Ship to Okinawa

My return-to-duty orders, after a leave, named a ship to get to without suggesting where it might be.  After considerable leg work, I learned that it was somewhere in the China Seas, sort of, which was at least better than “the Western Hemisphere,” or “yonder.”

I grabbed the first available Navy vessel that was crossing the International Dateline.  It happened to be a converted cruise ship with every contemporary appointment. It moved at a steady 35 knots but quietly and smoothly, its huge engines barely audible.  After my service aboard a ship that labored at speeds exceeding ten knots, and got from here to there by beating waves aside, this was pretty cushy.  It was aimed toward Okinawa, much closer to the China Seas than San Diego.

Having spent almost all of my Navy career aboard a vessel that echoed every wavelet, invited  the softest breeze to sprinkle foam over onto even the ensign, slithering drunkenly in dead calms,  and looked as if it had been assembled by a kid working on Legos, this smooth flowing 700 foot, streamlined bit of snobbery was practically shore duty. 

The Pacific, however, covers nearly half the Earth.  Wind blowing across it has plenty of room and time to develop green hills (make that “mountains”), lifting and tilting even this beauty halfway to heaven. As we entered the higher latitudes, even this luxury liner performed like a gymnast on a pommel horse.  I was almost on my LCT again. 

Which brings me to what makes the Navy the Navy --- coffee.  In the Navy you drink coffee only under the following necessities -- shift breaks, that is at 0800, 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400, 0200, 0400, and 0600 hours.  Whether you are going on duty, or ending it, heading forward or aft, working in the engine room or aloft, the Navy manual requires that you consume whatever scalding black liquid is available.  Every ship is equipped with a minimum of 28 mugs per bluejacket.

This made-over troop ship knew the Navy rules.   

One evening, with the seas running about thirty feet, a number of us were casually sort of playing cards, sort of conversing, not bothering to talk about home, and putting away coffee.

In good old Navy style, mugs were piling up on the cafeteria rail -- several trays of them. Then came an unusually hefty swell.  The cruise ship stuck its bow toward Arcturus for a moment, leaned slightly to starboard, promptly bucked its stern in the general direction of Cuzco,  shuddered momentarily, performed a  slow dance, and liked its own choreography so much it repeated the maneuvers.

None of this would have drawn any attention, except that the trays of mugs on the rails opted to join the dance.  With clattering joy, the loaded trays sprinted first toward one end of the rails, then back toward the other.

One of the card players said, “Uh-oh.”  The young man collecting mugs from tables cried, “Hey, ho!” and launched himself toward a double stack of mugs slithering sneakily toward a rail end.

Grabbing the rail with one hand, he yanked himself toward the rail end.  His free hand snapped to the end of the tracks.  The double tier of mugs was stopped.

At once, the coffee drinkers rose to applaud.

“That was GREAT!”  a voice called out.  The young man straightened up.  Grinning, he clicked his heels, gave a thumbs up, and bowed deeply... as the ship tilted some more, and the double tray shot off the railing behind him.  He launched himself in a fine, flat dive. A foot or so before the lead stack reached the end, he got his fingers on it and checked it just in time.

His audience applauded. The young man grinned, stood straight, and bowed deeply to even more applause.  As the applause left off, the next huge swell lifted the ship again, the room tilted again, and the two stacks of mugs completed their slither on behind the young man's back. The crash was worthy of the number of mugs.

From the far side of the room a voice said, “Wow! Do that again!”