California Liberty

 California Liberty 

By Paul Davis 

I was just returning from evening chow after my eight-hour watch in the message center aboard the USS Kitty Hawk as the aircraft carrier launched aircraft from “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam in 1971. 

As I entered the Radio Communications Division's enlisted men's compartment, I heard Salvatore Lorino’s distinctive raspy, fast-paced voice. 

Lorino often visited me while we were on Yankee Station, partly because we were both from South Philly and became friends, and partly because he had two meth customers in the division. 

Lorino, a young hoodlum whom I knew slightly from the South Philadelphia neighborhood where I was raised, was several years older than I. He was about six feet tall, lean, with black hair, rugged features, and a long face with a perpetual lopsided grin that alternately charmed and menaced. 

Entering the compartment, I saw Lorino sitting in a folding chair across from Ingemi, Hunt and a couple of other sailors. The radiomen were laughing at a story Lorino was telling them. 

“Hey, Paulie, I was jes telling them about the time we went to the bullfights in TJ,” Lorino said as I sat down and listened to the story of our trip to Tujuana, Mexico. 

“We was out of Boot Camp for only three months, so we was jes a couple of “Boots” from South Philly when we went down to the border…” 

As he told the tale, I counted. Lorino got seven out of ten facts wrong.

 

While we were stationed in San Diego prior to setting sail for Southeast Asia, we were on three-section duty, which meant that Lorino and I had two out of three weekends off. I liked San Diego, especially Mission Beach, but I was not too fond of the honky-tonk bars that most of the sailors and Marines frequented in the downtown area. I preferred to visit the bars near the local colleges, where the girls were mostly from out of town, just like us.  

I also liked to visit Tijuana, which was just across the border from San Diego. I laughed as Lorino began his tale, recalling how Lorino rooted for the bull rather than the matador. At one point, Lorino stood up and shouted out to the bull, “Now! Get ‘em now!”  

The Mexican bullfight aficionados around us were not amused by the loco gringo, but the Kitty Hawk radiomen hearing the story certainly were. 

Lorino then launched into telling another liberty story. Lorino went on to tell the sailors in the compartment about the time we visited a club on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. 

“We was in a club in LA and Paulie got us the two best looking girls in the place.” 

Lorino and I traveled in civies when we ventured to Los Angeles. I was fond of LA and liked the vibrant city’s nightlife, and I visited there previously on many of my free weekends. I liked to go to West Hollywood and hit the “happening” clubs on the mile and half of Sunset Boulevard that was known famously as the “Sunset Strip.” 

I told Lorino about the Strip and how it was home to trendy restaurants, sleazy bars and hip nightclubs. The Strip was a girl watchers’ delight and walking the Strip at night was like being part of a wild parade. Someone called the Strip a “cultural carnival.” 

I also liked the great rock music played at the clubs there and I liked dancing with the young, pretty girls. Growing up in South Philly, I had gone to teenage dances every weekend, so I knew that hitting the dance floor and dancing well was a good way to meet girls. 

Along with servicemen like Lorino and I, there were hippies, college students, tourists, music and movie people, and almost everything in between at the clubs. 

I wore my "civies" to the clubs, but unfortunately, like the other servicemen with regulation short hair, Lorino and I stood out from the young men who sported the longer hairstyles of the day. It appeared that the prettiest and most desirable girls shied away from military guys.

On the night Lorino was telling the Kitty Hawk sailors about, I asked an exceptionally good-looking college student named Susan to dance with me at a club on the Strip. She was a pretty, shapely blonde and she wore a loose blouse and tight dungarees.

“I like your high black boots,” I told her. “You can kick me if you want to.”

She laughed.

I spent a good bit of time with Susan on the crowded dance floor. Lorino grabbed Susan’s girlfriend and took her onto the dance floor as well. After a while, we took a break from dancing, and I bought Susan a drink at the bar. Lorino slid next to me with Susan’s girlfriend in his arms.  

Susan was a bit inebriated and giddy. I held her and she looked at me closely. 

I grinned, thinking this was a romantic moment and I was about to kiss her.

“Why do you have short hair?” Susan asked, stopping me from leaning in to kiss her. “Are in you in the military?” 

I just knew that my being in the Navy would be a “turn off” for her, so I thought fast. 

“No, but I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied sheepishly. 

“Why not?” 

“My hair is cut short because Sal and I just got out of San Quentin prison.” 

Her interest and imagination ignited, and she leaned into me and whispered, “Why were you in prison?” 

“We robbed a bank.” 

I heard Lorino behind me laugh. Susan nodded her head slowly, as if to say she understood. She then smiled, kissed me full on the mouth, and we returned to the dance floor. Lorino and I later took the two girls back to our hotel room. 

Apparently, this fresh-faced college girl was just fine with me being a bank robber and ex-con, but she would have surely bolted had I told her I was a sailor. 

Go figure.  

Thankfully, the girls in Olongapo had no such prejudice against sailors. 

 

On a roll, Lorino also spoke of the time we visited Disneyland in Anaheim, California. On that visit to Disneyland with Lorino, we dared to smoke marijuana openly, boldly, and quite stupidly, as we walked around the popular amusement park. 

On the Haunted Mansion ride we shared a joint in our continuously moving vehicle. At one point in the ride, the vehicle pivoted to the right before a mirror, and through Disney’s technological magic, a ghost appeared in the mirror between the reflection of Lorino and I. The ghost grinned and wrapped his arms around us.

Looking at the image between us in the mirror, I offered the joint to the ghost. I thought this was funny, and Lorino thought it was hilarious. 

The security guards monitoring the ride through the mirror were not nearly as amused. 

At the end of the ride, two security guards dressed as Western Sheriffs stopped our vehicle and ordered us to get out. 

“Are you part of the amusement ride?” I asked in jest. 

Lorino thought that too was hilarious. The guards remained unamused.         

The guards held us in a building until the Anaheim police arrived and took us into custody. We were handcuffed, placed in the police car and driven to the Anaheim police station. We were held in separate rooms. I was searched by an Anaheim police officer, and he confiscated the pocketknife I was carrying. 

I was worried about prison and getting kicked out of the Navy. Thankfully, the police officer took pity on me and told me that he was cutting me loose. He said he had been a Marine when he was a young guy, and he also did dumb things then. He told me to take off. 

I asked about Lorino, and the officer told me to “Get while the getting is good.”

I asked if I could have my knife back, and the police officer just stared at me in disbelief. I left the police station quickly and took a bus back to San Diego.  

Lorino later told me that he was arrested because he was holding more than an ounce of marijuana in a plastic bag in his pocket. He was held over the weekend and appeared before a judge on Monday morning. Lorino pled guilty to possession, was fined, and then released. 

Unfortunately for Lorino, the Kitty Hawk shoved off on Monday morning and the carrier went to sea while he stood before the judge. Lorino missed "ship's movement," which was a serious offense. Upon his return to the carrier, Lorino went before a Captain’s Mass and busted back to seaman apprentice and lost a month’s pay. 

I felt guilty that I was lucky to not be charged and “skated” through the incident, and left Lorino holding the bag, quite literally. Lorino shrugged and told me not to worry about it.

The sailors sitting around the compartment appeared to be quite amused at the pre-deployment adventures Lorino and I experienced.  

© 2025 Paul Davis 

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.”

The 30-Day Detail

 The below story, which is about drug dealing and other crimes aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, is a chapter in my crime novel Olongapo, which I hope to soon publish.

In my day, we thought the Navy was the coolest military service. After all, bell-bottoms dungarees were fashionable in the civilian world in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and dark blue bell-bottom dungarees were part of our working uniform aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk.

In addition to the dungarees, we wore a white t-shirt under a short-sleeve light blue chambray shirt, with our name stenciled in black just above the left breast pocket.

We also wore ankle-high black leather boots called “BoonDockers,” and when outside, a dark blue ball cap topped the working uniform. My dungarees and chambray shirt were always cleaned and pressed and my BoonDockers were always polished.

My older brother Eddie, who served in the U.S. Army at Chu Lai in South Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, often mocked me for wearing a clean uniform and fighting the war on a safe, clean and air-conditioned ship off the coast of Vietnam.

His life as a soldier at Chu Lai was not so clean, with heat, humidity, mud, dirt, bugs, rats, and Viet Cong attacks. Compared to his time at Chu Lai, my brother thought I served on a luxury cruise ship. In rebuttal, I told him that if it were not for naval air power from aircraft carriers, he and many other soldiers “in-country” would have died in combat. He agreed, albeit reluctantly.

The Kitty Hawk’s aircraft and battle group ships protected the aircraft carrier and kept it safe from attacks from the North Vietnamese while on "Yankee Station" in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of North Vietnam, but life could be dangerous on an aircraft carrier as air combat operations were fast-paced and precarious as the carrier launched and recovered aircraft around the clock. With vast amounts of jet fuel, bombs, missiles and rockets on board, an accident or a fire on a carrier can be a truly deadly affair, as it had been earlier on the Kitty Hawk and on other aircraft carriers, most notably the deadly fire on the USS Forrestal. The carrier was later nicknamed the “USS Forest Fire.”

And there were other safety concerns on a carrier, such as crime.

An aircraft carrier has been described as a floating small city due to her size and large crew. As even small cites have crime, it should not be a surprise that one would encounter crime aboard an aircraft carrier. There were assaults, thefts, gambling and drug trafficking taking place on the ship as the carrier sailed the South China Sea.

While operating off the coast of Vietnam. I worked in the Communications Radio Division’s Message Processing Center. The center was a hectic place, as we handled fast-flowing and fast-action highly classified war traffic. We received and distributed traffic concerning combat missions, tactical reports, naval intelligence reports, and intelligence reports from the CIA, DIA, NSA and the other alphabet soup intelligence agencies. We also maintained radio communications between the aircraft carrier and our pilots as they flew combat sorties against North Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply routes and strategic positions.

We also handled highly classified traffic for the Task Force 77 admiral, who commanded the entire fleet off Vietnam. The Task Force 77 admiral and his staff were stationed aboard the Kitty Hawk as the carrier was the designated Task Force 77 Flag Ship. 

The message center additionally received and distributed the famous “Z-Grams” from the then-Chief of Naval of Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Those Z-Grams changed Navy policy, such as letting sailors grow beards and go ashore in civilian clothes. Senior Navy people hated the Z-Grams, but young enlisted sailors like me loved them.

While on Yankee Station, we worked in eight hours on/eight hours off shifts, with about 20 to 25 men working in the message processing center during each “watch.” The center job was grueling and never-ending, sending and processing traffic, but we knew this was a good job. There were far more dirty and dangerous jobs on the aircraft carrier.

Compared to the engineers, called “snipes,” who worked in the hot bowels of the ship, and the flight crews, called “air dales,” who worked in the blistering heat on the flight deck dodging launched and recovered aircraft, we had it pretty good in the message center. And we certainly had it easier than the carrier’s pilots, who braved being shot down and killed or captured as they flew combat sorties over Vietnam. 

During this time on Yankee Station, I was under the dubious supervision of Gerald Hobbs, a newly promoted 3^rd Class Radioman, which was the Navy equivalent to an Army buck sergeant. Hobbs, who hailed from Baltimore, was a big guy, around 6’3,” and on the heavy side. He was crude and obnoxious, and not very bright. He was disliked by most of the enlisted sailors in the division.

His sour personality did not improve after he was promoted. With his new “crow” stitched on the left sleeve of his blue chambray uniform shirt, Hobbs became even more obnoxious. 

On one watch in the message center, I told an old joke in the guise of a true story, as I usually did.

“I met a girl in Olongapo,” I told a couple of sailors working alongside me. “She said her name was Angelina. I told her that was a pretty name. I asked her if people called her “Angel” for short, and she replied, “Yes, but not for long.””

The two sailors laughed. Even Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert Moony, who overheard the old joke as he walked by, laughed. I was a bit surprised, as Moony was not known for his sense of humor. The serious young officer once told us that his post-Navy plans were to become a State Department official or a Buddhist Monk.

But humor is not universal. Although I had some good friends in the division and I made them laugh on occasion, I must admit that there were those who did not find me particularly amusing. These sailors disliked me, disliked my telling old jokes that I heard or read somewhere, and disliked my sarcastic asides. My detractors thought I had far too much to say for so young a sailor.

Hobbs was squarely in that group. He overheard my joke and didn’t think it was funny. He screamed at me to stop telling jokes and “turn to,” Navy-speak for get to work. Hobbs puffed up his chest and acted tough as he was older, taller and had about fifty pounds on me. I was not intimidated, and I suppose I gave him a dirty look.  

“I’m a petty officer now and don’t you ever forget it,” Hobbs declared. 

 “I looked up petty in the dictionary and it’s defined as small and unimportant,” I told him. “And your photo was next to the definition.”

The sailors near me laughed. This angered Hobbs and he shoved me. 

Bad move on his part. 

As I had been training and competing as a boxer since I was 12 years old at the South Philly Boys’ Club, my instincts kicked in and I threw a stiff left jab to his nose, followed immediately by a “Sunday punch” to his mouth. The left jab and short right knockout punch dropped Hobbs heavily to the deck. He laid there next to his two front teeth, which I had knocked out of his head. 

Bad move on my part. 

I had punched out a petty officer in the message center in front of officers, chiefs and a number of assorted petty officers. Chief John Helm rushed over and ordered me to go the division’s supply office and wait there for him.   

As I waited for the chief, I knew I fucked up. I was worried that I would be sent to the carrier’s brig. As I was pondering my fate, Chief Helm came in. I could see that the chief was upset, as his large ears were bright red. He took off his glasses and taking a hankie out of his pants pocket, he furiously rubbed them clean.     

“What’s the matter with you? You think I don’t want to punch one of these kid officers in the mouth every day? Especially that tall glass of fresh water, Lieutenant Harrison. You just can’t do it!”   

Chief Helm told me that he went to see Commander Olson, the division’s commanding officer. He explained to Olson that Hobbs had shoved me first, although that was no excuse for me to punch him. We were both in the wrong. But Chief Helm said he put in a good word for me.  

“Is Davis the kid who tells all those dumb jokes?” the chief told me Olson had asked him.

“Yes, Sir” the chief replied. 

“No charges or the brig for Davis,’ the commander ordered. “Get him a 30-day detail out of the division and chew Hobbs’ ass. Tell him from me that he’s lucky that I don’t bust him back to a seaman.”  

I found it curious that it was my telling a joke that caused the confrontation in the message center, and yet it was my telling old jokes that also got me a light punishment.

 

Although I was happy that I avoided a 30-day stint in the carrier’s brig, I was not happy about being kicked out of the division. Although I was only a seaman, lower than whale shit, as the saying goes, I felt that I was doing important war-related work in the vital communications center. 

Chief Helms told me he arranged for me to be detailed for 30 days to the ship’s vent shop, as he knew the petty officer in charge. The following morning, I packed my sea bag and reported to the vent shop’s boss. Roscoe Davis was a hulking and jovial black 1^st class petty officer with a huge gut protruding over his belt.

 “I’m Roscoe,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

He gathered around the other guys in the shop and as we had the same last name, Roscoe introduced me as his “illegitimate white boy son.”

I laughed along with the others. One of the sailors in the shop asked me the question that sailors always ask when first meeting another sailor, “What state you from?”

 “South Philly,” I replied.

 “Is South Philly a state?” another sailor asked sarcastically.

 “We think so,” I replied. 

 James Green, a tall and lean black sailor from North Philly, laughed.  

“Shit,” he said to the other sailors. “I know these I-Talian South Philly boys. They are bad-ass, motherfucking mafia gangsters.”  

Rather than reproach this seaman on stereotyping Italians, as I was half-Italian, I said nothing, allowing the sailors in the shop to believe that I was a hoodlum. The fact that I was detailed to the vent shop because I had punched out a petty officer added to that somewhat exaggerated image. 

Roscoe teamed me with Green and called us “the Philly boys.” Each day we went around the ship and pulled out the 4x4 air filters from the ventilation system and replaced them with clean ones. We took the dirty filters back to the shop and soaped them up and blasted them with a high-power water hose. The removal and cleaning of the air filters was on a rotational system that Roscoe controlled. 

Pulling out filters, replacing them, and cleaning the old ones was a dirty job, but we worked an eight-hour day, unlike my eight on/eight off watches in the Communications Radio Division. I grew to like the job, although I felt like I was missing out on what was happening in the war. I also liked Roscoe, Green, and the other misfits in the vent shop. 

I soon discovered that Roscoe ran illegal card games aboard the carrier. He also smuggled aboard cases of vodka, scotch and other alcohol from Subic Bay and then sold the bottles at sea for a good profit. He reminded me of the colorful rascal military characters portrayed in movies and on TV series like Sergeant Bilko and McHale’s Navy. In fact, McHale’s Navy was one of the reasons I joined the Navy.   

I was a fair poker player and I sat in on Roscoe’s games. Many of the people I played against were poor poker players, so I made a few bucks on my down time. I always gave Roscoe a cut of my winnings, as he ran the games, just as I would have given a cut to the mob guys who ran the card games back in South Philly.  

Roscoe took the money, shoved it into his dungaree pants pocket and said, “My man.”  

On most days, Roscoe locked the shop’s door after working hours and we broke out the booze and partied.   

Another seaman in the vent shop was Leman Knox, a skinny guy from some small town in Florida. He had a serious case of face acne, which he always picked at, and he constantly scratched himself all over. Having known drug addicts from my old neighborhood, I knew he was a heroin addict. He confirmed this later by offering to sell me heroin. I declined his offer.    

Knox was one of those stupid and silly white guys who spoke and acted like a black street tough. Knox thought this made him cool. He called the black sailors “Bros.” Most of the black sailors did not consider his act an homage. They thought he was an ass and they mostly ignored him.  

Green, who possessed a great sense of humor, thought Knox was funny. He did a fine burlesque of Knox acting like a “brother.” He often performed his impression of Knox for the white and black sailors in the shop, and it always brought on great laughter. One day, Green did his impression in front of Knox himself. While everyone was laughing, Knox was clueless and asked what was so funny.     

 

As we were pulling out a dirty filter one day, Green told me that Knox went to the “Jungle” in Olongapo during the carrier’s previous visit to Subic Bay in the Philippines. The Jungle was the section of the wide-open sin city that black sailors frequented. The black sailors preferred to be segregated and did not take kindly to white sailors intruding on their territory.  

Knox, who must have thought he was an honorary black guy, visited a bar in the Jungle and was promptly beaten severely by several black sailors. Thankfully for Knox, the heavily armed shore patrol happened to enter the bar and disrupted the beating. Knox was bloodied and stunned as the shore patrol took him to the base hospital. 

Green also told me that Knox sold heroin aboard the ship. He said Knox was supplied by a Filipino drug dealer in Olongapo. Knox supported his own habit by selling the drug to other sailors while we were at sea off the coast of Vietnam. Green said that if Roscoe found out, he would boot Knox out of the shop. Booze was one thing, but Roscoe hated drugs.

When two drug users overdosed and nearly died on the heroin Knox sold them, a civilian Naval Investigative Service (NIS) special agent was flown aboard the carrier from Subic Bay to investigate. He interrogated the two sailors who survived the drug overdoses, and both sailors gave up Knox as their drug dealer.  

After Knox was arrested by the NIS special agent, he wasted little time giving up his Filipino dealer in Olongapo, as well as his many customers aboard the ship. He implicated several sailors. I was one of the sailors.  

I was summoned to the legal office where a tall, lean, and lanky civilian was standing behind a desk. I sat down in the chair across from him. He introduced himself as NIS Special Agent Cantrell and he passed a sheet of paper across the desk to me. The “Lincolnesque” special agent from West Virginia spoke slowly and softly with a smooth Southern accent.

“Sign this,” he said.

“Do you mind if I read it first?” 

The document was a confession that I was a heroin user. 

“Sign it and you’ll get a general discharge.” 

I pushed the paper back across the agent’s desk.  

“I’m not a heroin user,” I told the NIS special agent. “And I’m not going to sign that.”

“Suit yourself,” the NIS special agent said softly with a smile. “But if “Ole Boone” discovers that you are using heroin, you will go to prison.”

“Boone?”

“That’s me, Ole Boone Cantrell.”

I got up and left the office. 

Thankfully, there was no blow-back on Roscoe Davis due to Knox being his subordinate. Like me, Knox had been a disciplinarian problem who was assigned to the vent shop. For some reason, Knox did not tell the NIS special agent about Roscoe’s extracurricular criminal activities. Perhaps he thought Roscoe would kill him. 

 

My 30-day detail was coming to an end. Returning to the vent shop one day with dirty filters, Roscoe handed me the phone. Chief Helm was on the line, and he asked me if I was ready to come back to the division. I hesitated, but then said yes.

Roscoe shook my hand.

“If you ever fuck up again, you’ll be welcome back here,” Roscoe said with a wide grin.                       

Upon my return to the Communications Radio Division, I was greeted with handshakes and back slaps. Hobbs, I was told, was assigned to the other duty section, so we would no longer work together. 

Hobbs was so disliked by most of the guys that some of them told me that they wished that they had been there when I punched him out.  

The event was summed up nicely by Willie Henry, who hated Hobbs.   

“Someone now has 30 teeth and a different attitude.” 

© 2024 By Paul Davis 

Note: You can read other Olongapo stories via the below links:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Butterfly'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: The Old Huk

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Join The Navy And See Olongapo

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Boots On The Ground'

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter Two: Salvatore Lorino