval Base had the tradition of playing the anthem of every nation represented by a ship in port. There could be any number of foreign ships moored in the harbor. Some of the national anthems, such as that of Japan, seem to go on forever. So, morning colors could take a while as your saluting arm got heavier and heavier. If you didn't need to be out on deck around the time of morning colors, you made sure you were inside.
Sailors assigned to the submarine fleet used to go through escape training using the Stanke hood. Old time submariners will fondly recall saying "Ho, ho, ho" as they rose through the water. Sub bases since the 1940s maintained a round 100-foot tall tower filled with water for this purpose. One day, Master Chief Smith led a group of us divers over to the Pearl Harbor S.E.T. for some passive and active ascents. I'm sure there must have been an elevator, but we trooped up the outside stairway that encircled the tower to the top room. There was a recompression chamber that was always manned during training operations in this room. Submarine escape training is generally safe if done as directed, but it involves ascents from depth after breathing compressed air, so some arterial gas embolism cases have resulted. After receiving our briefing, we trooped down the stairway again to the 50-foot level and entered the compartment. The first exercise was to be a free ascent using only the buoyancy in your lungs. Since we were divers, we could use our facemasks. the compartment was pressurized, and once it was equalized with the pressure at that depth in the tank, the hatch was opened. Water entered the hatch up to our waists. An instructor from the tank staff exited the hatch and monitored each of us to make sure we performed the skill correctly. One at a time, we took a deep breath and exited the hatch into the water. There was a bar or line that we held onto as we got out. We then tilted our head upwards and began a slow exhalation through pursed lips. On a signal from the instructor, we let go and slowly rose to the surface, exhaling a thin stream of bubbles the entire way. You had to meter your exhalation, because if you let out too much, you would lose your buoyancy and begin to sink (we weren't allowed to use our hands or feet for propulsion), and if you didn't let out enough, the expanding air in your lungs could cause a potentially fatal diving injury called arterial gas embolism. There was another chamber, or 'blister,' at 30 feet and another at 15 feet, each manned by another instructor. The last ten or so feet were the most difficult, because the rate of ascent was very slow (maybe let the air out a tiny bit too much), and I really wanted to take a breath. We all made it, so this was a successful exercise. It is indeed possible to make an ascent after breathing compressed air by metering out just enough air without kicking or swimming up. The next exercise, also from the 50 foot chamber, was a buoyant ascent using our inflatable UDT vests. Unlike today's buoyancy compensators used by recreational civilian divers, these little vests, also called 'Mae Wests,' slipped over your head and were secured by D-ringed nylon straps around your waist. They could be orally inflated using a small inflator hose (which was difficult to use when you were very cold) and by pulling a lanyard which raised a little pin that punctured a small 16-gram cylinder of carbon dioxide. For this exercise, we were to exit the chamber and hold on, as before, while the instructor inflated the vest using a small air hose. Then, we would exhale, at a greater rate because the speed of ascent was much faster than before, let go, and take a ride to the top. An overpressure valve would release excess gas to prevent expanding air from bursting the vest. OK, this should be easy... Well, how embarrassing! I got yanked into the 30 foot blister. Wait a minute, the other guys who went before me are also in there. Another diver, then another got yanked into the blister until we all were there, a bit red-faced. That is, until the instructor explained that our facemasks broke our bubble stream and it was impossible for him to tell if we were exhaling continuously. The escape tank didn't normally conduct exercises for divers, so it was a learning experience for them, too. At the end of the day, we all felt that this was a very valuable training session. I learned later that, had I re-enlisted, my next duty station would have been the S.E.T. at Pearl Harbor.
In the early months of 1973, Coucal was scheduled for a major 6-month overhaul. We moored up at the shipyard in Honolulu and moved everything not nailed down onto a barge. Another barge served as enlisted berthing. We acquired a battered 17-foot Boston Whaler, and I was assigned the task of fixing it up. The bow was smashed in, and it was just a little bow heavy after repairs, but we used the boat for recreation when we could.
I really didn't want to spend the entire 6 months living on a nasty barge, and, as I mentioned earlier, second class divers had fewer opportunities during heliox diving ops. So, I made the decision to request Diver First Class School, which was then located in Washington, D.C. Because I was more than halfway through my 4-year enlistment, I had to extend for eight months. So, in March of 1973 I left sunny Hawaii for the banks of the Anacostia River, and I returned in August sporting a new pin and another chevron just in time for another 4-point moor off Lahaina.
Rooms at the enlisted barracks at the submarine base opened up for E5 and E6, so we eagerly took advantage of escaping daily fire drills and Saturday morning needle-gunning to move off the ship while inport. Although they were standard 4-man rooms, we got only one roommate. I shared quarters with OS2 Dan Aguilar. Wow, we could actually tape posters on the walls and have personal items on the desks! Instead of eating overcooked enlisted men's chow, our typical supper consisted of steaks grilled on our little hibachi, a six-pack of Primo beer, and half a jar of jalapeno peppers. Can you tell that Dan is from San Antonio, Texas? I'm also blaming Dan for getting me hooked on menudo, a Sonoran soup made from chile, simmered calves feet, hominy and honeycomb tripe, garnished with oregano and chopped onion. I still love the stuff. Before I retired, I made menudo whenever my wife left town for a conference. My orders were that it all had to be used up and the smell had to be out of the house before she returned! With all that spicy stuff we ate, Dan had the audacity to give me the nickname "The Green Mist." Dan and I still correspond after all these years, and it was he who invited me to join togetherweserved.com.
Pearl Harbor Special Services had a lot of activities to entertain off-duty sailors. Of course, there was always the Acey-ducey enlisted men's club, but drinking does get old after a while, and I was a little gun-shy after my unfortunate incident in Cam Ranh Bay. Some of the island headliners performed on base. I was particularly enamored of Carole Kai. A lot of the guys made tables from a slab of native koa wood layered with clear resin. Others used the gym. My buddy Wayne Aaberg was an avid body-builder, and he acquired the nickname "Herc." I went with him to the gym once, but I was so sore the next day that I realized that wasn't for me. One of the older guys on the ship, EN1 Ward, had a side business making ceramic coffee mugs. He was a talented carver and made all his own molds, carved with whatever insignia or design you wanted. He had his own shop with carving tools, mold-making materials, paints, and kiln. I helped him paint mugs and in return I was able to make my own, which I kept for many years. I was very sad when it finally dropped and shattered.I volunteered for the ship's pistol team. Our CO, LCDR Barrows bought some matched .45 caliber service pistols, and we'd practice at the Schofield Barracks range and sometimes at the Honolulu police range out near Makapuu Point. I don't recall our winning any matches, but we had a lot of fun, and I qualified for my expert pistol ribbon each year and as an NRA range officer.
In March of 1974, we embarked on a 6-month Westpac cruise. On our first leg, we towed a small tugboat from Pearl Harbor to Midway Island, which was still a Naval Air Station (it is now a National Wildlife Refuge). A few of us spent a few hours walking around the island. There were large fuzzy gooneybird (albatross) chicks everywhere, and little yellow canaries flitting through the trees. We only spent a morning at Midway, and then we were off again. Coucal was a powerful, but very slow vessel, and the next portstop, Yokosuka, Japan, wasn't reached for nearly another two weeks.
Passing the International Date Line at the 180th parallel qualified us for the Domain of the Golden Dragon certificate.Watching the radar spin around an empty screen at three o'clock in the morning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is one of the most boring things I've ever done. Things perked up as we entered Tokyo Bay, though. The radar screen lit up like a Christmas tree with all of the 'contacts.' One spot was a maritime intersection, with all of the contacts lined up as if they were at a traffic light. One line of ships would be stopped, and the perpendicular line would move, just as if one side had a green light and the other had a red light. It was the most amazing thing to watch.
That wasn't the only amazing thing to watch. As we approached the coast of Japan, we began to pick up the local television signal. At first, the novelty of watching >>something<< on the long-blank screen of the recreation compartment TV attracted our attention.Then, there was the novelty of foreign programs, which merited a few minutes attention. At about 1000, a Johnny Carson/Tonight Show type program came on. Guys gazed up for a few seconds, then went back to their card game or whatever. At the end of the half hour, all of a sudden a nubile young woman appeared and started taking her clothes off! In about five minutes, the rec. room was filledto capacity with gawking sailors. Wow, a strip tease on commercial television! Unfortunately, it only lasted for about five minutes,and then the program went to commercials. We soon learned when the 'good stuff' began, and the crowds appeared and disappeared with great regularity until we left Japanese waters.
The recreation compartment was just aft of E1 - E5 enlisted berthing. An overhead hatch lead up to the quarterdeck area near the fantail, and the next compartment aft was the Salvage locker, where we stored and worked on the diving equipment. I didn't normally spend a lot of time in the rec. room because it was one of the few inside spaces where smoking was allowed on the ship. In those days, smoking was more tolerated if not outright encouraged by very inexpensive, tax-free cartons sold as soon as we left port. In the evenings, when the 'smoking lamp was lit,' the smoke would be visible about two feet off the deck and get thicker at it rose to the overhead. I didn't smoke, so my eyes would start watering and itching as soon as I stepped into the compartment. In my offtime, I'd spend it sitting on the deck next to my rack.
One of the 'improvements' made during the long overhaul period in 1973 was the installation of a ship's music system, which consisted of a turntable in the 'ET shack,' and each rack had a box into which you could insert a headphone jack. ET2 Kudymtook it upon himself to be the ship's DJ, and he'd play various rock and pop tunes in the evenings.
We spent the next six months visiting the Japanese ports of Yokosuka and Sasebo, the Philippine ports of Subic Bay on the island of Luzon and Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao, The Taiwanese ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung, the Korean Port of Pusan, and the British colony of Hong Kong. One of my regrets about my naval service was that I never got my shellback certificate. Coucal's previous Westpac deployment took it to Australia, but, alas, not this one. Of course, there were memorable adventures at each port of call.
Subic Bay was somewhat infamous because of the many 'houses of ill repute' just off base. It was also worked by gangs of teenagers who were expert at relieving you of your watch and wallet. Because it was a major U.S. Navy port, it was also a maintenance facility, which we took advantage of. One afternoon a few of us rented little sailboats from Special Services for a little 'R&R' on the water.
On another occasion, a "rodeo" was scheduled on base. One of our guys, Randy Beeson, was from the West and was an experienced bull rider, and so he entered the competition. Was he ever surprised to see that the local cattle were small in stature, and the rest of us got a good laugh watching this 6-foot guy on the back of a miniature bull.
We performed joint training operations with divers from the Republic of China Navy at Kaohsiung. A few miles offshore we laid a four-point moor and conducted the full range of diving operations. Because there was no training submarine on the bottom for us, the ship carried a mock-up submarine escape hatch that we used for SRC training. Before our first liberty in this port, we were warned of the prevalence of venereal disease. It's funny that each port always seems to have the same little hole-in-the-wall bars and 'cat houses' with names like "The Kit Kat Club" or "Les Girls." There were also lots of little shops where you could buy souvenirs. Prices were not bad if our little ship was the only one in port, but we dreaded the times when a giant "Bird Farm" (aircraft carrier) came in, because the prices instantly went up! Our Morale and Recreation officer (can't remember who it was) often arranged for bus tours for those of us interested in the local culture or scenery. In Kaohsiung, we visited the neighboring town of Tainan. My strongest recollection of this excursion is that the water running in the Tainan River was purple! Not a lot of environmental rules in this part of the world. In fact, the streets of Kaohsiung were lined with open sewers.
While in Kaohsiung, our entire crew was invited to a harvest feast. I was used to Chinese food as adapted for picky-palated round-eyes, but this menu was eye-popping, and fantastically delicious, too. There were many strange and wonderful new taste sensations, such as sea cucumber, whole fish with the head still on, jellyfish and seaweek salads, and God knows what else. Luckily, today the wife and I live fairly close to Boston, which has a large asian community, so I can periodically satisfy my lust for "real" Chinese food.
Keelung is the on the northern coast of Taiwan. We docked near a 50-foot (at least!) statue of a goddess, which was hollow and you could peer out through an opening in the head. There was also what looked like an ancient temple on a hill. When you got closer to it, though, you realized that it was just being constructed. During our stay, we received an invitation to a public execution of some drug dealers. Eastern Asian countries don't kid around with drug enforcement. Nobody from our ship attended.
Wayne Aaberg, myself, and a few others took the train into the capital city of Taipei, where we visited the zoo and the national museum. As I was bending over to take a photograph of a macaque monkey, the lens hood of my 135 millimeter lens popped off and fell into the monkey pit. My subject immediately pounced on it, picked it up, and inspected it from every angle. As for me, I was cursing myself for not checking the damn thing to make sure it was on tight. The National Museum is absolutely spectacular, as the Nationalists made sure to loot the antiquities from Peking (Beijing) and other mainland sites when they evacuated to Taiwan. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside. As an example of the wonderful artwork, one piece of jade had been carved into a life-sized head of Chinese Cabbage. The artist had used the two-colored stone, green and white, to mimic the colors of stem and leaf of the real plant. A closer look at the work revealed three little perfectly-carved grasshoppers on the cabbage leaves! Jade is one of the harder minerals, and this piece, being hundreds of years old, was created without the benefit of the power tools we so take for granted today.
We were lucky on the Coucal to have enough people to be able to have 4-section duty. That meant only being stuck on the ship for one day out of four while in port if we didn't have a regular workday. I got Shore Patrol again when we were in Pusan, Korea. Since the ship was anchored out, I had to stay ashore all night, and there were no berthing facilities, I had to sleep on a pool table using the table's cover as a blanket until the first boat in the morning.
The nuclear submarine Sea Dragon tied up to us after we anchored in Pusan Harbor. The people of Pusan were fascinated with the appearance of us 'round-eye' sailors, and it was a little discomforting to be constantly stared at. Our bus excursion took us to the countryside, where we visited traditional villages and saw the traditional home manufacture of the Korean national dish, kim chee. I must be more gastronomically adventurous than most, because, here again, I got hooked on a strange-and-wonderful local food. I still purchase a jar whenever I'm at one of the big asian markets in Boston.
Myself and another diver were selected to perform a hull sweep using scuba gear of the Sea Dragon before she left our side, to look for anything a bad guy might have planted. A couple of weighted lines were suspended in the area of the nuclear plant, though, and we were instructed to keep clear of that potential 'hot' spot.
Every port had its own distinct character, marketplace, and type of traditional small boat. The Philippines had their outriggers (even some of the 'larger' ferries), the sampans of Taiwan had a double stern, Hong Kong had its distinctive junks. The marketplaces were also amazing to meander about in, with the exotic fruits and vegetables and open meat stalls. I made sure to buy souvenirs at every port I visited, as did most every one else (except for the 'old salts' who had been on previous Westpacs). I also brought back beer bottles from most of them, too and decorated them with macrame and sailors' knot netting.
My favorite port was Hong Kong. Dockage at the piers was limited to ships of the British Navy, so we anchored a couple of miles down the bay. A local 'bum boat' was hired to ferry us to shore and back. The main 'watering hole' was a multistory facility called the China Fleet Club, which also doubled as a great place to pick up trinkets. I still have some of them, including framed glassed-in little pictures made entirely from bird feathers, batik paintings, and little carvings. Our bus tour took us to the top of Victoria Peak, which has an amazing panoramic view, and also across the bay to the New Territories. Now, of course, we seem to have become dependent on The People's Republic of China to manufacture most everything, but back then, they were our mortal enemies. It was odd to be so close to the border of one of our most formidable adversaries. Little kids tried to sell us little red books filled with Mao Tse Tung's words of wisdom (kicking myself now for not getting one... must be a collectors item now). I don't know what Hong Kong looks like now, but back then there was a lot of farmland and undeveloped countryside in the New Territories. We also had a wonderful meal at a floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbor, which was accessible only by hiring a local stern-oared boat from the dock.
Another favorite place was Tiger Balm Gardens, which began as a personal estate of a very wealthy businessman in the 1930s. It was filled with gardens and very strange cement statues of animals and Buddhist mythological figures. I recently read something on the Internet with some regret that much of Tiger Balm gardens was torn down in 2004 to make room for apartment buildings (the original mansion was saved).
The Deck Department of our ship were perfectly capable of painting. However, I think there was some rule that compelled American ships to hire a local company to paint the exterior of the ship. The local workers showed up every day, did a few hours of work, and played -- loudly -- mah jongg until it was time to return to shore.
The XO of the Coucal ASR-8 in 1974-75 was an officious twit of a Lieutenant, the type of an officer that, if you saw him before he saw you, you'd cross the street to avoid having to salute. I never liked the guy. One time we were at anchor in Hong Kong Harbor, and I was off duty on the fantail with my camera. A junk in full sail was coming close by our stern. Just as I was focusing the lens, I heard him say: "Hey you! I want you to go..." I forget exactly what it was, but is was some unimportant little errand.
"Yes, sir, but could I just..." The junk was almost in focus....another second...almost...
A fat hand was slapped over my lens. "NOW, SAILOR!!!"
"Yes, sir!" and off I went, thinking to myself as I went, "Asshole!"
So, a few years ago, I was mindlessly watching a late night movie on the tube. I think it was the 1976 remake of King Kong. A shot of the bridge of the Elk River (LSMR-501) came up and I'll be a son of a gun, there was a quick cameo of him, now a LCDR, who must have been assigned to be CO of the ship after he left Coucal.
One of the memorable experiences in Hong Kong involved a short, skinny, pasty-white Irish kid from South Boston, who earned the nickname 'Killer.' He was a wise-ass punk on his best behavior, but when he had a few alcoholic beverages under his belt, he was ready to take on the world. Killer was escorted back to the ship by Shore Patrol a few times. On one morning just after reveille, I went up on deck to the fantail just in time to see him being released from temporary confinement. It seems that he picked a fight with a very large specimen of Shore Patrol the night before, and he was still out of control when he was dragged back to the ship. The duty officer was unable to calm him down, so he used sailor's ingenuity to keep the wild lad from causing more havoc. Killer was encapsulated into two metal mesh Stokes stretchers like a clam in his shell and secured to the deck until morning. I think Killer was confined to the ship for the remainder of our cruise, and he was definitely a bit more subdued in temperament after that incident.
Another memorable experience involved the Case of the Phantom Shitter. I was on the USS Coucal ASR-8 for a Westpac cruise in 1974. We spent some time anchored in Hong Kong Harbor. A water taxi, A.K.A. a 'bum boat' was hired to ferry guys on liberty ashore and back. One evening during our Hong Kong stay I had the 2000 - 2400 quarterdeck watch. All was quiet until the bum-boat arrived with the last two sailors coming aboard from liberty: CWO3 Bright and EN3 Newman.
A half hour later, my Sound & Security watchstander came by and said, "There is somebody up on the radar mast. I think you better check it out."
Oh, shit, the watch is almost over, and I just want to go below and hit the rack.
"OK," I said to my messenger, "you stay here and I'll go investigate."
I could have gone up to the 02 deck by the outside ladder, but I chose to go inside, through the mess deck, and up the inside stairway, past the captain's stateroom, and then up one more ladder. Just as I passed by the CO's stateroom, I smelled something terrible, and I looked over to find a huge pile of shit on the captain's pennant just outside his door. Oh, I'm pissed now, as I'll have to take care of that, too (maybe quietly make it disappear over the side).
I arrived at the base of the mast and looked up. There was someone up there, all right, happily spinning the radar around and around. It's Newman.
"Newman, I order you to come down immediately and go to bed!"
Poor choice of words. He climbed down slowly, but as soon as his feet hit the deck, he bolted for parts unknown. I made my way back to the quarterdeck and sent my messenger to wake the duty chief, who waked the duty officer, Ensign Bunn. The miscreant was finally located and convinced to calm down and hit the rack. Of course, he's also on report, and I had to write up a narrative of the evening's 'festivities.' The Ensign dumped the mound o' poop from the pennant overboard and put it in the laundry (I love Ensigns!).
A few days later, I had to testify at Captain's Mast in the wardroom (yes, it really is a green table!). The Skipper was not amused, to say the least when the full story including the defilement of his pennant was revealed. Newman lost his crow, got many hours of "Extra Military Instruction" (probably could eat off the engineroom deck after he was done), and he was restricted to the ship for the duration of the cruise. We were formerly on friendly terms, but after this incident he never spoke to me again.
While we were operating in Philippine waters, we steamed from Subic Bay, past Cebu Island, to Cagayan de Oro City in northern Mindanao Island for a good will port stop. The ship was dressed with pennants, and readied for a public open house. Ours was the first American warship to visit the city since World War II, and enormous crowds showed up. At first, a few of the guys thought it would be fun to toss coins into the water at the pier for the small boys to dive in and recover. Unfortunately the little brats quickly became nuisances as they climbed all over the ship and had to be swatted off. We also toured the city and its markets. A cute young Peace Corps worker came aboard, and a few of us chatted with her for many hours. I corresponded with her a few times, and when I mustered out of active duty at Treasure Island, I met up with her for lunch in San Francisco. Nice kid, I wonder what she's doing now.
Although it was chilly enough at our first port of Yokuska, Japan in late March to require pea coats on quarterdeck watch, for the most part we enjoyed glorious, hot weather. We did encounter the outskirts of a typhoon off the Philippines and spent much of the day either tying down everything in sight or holding onto anything solid for dear life. Most of us by that time had our sea legs, but one inexperienced watchstander threw up all over the ship's wheel. I was very glad that I could sit down at the radar screen, but I could only bear to look at the cursor circling round and round for a few seconds every minute.
If transit time between ports permitted, the CO slowed the ship down to trolling speed for a few hours to permit the fishing enthusiasts amongst the crew to try their luck. On one glorious afternoon in the China Sea, we lucked into some fine mahi mahi (also known as dorado or dolphin fish). They were filleted and immediately transported to the galley. The cooks made a delicious mustard sauce and we all had fresh mahi mahi sashimi on the spot. Experiences such as this make up for a lot of the inconveniences and tedium of spending time at sea. We also looked forward to the occasional cookouts on the fantail when we could eat barbecue and drink the one beer allotted per man for the occasion.
Our last port before returning to Pearl Harbor in mid August was Sasebo, Japan, which has had a U.S. naval presence since the end of WWII. A few hours before I had to return to the ship, I was perusing the bookshelves of the Navy Exchange for something to read. I came across a book on origami (Japanese paperfolding), and it was in English. It was only a few bucks, so I bought it. I managed to fold most of the models in the book, but the only one that I actually memorized was the traditional frog. Now, this frog was one of the few old style designs that could be made three dimensional instead of flat. This is done by holding his little rear legs apart and blowing air into the hole in the middle. It gets a lot of laughs at parties, especially after everyone has imbibed sufficient alcoholic refreshment. Fast forward about 20 years, and I have done this little comedy act one too many times for my exasperated wife. "You know, you're just a one-trick-pony! Why don't you learn something else?!" A few months later, we were in New York City visiting the American Museum of Natural History. We had learned through the Internet that the national origami group, Origami-USA had an office in the bowels of the building, which we found with a little effort. Eventually, we both joined, bought a lot of origami books, and attended a few conventions. So, today, one of my strange little pastimes is folding paper.
Wayne Aaberg and I took advantage of the great Navy Exchange prices at Yokosuka and bought 450 cc Honda motorcycles, which were crated disassembled. The Coucal was a relatively small ship, but we were allowed to store our Westpac treasures as space permitted. On the cruise back to Pearl Harbor, both recompression chambers were stuffed with our souvenirs. As soon as we got back, Wayne and I sent our bikes to the local Honda dealer for assembly, and in the next few months we explored just about every road on Oahu. Unfortunately, the enlisted barracks were now unavailable to us, and we couldn't use the ship as permanent storage. Luckily, one of my buddies, GM2 Ben Goss was in married housing and let me store my stuff at his place.
I wrote or called home once a week or so. My mother sometimes mailed home made mint chocolate chip brownies, which were very popular when they arrived. On one phone call home, in November, I mentioned to my mother that, if they wanted to take a vacation in Hawaii, I could arrange very affordable lodgings. I had found out about four recreational facilities run by the DOD that charged according to your rank. As an E5, my charge would be $5.00 apiece a night, and we could stay a week at each facility. There was Fort DeRussy, in the heart of Waikiki Beach, which was a large Quonset hut style building. There were individual cottages on the beach at Barbers Point on the Waianae side of Oahu, and similar cottages at Bellows Field on the windward side. Finally, there was Kilauea Military Camp on the big island of Hawaii. I didn't really think it would happen, though. Neither of my parents had ever flown before, and my mother was a nervous type, even in the car. A week later, though, I called home again, and my mother exclaimed, "Your father is very excited about the trip. When can you set it up?" We decided that I'd delay my 30 days leave that I'd accumulated until February.For the next few months, with the help of Wayne and some of the other guys, I researched restaurants and attractions all around Oahu and made reservations at the military R&R facilities. My mother's birthday was in early February, so I planned with Ben Goss to present her with the many gifts I had acquired during Westpac. When their flight arrived at Honolulu International Airport, I met them at the gate with fragrant flower leis, and we drove over to Fort DeRussy.I had made my mom a puka shell necklace using a newspaper photograph of one given to Elizabeth Taylor. It was a three-tier strand using about a hundred sorted puka shells, pencil urchin spines, and a cowrie shell that I had gathered from the shore. Our first trip was to the Ala Moana shopping center, where she bought a brightly colored mu-mu, and my father bought a very loud Hawaiian shirt. The first evening we went to a tourist luau at one of the Waikiki hotels, and I'm sure we were quite a sight.
The next week we stayed at Barbers Point and spent a lot of time at Electric Beach. My parents loved the beach and had a ball sifting for puka shells. Our third week was spent at Bellows Field, and we spent a lot of time at Kailua Beach Park, body surfing at Makapuu Beach Park, and snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. They had never been anywhere tropical in their lives, and the crystal blue water was a revelation. In addition to the beach, we went to the Honolulu zoo, Waikiki Aquarium, Polynesian Cultural Center, Paradise Park, Iolani Palace, Arizona Memorial, Punchbowl Cemetery, Bishop Museum, and Sea Life Park. I took them to the many restaurants that I had checked out including Top of the I restaurant, the Monkey Bar, and my personal favorite, Buzz's Steak House in Kailua (they had the best grilled mahi mahi I've ever had). I presented my mom with all of the Westpac treasures at Ben Goss's house. We drove all around the island in my beat up VW hatchback. I did manage to take my dad for a ride on my motorcycle once.
At the end of the third week of their stay, we again drove out to Honolulu Airport and from there flew to Hilo, rented a car for the week and drove over to Kilauea Military Camp. KMC was located at the edge of the vast, smoking caldera of Kilauea volcano. It was peaceful at the time, although there were sulfurous steam vents hissing within a short hike from the cottages, and there was an occasional road that was blocked by a layer of black lava that had flowed across. Accommodations were individual cottages with a fireplace, and Ohia firewood was supplied to take the chill of the evenings a few thousand feet up in the mountains of Hawaii. In the distance were views of the snow-capped peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Morning and Evening meals at a central mess was provided. The first few days we spent hiking and exploring the trails near the camp, one day we drove down to Hilo and explored the city, and another day we drove completely around the island. They were amazed by the many climate changes there were in just a few miles of driving, from the tropical rain forest near Akaka Falls, to the grasslands and cattle country, to desert. We stopped at black sand beaches, painted churches, and hiked over pahoehoe lava fields to see petroglyphs from before Captain Cook first 'discovered' the islands.
This was the vacation of a lifetime for my parents, all for $5.00 a day for lodging! They talked about this trip for the rest of their lives. My dad passed away in 1990, and my mom nine years later.
Tourist photographs of Waikiki Beach nearly always include the scenic cliffs of Diamond Head in the background. Very few tourists realize that Diamond Head is actually a hollow cone and is part of a National Guard base. In the early 1970s a local radio station organized a highly attended rock/folk concert inside Diamond head, called the "Sunshine Festival" on New Year's Day. Of course, a contingent of sailors from Coucal attended, mostly the younger guys. It being the 1970s, most of them drank a bit and got high from smoking weedy substances. One of them produced a rubber fire-fighting mask 'borrowed' from the ship which had been slightly modified with a little tinfoil to contain some of said dry weedy material in a little bowl on the outside. The user donned the mask, lit the material, and inhaled deeply. One instant you could look into the mask and see his face, the next all you could see was dense smoke! After a pause of a few seconds, off came the mask, there was much coughing, and exclamations of "Good stuff, man!"
I had an underwater camera, macro lenses, and strobe light on the Coucal. One night in early 1975, our master diver, Chief Hall, got me out of the rack about 2200 and told me that he wanted some underwater photographs taken under the ship. There was a leak coming from a small hole. So, I and another diver geared up in scuba, jumped in, and swam over to the location the Chief had told us. There was his finger protruding from the hole. I took a few shots, and we climbed up a Jacobs ladder to get out. I rewound the film and gave the roll to the Chief. A few days later, we found out what the problem was. When Coucal was built in 1943, the builders failed to weld an extra plate, called the striker plate, at the bottom of the sound and security tubes. Every 30 minutes for 32 years a young engineering watch stander lowered -- dropped is likely more accurate -- a small weight attached to a graduated metal tape into this tube to check for water that might have leaked into the space. There were maybe 30 more S/S tubes around the ship. Over the 32 years, a small hole had been worn into the hull plate. I didn't hear anything more about this, and I left active duty later that year. Fast forward another 30 plus years, and I found out via the Internet that Coucal had been decommissioned in 1977, only two years after I snapped a photo of the Chief's finger sticking out of the bottom of the ship. I wonder if more holes were found, and that this might have contributed to the retirement of this old ship.
I found a girlfriend and lived off base in late spring of 1975, and I used up my remaining leave allotment, especially when the ship deployed. The only adventure that I missed was when Jack Lord filmed part of an episode of Hawaii Five-O aboard the ship. I knew that this was not going to be my career, and I was getting anxious to muster out. My last enlisted reviews mentioned a "short-timer's attitude." I looked around for employment, but I couldn't find anything, so I left Hawaii and returned to my home town.
I didn't think so at the time, but in hindsight it was a privilege to serve on the old girl. We used to joke that "ASR" meant "Assholes and Submarine Rejects." The ship's name was an embarrassment. Other ships were called "Resolute," "Intrepid," "Preserver," or after historical places like "Iwo Jima," or after famous heroes such as "Eisenhower," but our ship was named after a tropical cuckoo bird. I've learned a little bit of the history of submarine rescue from researching around the Internet. After several peacetime submarine disasters, there was great pressure directed at the Navy to develop a means of rescuing survivors who might be trapped in the vessel on the bottom. Early ships available for retrofitting into salvage platforms were Lapwing class minesweepers left over from World War I. Back in the day, ships of a particular class were named by theme. For example, battleships were named after states ("Arizona," "Massachusetts"), submarines were names after sea creatures ("Skate," Sculpin"), and so on. The Lapwing class minesweepers were named after birds. The Naval History and Heritage Command web site states: "the development of mine warfare necessitated the introduction of a new type of ship, the minesweeper. A new type of ship required a new name source. The then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, took a keen interest in amateur ornithology. This led him to select bird names as the name source for these new ships, and "F.D.R." signed the General Order assigning names to the first 36 ships of the Lapwing class. The ships that bore these colorful names served as the backbone of the Navy's mine force for the next quarter century; many earned honors in World War II" ( http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq63-1.htm ). Apparently enough of the Lapwing class minesweepers were retrofitted for the new mission of submarine rescue that the tradition was continued for the Chanticleer class ASRs.
I also learned that that the few Congressional Medals of Honor awarded for extreme valor during peacetime were presented to Navy divers involved in submarine rescue. We trained hard and were always prepared to take action, but the opportunity never came.
I've corresponded with a few of my shipmates over the years. I spent a few days visiting Dan Aguilar at his home in San Antonio, Texas the week I got discharged from active duty in 1975, and about fifteen years later he, his wife and son visited my wife and I for a few days in Falmouth, Massachusetts (unfortunately I only spent an evening with them because I was staffing a NAUI scuba instructor course in Rhode Island that week). In 1986 Ens. Dennis Bunn and his wife kindly put me up for a couple of days after a conference I attended at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. After his service ended, he was a swim coach at FSU. I learned that he passed away from cancer several years later. He must have been a much loved coach, because his students put up a tribute web page to honor his memory. He died way too young. Wayne Aaberg and I still correspond via email. After spending months scanning my many color slides, I burned and sent CDs filled with my Coucal photographs to other former shipmates. Coucal's CO, LCDR Blair Barrows now lives in Maine and is a published author! He penned a novel in 2004, "The Deep Steal," involving, you guessed it, a submarine adventure.
Sometimes in life there are phenomena that just can't be explained. There are two noteworthy coincidences pertaining to my Navy career. In high school my mother gave me a 2-inch model of a torpedo made of monel, complete with tiny rotatable propellers. An old flame of hers had given it to her during the early part of WWII. I have it to this day. The school I was assigned out of boot camp was torpedoman's mate, even though I hadn't requested it.
I replaced David Owen as the Diving Safety Officer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1980. David established the dive program in 1953. He was a prolific correspondent, writing letters to most of the 'who's who' in diving for almost 30 years, and he saved almost every scrap of paper. A few years before I retired in 2010, I began to open up and examine the contents of boxes full of papers. It was a treasure-trove of history. I found hand-written notes from Jacques Cousteau, letters from George Bond (Papa Topside), Conrad Limbaugh from Scripps, and many more. Some papers had already been damaged from a renovation project, and since my office was on the waterfront in Woods Hole, I realized early on that it was vulnerable if a hurricane hit us at high tide (we've been lucky...Hurricane Bob in 1991 hit at low tide). I wanted to keep the content, but I felt that I no longer could keep the artifacts. So, whenever I had some time, I began scanning some of the more significant documents that chronicled the history of scientific diving at Woods Hole. I eventually delivered the papers to the WHOI archives. In the early days of scientific diving, there were no NAUI or PADI agencies, and indeed no scuba textbooks to go by. The authority for all diving knowledge was the U.S. Navy. WHOI had done much research useful to the Navy during and after WWII (bathythermographs, which showed where submarines could hide from sonar detection below the thermocline, for one), so there was a close cooperative association. Our early divers all received training at the Submarine Escape Training Tower in New London, Connecticut, and I found many letters between the CO of the tank and Dave. One of the letters drew my attention. In it, the CO informed Dave that he was leaving New London because he had received orders to be the CO of the USS Coucal in Pearl Harbor! It was amazing to read this letter of long ago that involved the same ship that I served on many years later.
The Vietnam war was winding down in 1975, but antiwar sentiment reached its peak. Unfortunately, our own peer group in the civilian world misplaced their animosity onto those of us serving in uniform. Nobody wore the uniform off base. Men's hair styles were long and largely unkempt, so everyone knew who we short-haired people were. It's been many years, but I've never forgot the lack of respect or recognition servicemen of that era received from the public. Today, whenever I see someone in a military uniform, I always go up to him/her, shake his hand, and say, "Thank you for serving."
As it turned out, the Navy wasn't quite finished with me yet, but that is the topic of another essay.
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