This story concerns one of the more unpleasant series of events in my Navy career and my life. I was onboard the USS Enterprise, (the aircraft carrier not the starship) in charge of the night shift in the communication and navigation repair shop. I had a crew of 12 sailors, some from every squadron on board. 10 were good guys and good workers; 2 were not upholding the highest standards of the Naval Service.
I liked the job; I got to help the guys with troubles they couldn’t repair on their own and work as much or as little as I cared to. It was a great job except for the 2 recalcitrant clowns I had to deal with. Besides being a drag on morale they smoked a little weed during their off duty hours and were then always tired when they showed up for work. I was still green enough to think I could solve the problem myself, so I leaned into it and did my best to motivate them, but they were surly and thought they knew everything about everything. I couldn’t catch them with the weed, but they were, as I said, always tired on duty. I was warned by my Chief that sleeping was not to be tolerated on shift. I warned the two of them that I could not allow sleeping. They thought they could buffalo me and thought I wouldn’t enforce my decree.
I did warn them twice, but they persisted and on the third time I woke them up and told them I was placing them on report. They didn’t believe I had the guts to do it, but they were wrong. I went to the Master-at-arms office and wrote up the chits, placing them on report.
One, named Cornwell, found out I wasn’t bluffing and by the next shift, he caught me in a ladder well and pleaded with me to withdraw the report. “Please don’t do this to me,” he asked.
“You did it to yourself,” I answered. “I’m not going to withdraw the chit. I warned you and did all I could to help you get squared away and you gave me nothing but grief for trying to help you. Now you have to live with the consequences.”
I assumed both of them would get a slap on the wrist and perhaps some extra duty. That was what happened to me years earlier when I was put on report. What I didn’t know was I would have to go through more trouble than they did. As I said, I was running the 1900 to 0700 (7:00PM to 7:00 AM, 7 days a week) shift, so I went to bed at 0700 in the morning. The report began to go through channels and the first day I got a call from my chief around noon, (my midnight). He wanted to talk to me about the incident. I got up, got dressed and went to see him in his office.
“Why did you put these guys on report?” he asked.
“I was out of other options to enforce your order concerning no sleeping,” I said.
“Do you want to go through with this?” he asked.
“Yes I do, I don’t have any other option,” I answered.
“Okay,” he replied.
The next day at noon, (again, my midnight) I received a call from Cornwell’s division officer. “I want to speak with you.”
“Sir you do understand it’s midway through my night’s sleep?” I asked.
“Yes I do and I want to see now.”
I dressed, went to his office and relived the same routine I did with my chief, but in a less civilized manner. The officer all but threatened me for doing what was my duty, following my orders.
Shortly after that we pulled into Cubi Point, adjacent to Subic Bay naval station and my squadron received notice from the Red Cross that my Father was in the hospital and was in danger of death. I was called to the squadron ready room to speak with my division officer. I told him I knew Dad had been in a severe accident and had a broken leg, but nothing beyond that. He said: “I can give you emergency leave, but I don’t see how a broken leg warrants that.”
I agreed and said I would go over to the base telephone exchange, call home and see what was going on back there. I called Mom and asked what happened? She said: “Your Father’s had a stroke and I don’t know if he’ll live or not. The doctor asked me if there was anything I could do to give him the will to survive. I said bring his son home from overseas. If I can tell him his son is coming home he’ll survive.”
“I’m on my way Mom,” I replied. I went back to the ship, went to the personnel office and told the duty personnel man what my division officer had said and I wanted emergency leave. I gave the personnel man a note to my division officer explaining what had happened. The cruise was nearly over so I wasn’t going to be missed too badly by my technicians and not at all by my 2 errant charges.
I packed my sea bag and left the ship on a journey half way across Luzon and halfway across the world, to home. In 36 hours I was landing in Springfield, Missouri and taking a taxi to the hospital here. Dad lived on to survive several more strokes before succumbing to congestive heart failure on December 15th in 1992. Dad was never the same after that accident.
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