Hit The Head

 Hit the Head

 By Paul Davis

 “I gotta hit the head,” is U.S. Navy speak for a sailor needing to use a urinal or toilet. 

Bathrooms on Navy ships and shore stations are called the "head.” As I heard it, the name derives from the old sailing ships, where the toilet was located in the bow, or the head of the ship. The Navy is big on traditions and nicknames.   

On the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during our 1970-1971 combat cruise, the Communication Radio Division’s head was equipped with four urinals, a half dozen sinks, a half dozen toilet stalls and a half dozen shower stalls. 

Cleaning the head was the responsibility of the compartment cleaner, a position I held for a month when I was first assigned to the division. 

I told the other sailors at the time that I was the “head man." That always got a laugh. 

While on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, the radio division was on what was called “port and starboard” watches, with eight hours on watch and eight hours off. When half of the division was on watch and the other half were in their racks sleeping, the head was usually empty. 

One evening during our second line period on Yankee Station, I couldn’t sleep, so I was in the head brushing my teeth. Ronald Redman, a big and heavy sailor, wide as a refrigerator, waddled into the head. 

The Oklahoma sailor was crude and ill mannered. He had a mouthful of chewing tobacco in his jaw, and he spit a glob into the sink next to me. He then began to walk away. 

“Yo! Clean the sink out, you fucking slob,” I said to him. 

“Fuck you, Davis,” Redman said. 

At that moment James Griffin, a chubby and congenial 2^nd class radioman, walked into the head. He saw me hit Redman square in the face with a swift and hard left jab. The jab caused Redman to step back, but he just stood there and didn’t say anything. 

“That’s enough, Davis,” Griffen said, stepping in between us. 

“I don’t want to fight you, Davis,” Redman said. “Because you is smaller than me.” 

“Oh, yeah,” I replied. I hit Redman in the face with a good short right. 

Redman fell against a sink and his left eye swelled and closed. 

Griffen grabbed my arms and warned me that he would put me on report if I hit Redman again. 

“I ain’t gonna fight you, Davis, cause I don’t fight guys smaller than me,” Redman said as he held his left eye and waddled out of the head.   

To my surprise, it appeared that Redman had one redeeming quality.

 

Most of the sailors entered the head wearing flip flop shower shoes, a white towel with snaps held around our waists, and another white towel around our necks. 

Jason Bullard was different. 

The tall and fat 3^rd class radioman came into the head wearing a white fleece bathrobe. After showering, he emerged from the shower stall with a towel wrapped around his head like a girl and the full robe on his body. 

Despite Bullard’s effeminate ways, he was not ridiculed or picked on. He was a popular guy in the division. We presumed he was a homosexual, but he didn’t proposition anyone as far as we knew. Bullard was intelligent, cheerful and funny. He often made self-deprecating comments about his swishy ways. We all laughed when he swayed into the head like a movie queen, and he would laugh back, usually making some clever quip.    

Bullard’s best friend on the Kitty Hawk was Jeffrey Greenberg, a 3^rd class radioman who shared Bullard’s love of books. I became friendly with Greenberg when he saw me reading Mark Twain’s short stories. He struck up a conversation with me about Ole Sam Clemens, a writer we both loved.  

I later became friendly with Bullard. “I’m surprised that a high school dropout and street urchin is so well read,” he said.  

I laughed. I told him that I wanted to be a writer, and he encouraged me to get my GED high school equivalency via a correspondence course and then take college correspondence courses. I took his advice. 

 

It was on another line period off North Vietnam when a serious assault was committed in our head. 

I didn’t like Louis Durand. The tall, lean 27-year-old 3^rd class radioman with curly reddish hair was from New Orleans. He was proud of his college degree from some university, and he often spoke of it and how he was better educated than our officers. 

He bragged that he had connections in the city, and he was in line to be a big shot when he received his draft notice. Not wanting to die in a Vietnamese rice paddy, he joined the Navy. But he often complained that the Navy was holding him back from his destiny.  

Durand was also quite vocal in his detainment of those with only high school diplomas, and he was even more disdainful of high school dropouts. And he was especially disdainful of 18-year-old high school dropouts, like me, who appeared to be somewhat literate and intelligent. 

In the middle of a group discussion on our down time, Durand would quiz me about some fine point of the subject. I passed his quizzes, which made him scowl and others laugh. But he was positively gleeful when I happened to mispronounce a word.

Bullard, also a college graduate, came to my defense, stating, “Davis is an autodidact. That’s why he sometimes mispronounces words. But I suspect that he is better read than you, dear Louis.”

That pissed off Durand. And he had no snappy comeback.

I didn’t know what an autodidact was. I had to look it up. Bullard was right. I was never a good student, having cut most classes in high school, but I was an avid reader. So I may have known what a word meant, but in some cases. I did not know how to properly pronounce the word due to my not ever having heard the word spoken in a classroom.

After Durand mocked me for mispronouncing the word, I made a joke about it. But in my head, I made a note to punch out Durand if I ever encountered him in Olongapo. Luckily for Durand, he frequented a different bar in Olongapo than I did, so I never saw him ashore.  

 

I later learned that Durand also displayed his haughtily ways in Olongapo. He mocked an airman from one of the airwings attached to the Kitty Hawk. The airman, John Makris, the son of a Greek restaurant owner in New York City, was offended but said nothing to Durand.  

“The Greeks have gone from being great philosophers to being short order cooks,” Durant said disdainfully. The bar girls laughed at Durand’s put down of Makris, even though they didn’t know what he was talking about. But hey, they thought, he’s buying the drinks.

Makris held his tongue and temper and allowed Durand to make disparaging remarks, but he drew the line when Durant coveted Lolita, Makris’ pretty bargirl.

After pulling into Subic Bay after a long line period, Markis went before a captain’s mass and was restricted to the ship as punishment for shoving another airman during an argument at sea. Not being allowed to visit Olongapo during our week-long port of call was a very cruel punishment for a young man.

To make matters even worse, Makris was told by another airman that Durand had paid the bar’s Mama-San, so he was able to take Lolita to a hotel for what was called “Short-time” sex. Durand later that evening left with Lolita when the bar closed.

Makris was furious. He had fallen for Lolita, and he thought she was in love with him. He took a combination lock and stuffed it into a white sock. The “lock in a sock” was a common weapon aboard ship and Makris planned to get revenge on Durand.

Makris lay in the passageway outside of the Message Processing Cener. He waited more than an hour and then saw Durand step out into the passageway and enter the radiomen’s compartment. Makris followed Durand into the head. Durand stood before a urinal when Makris came up behind him and hit Durand in the back of his head with the lock in a sock.

Durand screamed in pain and fell to the deck. Makris stood over Durand and struck him twice more. Three radiomen, alerted by Durant’s screams, entered the head and grabbed Makris.

Durand was taken to the ship’s sick bay and then flown off the carrier and admitted into the Subic Bay hospital. Makris was also flown off the carrier and landed in Subic Bay. He was met on the airfield by NIS special agents who arrested Makris for felonious assault and attempted murder.

I felt bad for both Durand and Makris, although I didn’t like Durand and I didn’t know Makris.

Bullard told us that he read a message that stated that Durand had been operated on and was in stable condition. The message also said that Durand was scheduled to be medically discharged from the Navy.

“Durand said he couldn’t wait to get out of the Navy,” Bullard said. “He said that with his fine education; he had a bright future in New Orleans. It is a shame that he had to be beaned on the head, in the head, to get a jump on his brilliant career.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s one way to get ahead in life.”

Admiral McCain

 One of the good things about working in the Communications Radio Division aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War was that radiomen were the first to know about everything. 

For example, when fleet headquarters ordered the carrier to leave “Yankee Station” off the coast of North Vietnam and sail towards Subic Bay on such and such a date, the word spread quickly among the radio division. The radiomen in turn told their friends in other divisions aboard the ship the good news about heading to Subic Bay and the great wide-open liberty town of Olongapo. 

The Kitty Hawk’s captain often complained that the entire ship’s crew and air wing knew about the order to proceed to Subic Bay before he did. 

While on watch in the Message Processing Center one evening in 1971 during our final Yankee Station line period, I saw a copy of a classified CIA report that was sent to the Task Force 77 admiral and the Kitty Hawk captain. 

The report announced the capture of a North Vietnamese spy in Manila. The spy, named Thanh Ban, was the subject of a nation-wide manhunt in the Philippines. He had been posing in Olongapo as a Filipino Chinese merchant named Shi Chen as he spied on the massive Subic Bay U.S. naval base. But after an assassination plot had been uncovered, Ban fled to Manila and was hidden by the New People’s Army (NPA), the communist guerrillas at war with the Philippine government. 

An elite Filipino police unit, accompanied and assisted by an unnamed CIA officer, raided a NPA hideout in Manila. Four Filipino NPA Communist guerrillas were killed in the shootout with the elite unit. One NPA officer and Ban were captured.

The report noted that although Ban was a dedicated Communist, he did not relish being executed by the Filipinos or spending many years in an awful Filipino prison, so he confessed to the commander of the elite unit and the CIA officer. 

Ban told of the plan to execute Admiral John S. McCain aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while the aircraft carrier was off the coast of North Vietnam.  

On our very first line period on Yankee Station in December of 1970, Admiral John S. McCain, the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, known as CINCPAC, flew aboard. As CINPAC, Admiral McCain was the commander of all American forces in the Vietnam War.  

I was working in the Message Processing Center when I heard a commotion.

Admiral McCain, escorted by the Task Force admiral, the ship’s captain and other ranking officers, entered the center for a brief tour. I stood at attention like the other sailors in the center and heard McCain yell “At ease.” 

The admiral, a short, thin and wizened officer, with a cigar as big as a pony’s leg, walked by me and other sailors on watch. He stopped, looked me in the eye, and said in a gruff voice, “Get a haircut, sailor!” 

“Yes, Sir,” I replied. 

The admiral and his entourage all laughed. 

As they were passing by, I heard the admiral ask what movie was showing on our closed-circuit television on that evening. An aide responded that MASH was scheduled to air three times for the ship’s three different watches on their down time.   

I saw the admiral grimace and say that we should be watching the movie Patton with the great actor George C. Scott, and not some anti-war crap. 

I liked both films, but the good admiral did not ask me for my opinion. 

After Patton showed in the early evening, McCain appeared on our closed-circuit TV. Noted for his profane language, the admiral opened with, "Good goddamn evening.” He went on to give a rousing and profane speech about our mission to contain the Vietnamese Communists in Vietnam. He praised our Navy commanders on the carrier as well as the young crew. 

He ended his speech by stating, “The hippies back home say ‘make love not war.” I say if you’re man enough, you can do both.” 

There were both cheers and groans from the more than 5,000 sailors and airmen about the ship. 

“Cut him some slack,” I told a friend who had groaned loudly next to me. 

“Do you know his son, a Navy carrier pilot, is a POW in North Vietnam? How would you like to be the top officer in the war while the enemy is holding your son? And you don’t know if he is being tortured because of you?” 

Admiral McCain’s son was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander John S. McCain III. The future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate was then a prisoner of war being held in North Vietnam having been shot down in 1967. The admiral said little about his POW son, and I can only imagine how he suffered in silence.

 

Later, reading messages to and from the Subic Bay naval station and our message center, I learned about the plot to assassinate Admiral McCain aboard the Kitty Hawk. 

Lieutenant Colonel Cesar Rosa of the Olongapo City Police was a short and thin officer, but he was wiry and hard, and he had a stern face and cruel dark eyes that frightened the people that he investigated and subsequently arrested. He also had a reputation for being relentless and ruthless. 

Luz dela Cruz was an unattractive older woman with a skeletal body, a taunt face and protruding buck teeth. Still, she had her customers in The Ritz, an Olongapo bar that catered to American sailors. Most of her customers who bought her drinks were “Cherry Boy” young virgins and older American sailors that were not too fussy about looks. 

She also had customers she sold shabu crystal meth to at the bar. Luz dela Cruz was her own best customer. When a young sailor went wild on shabu and took on two American Marines in The Ritz, the Olongapo police arrested the sailor. 

Prior to handing over the young sailor to the American Shore patrol, he was questioned by Rosa. 

"Where did you get the shabu?"

The sailor, who was still jumpy from the drug, replied, "I bought the meth from Luz."

He said that he had never taken the drug before and he had never felt so strong and invincible.  

"So why did those two Marines I picked a fight with beat the living shit out of me?" 

After turning over the sailor to the Shore Patrol, Rosa and Mario Dizon, his huge sergeant, drove to The Ritz and arrested dela Cruz. Back at the police station, the scared and desperate bar girl quickly gave up her shabu supplier. As a bonus, she confessed to collecting information about U.S. 7th Fleet ships from the drunk and high sailors and passed on the information on to an NPA agent. 

Rosa and Dizon headed out to arrest the NPA spy. Fernado Diaz, a muscular and seasoned warrior, fought the two Filipino police officers when they tried to arrest him. Diaz swung punches widely and tried to pull a knife from his pants pocket, but Dizon pinned the spy's arms and Rosa punched Diaz repeatedly in the face. Dizon took Diaz to the ground and placed handcuffs on him. 

Diaz was taken to the police station. Rosa called Boone Cantrell, a Naval Investigative Service special agent who worked at the Subic Bay naval base. 

Diaz, bruised by his fight with the Filipino police officers, was quiet as he sat in a chair and faced Cantrell, who was tall and Lincolnesque, and the much shorter Rosa. 

Worried about what Rosa and the American agent might do to him, he confessed to being an NPA spy. He asked for a deal. He would not only confess to passing on intelligence tidbits to his NPA superior in Manila, he would also confess to working with a North Vietnamese spy. Rosa and Cantrell looked at each other in amazement. Rosa agreed to a deal. 

To their amazement, Diaz told them that the NPA had a spy aboard the USS Kitty Hawk. The spy, Roberto Santos, was a Filipino serving in the U.S. Navy as a disbursing clerk aboard the aircraft carrier. Santos was ordered to meet with Diaz whenever the ship visited Olongapo. Santos, the son of an NPA guerrilla, had been ordered to join the American Navy. Although as a disbursing clerk, he did not have access to classified information, he was useful to a point. 

During the Kitty Hawks first port of call to Subic Bay for the 1970-1971 combat cruise, Diaz and the North Vietnamese spy, called Shi Chen, spoke about Santos. Chen said that Santos should be assigned to assassinate Admiral McCain when he visited the aircraft carrier later that month. 

Diaz objected and told his Vietnamese Communist brother-in-arms that Santos was not trained for assassinations, but the North Vietnamese spy said that it did not matter. Even if the assassination failed, it would be a psychological victory for the Communists. 

Since Diaz’s orders were to assist Chen in any matter, he met Santos at an Olongapo hotel and handed him a .25 semi-automatic pistol. Santos cried and pleaded with Diaz. He had never killed anyone, he said. He was also concerned with his own safety. What will happen to him after he shot the famous admiral?  

Diaz was adamant. Santos will follow his orders. 

After listening to Diaz’s confession, Cantrell rushed back to his Subic Bay NIS office and sent an urgent message to the USS Kitty Hawk. 

Aboard the Kitty Hawk, the message was received and distributed quickly. The admiral appeared unconcerned when told of the assassination plot. Two Marines armed with .45’s were added to the admiral’s group, and the Marine Division’s captain and two enlisted Marines armed with M-16 rifles rushed to Santos’ berthing compartment. 

Santos raised his hands in surrender and told the Marines that the pistol was in his locker. He seemed almost relieved to be arrested and therefore he would not have to shoot the admiral.

Admiral McCain later flew off the carrier. His son, John McCain, a 31-year-old Navy lieutenant commander, was held as a POW for five and a half years. He was finally released on March 14, 1973.

And looking back, I didn’t get a haircut after being ordered to do so by Admiral McCain. 

I’m proud, somewhat perversely, of the fact that I disobeyed a direct order from a four-star admiral.