by Jeff Noonan
We were underway early the next morning, heading again for the South China Sea to maintain a vigil over the Laotian insurgency. Again we cruised in circles for days, after which we returned to Subic Bay.
On the way back to Subic, the ship’s executive officer announced that the ship would be inport on stand-down status over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday periods. We were obviously not allowed to return home, but we were offered several Philippine tour packages if we wanted to get away over the holidays. Most of them were either to Manila or to Baguio, the summer capital of the islands. None of us were particularly interested at first.
The first night inport, we went back to the California Bar and had a few drinks. As we were imbibing, the subject of the tours came up. We decided that it was really unfair that “the pussies” who were going on the tours were allowed to stay off the ship for twenty-four hours a day, five to seven days at a time, yet those of us who wanted to stay closer to the ship, in the Olongapo area, had to be back aboard ship at midnight every night. It was just plain unfair!
Of course, after enough San Miguel beer, we came up with a plan designed to correct this obvious unfairness. We decided that we would sign up for a tour. Then, since the tours were self-guided, we would just stay in Olongapo and have our tour hours there. We talked to the California Club Mama-San, and she told us where to get a group of rooms that were off the beaten path where we wouldn’t get caught. The plan was coming together!
The next morning, we went to sign up for a tour, only to find that the only one left was a seven-day tour to Baguio,scheduled to leave on December 30. We signed up.
The day came and we followed the plan. With leave papers in hand, we stopped at the Base Exchange and each bought two bottles of hard liquor (which was the most that we were allowed to take through the gate). We also bought some non-descript civilian clothes so that we wouldn’t have to wear our white uniforms. Then we went to town and rented the rooms that Mama-San had reserved for us, changed clothes, and descended on the California Bar to commence a seven-day party. With the “civvies” on, we figured that we looked like sailors stationed on the base, or some of the Air Force people that we saw around town regularly, and we would just blend in with them.
It worked beautifully! The first night, we stayed in town, making the rounds of Olongapo’s Magsaysay Boulevard bars and just having a good time. At midnight, we retired to our rooms with an assortment of “friends” and partied on until daybreak. Then we slept until noon, got up, and started over.
However, fate was not kind to us. On the second day, we had been drinking all day and were well “into our cups” at about 9:00 p.m. when the doors on the bar suddenly burst open and a Shore Patrol team came in, blowing their whistles for attention. One of them shouted out, “Listen Up! Everyone is to get back to your ships. All ships are getting underway at midnight! I repeat: everyone up and out. The ships are leaving at midnight!”
This hit us like a wet blanket. We were having the times of our lives, and we had to quit and go back? I knew one of the Shore Patrol guys, so I approached him and asked, “What’s going on?”
He said, “Probably nothing, but all ships have been directed to leave for the South China Sea for maneuvers. It has something to do with the Laos thing. Apparently the Brass wants to show the flag, so we all have to go.”
I said, “Thanks,” and went back to the troops.
We discussed this development as rationally as any bunch of drunks can discuss anything. The Shore Patrol had gone to alert other bars about the situation, so there was no pressure to leave right away. We were not happy. We still had leave papers in our pockets that didn’t expire for another five and a half days, but we were supposed to be in Baguio, not Olongapo, and the leave papers wouldn’t save us as long as we were there.
We decided to go to our rooms and get changed so we could go aboard ship. We finished our beers and, walking together, we headed for the hotel.
But, on the way, I had a thought: “Hey guys, if we were in Baguio, we wouldn’t have to go back to the ship, would we?”
“No!”
Then we all lit up as the thought caught on. “Let’s get our clothes and head for Baguio!”
“Where the hell is Baguio anyway?”
“I don’t know, but I know where we can rent a big Jeepney to take us there.”
“Let’s do it!”
We were stopped by Shore Patrol twice on our way to the hotel. We told them that we were going for our uniforms, and they let us pass, but it was very obvious that we would have to be really careful when we got our clothes and headed for the Jeepney station.
We picked up our clothes and got back-alley directions to the Jeepney station from the desk clerk. We had a problem, however, because we had not planned to carry our uniforms anywhere, and we just didn’t have any room in our bags. It came down to either we had to leave our uniforms or we had to leave our booze. So, with our impeccable logic intact, we made arrangements with the desk clerk to leave the less-valuable items—our uniforms—with him. We reasoned that we could easily pick them up on our return trip.
We started out carefully walking down the back street, making as little noise as six drunken sailors could make. We had agreed that, if we were stopped, we would split up and meet at the Jeepney station.
We had gone a couple of blocks when it happened: “Hey You guys! Stop! Where do you think you’re going?”
I broke to the left at top speed, and the other guys took off in all different directions. The Shore Patrol broke into a run behind us, and darned if they didn’t decide to chase me!
“Stop you!” they screamed.
Why in hell did they pick me to chase? I thought as I sped up.
I looked behind me, and I could see them. They were typical Shore Patrol, both first class petty officers and both a little paunchy. I hoped that meant that they were slower than me, and I redoubled my efforts. Then to my right, I saw a huge pig pen in back of a little Filipino home. It must have covered at least an acre, and the fence was attached to the house. It would take at least ten minutes to go around it.
The ooze looked impassible at first glance, but my experience on Montana ranches paid off. I knew that most of the pigpen would be rather shallow, with the deep parts being obvious because of the standing water on them. I could see dry spots here and there in the muck of this pigpen, so I took a chance. I vaulted the fence and dashed toward the other side, keeping to the more solid areas as much as possible. I had a fleeting regret for my beloved Hong Kong No-Squeak Boots as I plowed through the muck, but it paid off, big time.
I heard one of the Shore Patrol behind me say, “Fuck this. They don’t pay me enough to go in there.”
I was free!
I jogged the rest of the way to the Jeepney station, carrying my little overnight bag stuffed with shaving gear, a spare shirt, spare socks and underwear, and two almost-full bottles of precious Canadian Club Whiskey.
When I got to the Jeepney station, one of the guys was already there and was arranging for the Jeepney. The Filipino behind the counter wasn’t going to lose the fare, so he hid us in a back room while we waited for the others. They showed up while I was out back, hosing off my No-Squeaks. Our only casualty was a young sailor named Tony, who had been bitten by a dog while he was running through someone’s back yard. We cleaned him up and poured a goodly amount of whiskey over the wound. Then we all took a liberal internal dose just to make sure that we hadn’t picked up any germs, and we were off!
The trip to Baguio was amazing. We went from the deep jungle around Olongapo to some of the most beautiful mountain country I had seen since I’d left Montana. The road through the mountains reminded me of Glacier Park’s Going to the Sun Road except that it was narrower and not as well-maintained. We drank our way there. I have absolutely no idea how far it was or how long it took us, but we were all (including our Filipino driver) drunk and singing before we arrived.
The military had a beautiful recreation base
in Baguio, with modern cottages, a nice restaurant, a club with nightly entertainment, and a golf course. This was where the Navy had envisioned that sailors would stay when they were on leave in the area. It was even fenced to keep out the riff-raff.
But my friends and I enjoyed the riff-raff more than we would ever enjoy the people that hid in this pseudo-American environment when they were in a tropical paradise. Plus, we figured we would be less easy to find in a civilian hotel. So we had our driver take us to a non-descript hotel on the other end of town. By then, the driver was our buddy, so we offered to rent him a room if he would stay and take us back. He declined the room, saying that he had relatives in town if he needed them, but he agreed to stay with us for the duration. When we stopped at the hotel, he promptly crawled in the back of his vehicle and went to sleep. We checked into the hotel and decided to sleep until noon and then meet up for breakfast.
We met up at noon, all a bit worse for the wear. But by the time we had breakfast and a couple of Screwdrivers, we were good to go again. We decided that we were easily the smartest bunch of sailors on the planet, but we tempered that with a bit of caution. We had no desire to be caught and sent to the ship before our leave was officially over, so we decided to keep our presence as low key as possible.
We walked out of the hotel and our Jeepney driver was there waiting for us. We climbed in and told him to take us to “the most remote bar in Baguio.” Once there, we proceeded to carry on the party that had been so rudely interrupted the night before. It turned out that Baguio wasn’t nearly as equipped for partying sailors as Olongapo had been, but by the time we’d been in the bar for a while, local girls started showing up. Before long, we were right back at it, dancing, singing, and having a ball.
I was particularly taken by a woman who would have been absolutely gorgeous except that she wore an eye-patch over her left eye and had a long scar across her forehead. She explained to me that she had lost her eye as a child when she was wounded by a Japanese bayonet. That made her a war hero to my sodden mind, and we stayed together for the duration. It didn’t hurt our relationship that she had two other amazing attributes that were prominently displayed in her tight sweater.
Soon the group gained confidence and began to forget that we were semi-fugitives. The news of the deployed ships hadn’t reached Baguio yet and no one appeared to care whether we were there or not. We ran into several Americans, mostly Air Force people who were there on leave. We figured that we had beaten the odds and the Shore Patrol, so we relaxed. We went out to a restaurant for dinner and then barhopped around town. We picked up other partiers as we went and soon had a crowd of about twenty Americans and at least as many Filipinas, plus our Jeepney driver, going bar to bar having a jovial and rowdy time of it.
This went on until the wee hours of the morning. Then, one by one, we faded out and went back to our hotel rooms. It had been a glorious party!
I had another nightmare that night in the quiet of the hotel room. This time, it was a faceless man and I was in a bunker; trying to protect Mom and a bunch of kids. I was swinging a stick at him and yelling when my War Hero woke me.
I stammered, “I’m so sorry.”
But somehow, she seemed to know what to do more than I did as she held me close and calmed my nerves. Her words really made an impression on me: “Jeff, be quiet. You don’t be ashamed. Lots of us dream bad dreams. It comes from the war. I always dream of the rat face that stabbed my eye. I know that he’s dead, but when I dream, he’s still there. It’s the war that’s still there, inside us, when we dream.”
I didn’t want to tell her that I hadn’t been in the war she was talking about, but her soothing voice and the memory of the dream, the faceless man, and Mom in the bunker, made me think; Maybe I was in a war…just not the same one.
But I was ignoring the War Hero, and that wasn’t a good thing. Her large, soft, breasts were resting against my chest while she talked. They were a very calming influence on me—or maybe calming isn’t quite the right word, but they certainly did distract me from all types of thought. I pulled her close, and soon I was able to get back to sleep, all thoughts of dreams and war far, far, behind me.
I was awakened by a horrendous noise at my door. I rolled over in protest and looked at my watch. It was 8:00 a.m.! I yelled at the door people to go away, and rolled over again, but they persisted and started hollering back, “Up and out, Trooper. Everyone has to go back to their bases. We are in a National Emergency Condition, and all leaves are cancelled!”
“Shit!” I mumbled under my breath, before yelling, “Okay. Give me a minute.” I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my Filipina War Hero had slept in her eye patch. Probably just as well because I wasn’t feeling too well anyway and that could have been a real shock to my system.
I got up, went to the door, and opened it. There was a Navy lieutenant—a pilot from the look of the Navy wings on his chest—and a second class boatswain’s mate outside.
I said, “Give me a few minutes. I need to get cleaned up, and then I’ll be with you.”
“Okay. We’ll roll out the rest of the rooms and wait in the lobby.”
I closed the door and started for the bathroom.
Just then, the War Hero rolled over, with those magnificent mammary mountains flashing, and I decided that the pilot could wait a bit. I drained the rest of my Canadian Club in one long swallow. Then I took a few extra minutes to say good morning in an appropriate manner. Only after that did I begin getting cleaned up and ready for whatever awaited me downstairs.
I finally opened my door and started off for the lobby. But one of my friends, Tony, was in the hall. He had a half bottle of vodka with him and was slugging at it. He looked at me and said, “I paid good money for this. At least we can enjoy the trip down the mountain.”
I agreed and proceeded to help him with his chores. When it was gone, we went downstairs and discovered that we were the last of the crowd to show up. But even though we had tried valiantly, we were far from being the drunkest people present.
There were about thirty of us in the lobby; people stationed at military bases all over the Philippines. The Lieutenant split us into two groups—one that was stationed in the vicinity of Subic Bay and another group that was stationed elsewhere in the Philippines. He then put the bos’n mate in charge of the “others,” and he took control of the Subic Bay contingent.
After the bos’n left with his bedraggled crew, the Lieutenant explained to us that an airplane was waiting for us at Baguio Airport. He was going to walk us to the airport, which he said was “a couple of miles away.” The waiting plane was to fly us to Cubi Point Naval Air Station, which was located near the Subic Bay Naval Base. Then we would be split up to return to our various commands.
The Lieutenant then told us to all put on our uniforms immediately. He was very adamant about it and almost totally lost his cool when he was informed that the six of us didn’t have any uniforms with us. Since we didn’t have uniforms, we offered to stay behind and catch up later, but he wasn’t buying that. Finally, he decided that he would take us along, civvies and all.
While he was explaining the plan and resolving the uniform situation, the crew he was addressing was doing its best to do away with the booze that was left over from the night before. We had decided that, if we were going to go, we would make a party of it. By the time we left the hotel, virtually every one of us was legally intoxicated, to say the least.
That poor lieutenant! He was young and very earnest, but as a Navy pilot, he had no experience with managing the troops, particularly a bunch as rowdy as this one. He tried, but his job was worse than herding cats. Whenever we walked a while, one of us would sit down on the sidewalk and claim to need rest. In the meantime, others were sneaking into local establishments to get more booze. The two-mile walk took us over four hours. When we finally arrived at the airport, we were all totaled.
When I saw the plane, the magnitude of the situation suddenly hit me. I had never b
een in an airplane before! Now I was not only drunk, but I was also scared silly!
There were a group of Filipino policemen at the airport. The Lieutenant enlisted their help and between them, they took away all of our booze, got us lined up, and filed us into the airplane. It was a Navy plane, but I had no idea what kind because I had never even looked at a plane closely before. But it was big enough and soon we were all strapped down in its bowels, for better or worse.
I was in a window seat and had a nice view. I could see down the runway to its end. There were mountaintops and trees on both sides of the runway. I remember thinking that it was rather pretty there. I also remember thinking that the runway must be on a bit of a hill, because I couldn’t see anything except blue sky beyond the end of the runway.
Soon the big engines were thundering and whining as they came up to speed. At the same time, my stomach was churning from too much booze and too little food. In addition, the fear of the unknown, flying in an airplane, was starting up deep inside me. Then the plane started moving and I calmed down. It was no worse than one of my old hot rods revving up during a drag race. I could handle this!
Then, startled, I yelled at the top of my voice, “Holy shit.” The whole bottom had dropped out from under us.
Everyone was yelling, and Tony puked on his shoes. The damned plane had just driven off of a cliff! One minute we were on solid ground, drag-stripping it along, and the next minute, there was a tremendous drop…and then nothing!
We were flying, but I had never heard of such a takeoff. I had been looking out window when the grey asphalt under us had instantaneously disappeared and been replaced by a valley that was about a thousand feet lower down. It was too much for me. I fell back on my seat, closed my eyes, and did my best to keep the liquid that had been my breakfast from coming up.