On the Quay at Subic
Everything was critical at that age. Every experience pivotal. The first two years in the Navy; in Denver, Key West, on the USS Ranger (CV 61) nearly every day something occurred that altered or appreciably added to my understanding of the world. It's not lost on me that I was still a teenager through those years, which significantly influenced how I incorporated what I encountered. Some of these things I've always remembered over the years. Some come to me out of the blue.
This is one of the former. It occurred on a nondescript day midsummer 1979 unremarkable amid the constant low level bustle of the Subic Bay naval base, but it made a curiously strong impression on me.
It was Cinderella liberty situation; getting back to the ship before midnight, before whatever curfew existed for those who were going back to the ship. As such it was probably around 2300 hours, 11:00 PM, as this story begins. Such a routine re-embarkment was simple enough, but like everything the Navy did there was a procedure to it. This consisted of going up the gangplank by the quarter deck watch saluting the ships flag and announcing to the watch that you were reporting back on board while showing them your id card. The mass of ship ten stories above us on the quay was the accepted grounding and gravity of our reality and responsibilities. But there was a hold up this night.
At the top of the gangway taking his turn with the quarterdeck watch was one extremely wound up guy. He broke into an tremendous argument with quarterdeck staff; which seemed to involve some refusal of formal procedure. The initial stages of this apparently took place just before my friends and I came up into the line. We were filled in, in a somewhat haphazard fashion by those just ahead of us in the line. We were coming back from a night in Olongapo and it required a strong initial degree of concentration to determine why the line was not behaving -- not working its way forward in predicable fashion, and understanding the explanations offered for this. By then this sailor had moved from simple refusal to a full bore howl phase of his evening. It seemed he had a story to tell. His repeated cry I was born in the wrong century
, serving as a thematic summary of the rest of his impassioned soliloquy. Which, was directed to his new and captured audience; the bemused quarterdeck staff and us gathered below.
Much of the further particulars are lost to time at this point (to me at least). From what we were able to gather; though, his bar girl was unfaithful that was it -- to another sailor off a different ship. This shouldn't have surprised him; groceries need to be bought on a regular schedule and we were often at sea for two or three weeks at a time. But he went on at length: his "chivalry" was for naught in these times, his sense of the world and his place in it shaken. Lost on a dark pitiless sea in turn-down weather.
At some point he dropped down and crawled out to the front starboard elevator girder beams to evade the Master-at-Arms. All this was taking place some 20-30 ft, a long fall, above our heads from where we stood that night on the long concrete cluttered industrial expanse of the fleet quay.
From there he got into a circular cut in the wedge shaped I beam, into the first or second of a series of holes in the angle iron arm that held up the starboard elevator. Where he then looked like nothing as much as the man in the moon.
The immediate resolution of this incident followed fairly quick after that. They made a few efforts to pull him out of his perch, but soon gave up on that as impractical. He settled down from his original powerful (and I imagine chemically-induced) state of agitation. Punctuating the tropical Philippine night now with only mannered and periodic outbursts. He was therefore deemed amenable to traditional Navy techniques which is to say they put a sailor on him as a watch duty -- parade rest.
If he had stayed there til dawn, undoubtedly they would have painted him grey and written up a preventive maintenance plan for him.
Our part of incident lasted maybe 30 to 45 minutes. Apart from a soon forgotten annoyance at the waste of our time; perhaps it began to rain at some point during that evenings proceedings. There was also a struggle within us -- which had been the topic of conversation during the incident -- to resolve of our passing discomfort at what we had witnessed. There was the recognition ourselves in his conflict. Recognition of the reality of other people's lives. The Olongapo Bar Girls while not hookers as we imagined hookers; with or without heart of gold. And were not our high-school sweethearts either, they were obviously (to those who choose to discern it) people. People with hearts no different than our own.
We felt his confusion in our own reactions. Generally a responses we didn't want; and we processed accordingly privately individually. One way or another we all expected more than these situations could hold.
He was thinking too hard and had read too much growing up, we said. The masks of juvenile romanticism were not helping him in this moment, keeping him from seeing the world in un-compromised terms. Directly with common sense, not with a head full of unhelpful nonsense. We were freeing ourselves, we thought, with our indifference. The file of the waiting on the gangway and quay below bumped forward. The sailor next in line saluted and turned aboard, moving on.
Sun, 26 Jan 2014 17:00 hrs