A Mark II sea story
Now for the second of three short vignettes about Mark Edmunds (as I remember him). I had the idea to have the stories span a year. This story occurred roughly midway between the first and the one I will tell last. All events related are from a previous century.
Crusader Castle
One difficult thing about telling these stories now, is that while I remember certain events well and in approximate detail - these are the stories I relate, often after coming to understand them as stories establishing a memory hook for their narrative line like a photo dipped in fixing solution - I find; though, that I often recall nothing really of what lies on either end of the event I remember. Such is the case here. I remember it was a Sunday, I know we were in port. I came into the CVIC of the USS Ranger at some point in the mid morning. I don't recall if I had eaten breakfast or not. No one was in the CVIC (a warren of about eight compartments about as big a two bedroom apartment where approximately thirty-five people worked) No one was there save for Mark who was in the mission planning compartment, which was a small tv studio/briefing room. I hadn't run into anyone else I knew since I got up. I imagined they were either standing a watch, still in their racks or most likely had hit the gangplank and were out someplace in town (which would have been Olongapo). Mark was hard at work. He had the daily message traffic in hand which told him where on the big metal sliding wall panels to which we had rubber cemented ONC charts of the Pacific, he should place the strip magnets which had the name of Russian ships affixed to them written out using those Denison embossers which punch white letters onto brightly colored plastic tape.
I came in sat down and watched, as one would sit down and watch a tv that was turned on. After a while I said to him: "Y'know Mark, we're tied up at the quay in Subic, we don't have to plot the board when we're in port. We're off call."
"I know" Mark said , and continued to trace out the intersecting lines of longitude and latitude that marked the individual position of some magnet.
What he was doing was a fairly involved piece of work. It took about forty minutes to do well and right. I tried again to make him see the futility of the effort particularly on a Sunday morning in the middle of an extended in-port period, where it was unlikely anyone would ever lay eyes on the results of his labor. Additionally, Mark and I were not ships company but part of the air-wing (the suite of squadrons assigned to the aircraft carrier for that deployment.) We were only attached administratively to a ships unit through the speciality of our rating. Chief Tennyson didn't really give a rats ass about us, or any other of the TAD sailors he was in charge of. If that meant you came in for less scrutiny by turns, it also meant you couldn't buy a brownie point for trying . I pointed all this out to Mark ending with "no ones going to know or care. "
"I'll know" he answered.
"There are other people whose responsibility this is right know", I told him, " units at sea, fleet intelligence centers, the ready rooms of the fighter squadrons at Clark AFB or Cubi point just around the point in Subic Bay."
"Maybe so", Mark said slowly as he finished the plotting, "but this ship is what the Seventh fleet is really built on for the period of this deployment. Our ability to defend everything you just mentioned depends on this ship and its planes and bombers. So the only thing that really matters is what we know. If something goes down and we have to put out to sea this afternoon, pull everybody back from liberty - scrambling back to the ship with their dicks hanging out. We'll be ready, because I'll have plotted the board. "
Mark was very proud of himself now and he was finished so he stepped back to take a look at the board. "Its done and we know where all the Russians are. Probably the only two people within fifty miles of here who know all the Russians are, certainly on this Ship and this is the front line of America's defense's".
Scanning the array of blue magnets and red magnets on the board, I ascertained that this was true enough and on its way toward being a description of the situation. The admiral's copy of that same message traffic probably contained pictures with all the O's and X's and in the appropriate colors, but I didn't know were the admiral was so he didn't count. I didn't like losing arguments to Mark even low key arguments though I often did.
"Hey Mark" I called out, "How old are you". "nineteen", he answers. And how old am I? "Nineteen also" "Did ever read Kurt Vonnegut's book SlaughterHouse Five My memory here is a little hazy I recollect that he said 'yes' but with enough hesitation to make me think he hadn't, but wanted to hear what I had to say.
"Do you remember the subtitle of that book?" Slaughterhouse Five, a fictional novel that spins out of an autobiographical instant in Vonnegut's life, has a subtitle: the Children's Crusade. "If you take any war, any army, any navy, from anywhere in history or right now on your board or whoever else keeps a big board plotted, and you crack it open - inside you will find nothing but children."
Mark nodded, "I know."
11:48:08 PM  ;;
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