by Jeff Noonan
The summer flew by, and soon I was ready to leave and rejoin my Cogswell shipmates. I had made it through the eleven weeks of school and, when I was finished, my class standing was third out of thirteen. That was as good as I could do with the math problem that I had.
I rejoined Cogswell during the first week in September 1960. A few days later, we got underway for a six-month cruise to the Western Pacific. I was truly excited. I had a friend over there!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Love Lost Forever
We pulled in to Pearl Harbor on the 23rd of September, 1960. The next day was my twentieth birthday, and, coincidentally, twenty was the legal drinking age in Hawaii. So we decided to really celebrate my birthday and the next afternoon a whole group of us headed for downtown Honolulu. There were several taxis full of celebrants, including many of my Fox Division friends, deck force friends, and other people who had become friends over the past year and a half. We were going to celebrate my promotion as well as my birthday. It was a rowdy crowd.
I have absolutely no idea where we ended up in Honolulu. I think that this part of town must have gone away over the years, since I can’t find it today, but it was rough, to say the least. I drank way too much, which was abnormal for me, and I’m really hazy on the specifics of the evening. I do remember getting a massage—a legitimate massage by a legitimate masseuse—that didn’t impress me at all. But someone decided that it would be a good birthday present, so I tried it.
I also remember the crowd getting in a huge fight in a dance hall that was on the second floor of a bar. I remember the stairs leading up to the dance hall very clearly, because I flew over all of them, without touching a single one, after I tried to stand on the bar and fight with a huge Hawaiian bouncer.
How any of us got back to the ship without being arrested, I will never know, but apparently we did, because the next thing that I remember, after looking down at the stairs, was waking up in my bunk with my dress uniform still on my bruised and battered body.
We were there for a week. I stayed aboard ship for a few days, and then Fred, Willie, Robbie, and I decided to try to really see Oahu. We went ashore and rented a car, then spent a very long day driving from one sight to another. We climbed Diamond Head and hiked through some beautiful tropical forests to see a famous waterfall. We tried swimming on the famous North Shore, and we even got into grass skirts and tried our hand at some of the local dances at one point. Robbie took a picture of me in a grass skirt that ended up in the ship’s Cruise Book, preserved for posterity. As I look at it today, it proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, just how ludicrous an American sailor can get if given his freedom and a couple of beers in a tropical paradise.
A few days later, we left for the Western Pacific. Our first stop was to be Guam for refueling and supply replenishment. Then we were headed for somewhere in Southeast Asia. The crisis in Laos had taken center stage in the international news recently and all of the Seventh Fleet was on a high state of alert waiting for something to happen there. The military advances being made by the Pathet Lao, with the assistance of North Vietnamese advisors, were making news worldwide. They were taking over the country rapidly, and tales of their inhumanity were generating a great deal of political concern. So we knew we would head in that direction, but none of us had any idea what our mission would be.
We worked our way across the Pacific, performing every type of practice drill that our leaders could think of. When we reached Guam, we met up with an aircraft carrier, and then spent the remainder of the trip conducting flight operations and plane-guard drills.
Then, in the first week of October, we finally arrived in Subic Bay.
I had been waiting for this day. Edith and I had been writing to each other during the long months that we had been separated. I couldn’t wait to see her again. I had bought her some presents, mostly little makeup things that she couldn’t get in the Philippines.
It seemed like it took hours to tie up the ship, get dressed, and get off the ship that day.
As we walked through the main gate, I remembered Bob’s comment that I had thought so strange last year, about even Shit River smelling good. I finally understood. I was so happy to be here that nothing could, or would quench my spirits today. It was like coming home again! He was right. Even Shit River smelled good today.
I had just crossed the bridge and was talking with my head turned to the side when I was almost knocked over by a flying body. It was Edith! She had heard that the ship was arriving today and she had been waiting at the bridge for hours. She was hugging me as if I were the most precious thing in the world. I had never felt so loved, so warm, so wonderful. It was a moment to remember forever.
She was crying and trying to talk all at the same time. I wasn’t much better. My friends all discreetly kept walking ahead, then gathered in a group to talk and wait for us.
Edith had taken the day off, so we found a little café where we could talk, and the guys went on to the U & I without us. Then we walked to her boardinghouse, and she dropped off the presents that I had brought. When we got there, I tried to get frisky, but she stopped me with, “Remember, Jeff. One, I don’t go to bed with anyone. Two, my name is Edith.”
That brought a laugh from me, and we talked some more. Then we went over to the U & I and had a beer with Mama-San and my friends.
The next afternoon, we went to a movie, then out to dinner. It was as if I had never left. I was a very happy man again. We laughed, we joked, and we had fun. Life was good.
The third day in Subic, I had duty and stayed aboard ship. It was a quiet day and nothing much happened. I stood my watch, did some maintenance work on my equipment, and spent some time reading a paperback.
The next morning, I was in my radar room working when the door opened and Fred and Bob came in. “Jeff, we have to talk to you.”
I was startled. They looked so serious that, at first, I thought someone had died. But the news wasn’t that good. They came in and sat down and then Bob opened with “Jeff, we were in town last night and we did some barhopping. When we got back to the U & I at about 10:00 p.m., Edith was just leaving—with a sailor.”
I was startled, but I said, “Heck, it’s probably nothing. She probably just had someone take her across the street for food or something like that.”
At that Fred opened up, “No, my friend, it wasn’t so simple.” He paused and then went on, “We thought that it looked strange, and she didn’t see us, so we decided to follow them. They went straight to a hotel and, through the window, we saw them register and go upstairs.”
I must have had an unusual look on my face then, because Bob chimed in, “Jeff, don’t shoot the messengers. We really didn’t want to tell you this, but someone had to.” He went on, “After we followed them, we went back to the bar and I collared Mama-San. She confirmed it. Skinny-Mini has been taking the sailors on regularly for months now. She is a bar-girl now and doesn’t even work as a Cherry-Girl waitress anymore. Mama-San didn’t think that it was a big deal, but we thought you should know.”
I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. I know that we talked for a while, and then I just sat in the radar room and thought about it for the rest of the work day. I couldn’t wrap my brain around this news. I knew that my friends were telling me the truth as they saw it, but I was sure that there was another explanation. The girl that had been so happy to see me at the bridge two days ago just couldn’t be a whore! It was impossible. So I decided to go to town and find out for myself.
I showered and changed into my dress uniform before the end of the work day for once. As soon as we could leave the ship, I was on my way. I asked my friends to let me go alone this time and I headed for the U & I. When I walked in, I was a couple of hours earlier than usual. Edith was sitting at a table talking to a sailor who I recognized as one of the sailors that was stationed on the base and hung out at the U & I. I just went back to our usual table and waited.
After a while, she noticed me and cam
e over, just as bubbly and happy as ever. She bent over and gave me a hello kiss as if all was normal—as I so desperately wanted it to be. I asked her to sit down and I guess she saw the seriousness on my face because she immediately came out with, “What’s wrong?”
I said, “I‘ve been hearing that you’re a full Bar Girl now.” She smiled and proudly said, “Yeah, I’ve been promoted while you were gone.”
I then asked, “Edith, does that mean you’re sleeping with sailors now?” She became indignant and denied it, but I went on, “My friends tell me that they followed you to the hotel last night and saw you go upstairs with a sailor.” Her face fell, and I could see the truth in her eyes. She looked away, and there was a long pause before she answered, “Jeff you don’t understand this life. I do what I have to do to eat. I have one life with you, but I have to have another life that keeps me alive so that I can have my life with you. Please, please, don’t judge me.” I could not handle this. I could feel the tears burning in the back of my eyes. I stood up and turned toward the door.
She grabbed me in a desperate bear-hug and pleaded with me to stop and listen to her. She was crying hysterically, but I couldn’t stop. I managed to stammer something through the huge lump in my throat, and I gently peeled her off of me and left the bar.
I walked for about a mile while the tears flowed freely. I must have been quite a sight, if anyone bothered to look at me. Finally I dried my face and stopped in a quiet little restaurant-bar, took a seat in a dark corner and nursed a beer. I was absolutely devastated and I couldn’t think logically. My mind just wouldn’t focus; it kept slipping away from the reality in front of it. It just wanted everything to be as it had been two days earlier and it didn’t want to see what it had been made to see.
People write about how adversity makes a person stronger and how a person “grows up” from emotional experiences. Love and broken hearts are standard grist for the romance novelists. I can only assume that those who write so glibly about it have never been there. It is a horrible, horrible feeling and I don’t ever again want to go through it again. I was twenty years old and I knew that life would never be the same for me again. In my mind, the woman that I loved had betrayed me in the worst possible way.
I stayed aboard ship for well over a week that time. We were going to be in Subic almost indefinitely because the world was watching the Laos situation, and we were standing by in case we were needed there. So, even though I wanted to put distance between myself and the source of my pain, that wasn’t an option.
I racked my brain for things to do that would keep my mind occupied and keep me away from the U & I. I read a lot and went to the beach on the base a few times. I even tried going to the EM Club again, but that was still no fun.
Several of my friends had bought eyeglasses from a Filipino optometrist out in town and had received great results for very little money. I had been wearing the grey plastic Army/Navy frames for the past couple of years, so I decided to go buy civilian glasses while I was there. I went to town, was tested, and picked out some modern, and reasonably fashionable, frames. They were a reddish-brown color in front, with silver temple-pieces. As soon as I ordered them, I went back to the ship. I didn’t want to take a chance on running into Edith or anyone else that knew us.
The glasses came in, and I was really proud of them. But I will never forget Bob’s reaction. He took one look and said, “Jesus, JJ, you look like a little red choo-choo train with too much fucking chrome on the sides!”
Even I had to laugh at that.
Cogswell stayed in port for a few more days, and I stayed aboard ship. Then we got underway with an aircraft carrier, USS Hancock, headed for South China Sea, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Laotian coastline. We spent the better part of a month patrolling the coast and practicing the launch and recovery of aircraft. As before, it was slow, boring duty. As always, I passed the time studying and standing sonar watches.
The sonar watches were something of a joke to us on that particular mission. When we were in close to shore, we didn’t see or hear anything except the shoreline. Usually the water was too shallow for submarines, but we still stood sonar watches. Then, when we worked with the aircraft carrier in plane guard roles, we were going so fast chasing the carrier that the sonar was just a noisy blur. The noise of the propellers and the sound of the ships beating their ways through the water at thirty-plus knots just made our old sonar useless. But we still stood our sonar watches.
During this time at sea, Fred and I talked a lot about our futures. We both planned to make a career out of the Navy. Fred was an orphan and had no home to go back to, so the ship had become a kind of a home to him. I had no desire to return to Montana and work in the lumber mills, so we were both very interested in a new program that the Navy had opened in order to retain technicians.
It was called the Star Program. It had some pretty stringent pre-qualifications, but if you applied for it, and the Navy approved your application, you could go to one of the Navy’s Class “B” Schools, which were intense six-to-eight-month technical schools, followed by a specialty school. If you passed the Class “B” School with a high enough average, you could get an automatic promotion. This was very interesting to both Fred and me, so we applied for the program.
After a long, boring time at sea, we finally returned to Subic Bay.
Finally, I agreed to go ashore with the gang again, on the condition that we wouldn’t go near the U & I Club. So we went to a little bar that was about a mile away from the U & I on Magsaysay Boulevard—the California Bar We had stopped there a couple of times and thought that it could become a good substitute for our old haunt. The guys all knew what had happened between me and Edith and they were all willing to support me by this relocation, so we drank beer and shot the breeze and got to know our new home away from home.
But Olongapo was a small town in those days; there were no secrets. I guess Edith had put out word on the local grapevine, because about an hour after we arrived, she walked into the bar. She came straight to the table where we were sitting. Of course, as was the way in Olongapo, there were three or four girls setting with us at the table.
Edith said something to them in Tagalog, and the girls moved away from us. Then she turned to me and said, “We need to talk. Will you come with me, or should I sit down here?”
I looked around and spotted a table in a quiet corner and pointed at it. “Over there. You have five minutes.” We sat down and she started by telling me, again, that I didn’t understand.
I interrupted her and told her, “It isn’t me that doesn’t understand; it’s you.” I went on, “I gave you more of myself, my feelings, and my caring, than I have ever given any woman before. I respected your body and your wish to stay a Cherry Girl by stopping like a gentleman, even when it caused me a lot of physical pain. You know that’s true. I’ve been devoted to you, and only you, since we started going out together, but you repaid me by sleeping with any sailor that could afford to pay you. No Edith, I don’t think it is me that owes an apology or understanding of anything!”
She looked at me for a long time and then said, “You want to sleep with me? Is that what you want?”
I misunderstood her, thinking she was still talking about the past. I replied, “Of course, I’ve always wanted to sleep with you. But I didn’t because I respected you too much.”
She held up her hand to stop me and said, “No Jeff. I mean now. Do you want to sleep with me now?”
My reaction was just plain mean-spirited. I was so mad at her that my only thought was that I would just do it and then walk out on her. That would teach her a lesson! So I said, “Hell yes, let’s go!”
We left the bar in silence and caught a Jeepney to her boardinghouse. We traveled in complete silence, each lost in our own thoughts and both afraid to say the wrong thing. We went to her room, and I sat down on a chair and began taking my shoes off. I was starting to come down from being mad, so I was a bit shy and hesitant.
She we
nt to the sink and got a glass of water and stood there, looking out into space. I watched her for a minute and then said, “What’s wrong, Edith?”
She looked at me and then looked away. I could see that she was crying.
“Nothing,” she said. But she kept standing there. Finally, she turned and looked at me, and said, “Jeff, I can’t do this. I know you don’t understand, but if I do this, I will be a whore—just another whore. I can’t do this. I can’t!” and she broke down into sobs, still leaning on the sink, bent almost double with the power of her emotions.
This was just too much to process for me. I could not, for the life of me, understand how she could indiscriminately go to bed with other people, but draw the line at the one person that cared for her. At that moment, I just thought that she had been playing me. I am sure now that I was wrong, but I was a twenty-year-old who was hurting badly. I just wanted to lash out—but I couldn’t. I still cared too much.
I didn’t say anything. I just got up and walked out. I looked back at her as I closed the door, and she was standing there, staring at me, still slightly bent over, with a stricken look on her face.
I never saw her again—but I will never forget that look. After a half of a century, it still haunts me.
Was I wrong to do what I did? I don’t know. I will never know. But it does haunt me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Great Baguio Adventure
In mid-November, we got underway and transited to Buckner Bay, Okinawa, where we met up with another aircraft carrier, USS Bennington. We were only in Buckner Bay overnight, and I had the duty, so I never got ashore in this port. The ship’s crew did love it, judging from the sea stories they told the next day.