by Jeff Noonan
The Captain’s name was John Law and, because of his name, I was expecting a burly, by-the-book, tough-as-nails kind of guy. He was just the opposite; a slim, dignified man with an infectious smile and a totally relaxed manner. There was something about John Law that told you not to mess with him, but at the same time, you couldn’t help but to like him.
John Hurt was about the same size as the Captain, and was equally easy-going, but the similarities ended there. Where the Captain was erect and dignified, John Hurt always walked in an easy slouch, usually with his hands in his pockets. Where the captain had a tanned complexion and closely-cropped dark hair, the Lieutenant was blond and looked like a mature surfer, with his long locks always down over his forehead.
They shared another common trait. They were both very intelligent, absolutely dedicated, Navy men who wanted Belknap to be the best ship in the Navy. I liked them both on sight and never had any reason to change my initial impression.
With the ship’s permission, Mark and I had gathered copies of many of the Yarnell’s manuals and operating instructions before we left. As a result, the back seat of my car was filled with documents like “The Weapons Doctrine,” The Yarnell Operations Department Manual, the Yarnell Personnel Manual, Ship and Departmental Instructions, and the like. These were documents that every ship had to have, and they were usually written by the crew in Bath. Mark and I had agreed that these were a huge pain in the butt and a distraction from the real work when we were in Bath before, so we decided to short-cut the process by bringing samples with us. These were well-received by the Captain. After he read them and made a few editorial changes, he turned the whole stack of documents over to the ship’s yeoman with instructions to re-type them and change the ship name from Yarnell to Belknap. This freed up the whole crew, as they arrived, to concentrate on shipboard equipment work.
I made sure that the Captain and Lieutenant Hurt both knew that Mark had been my partner in getting the documents together. At this, Hurt remarked, “I knew that the pair of you would be an asset. I heard about you guys from the SQAT Teams in Port Hueneme.” Apparently our reputations had preceded us.
When I checked in, the Belknap’s yeoman gave me some mail that had been forwarded to me from the Yarnell. In this mail was a letter from my brother, Tim. This startled me because Tim had never written to me before. Looking at it, I immediately imagined the worst so I literally ripped it open. But the news inside was good, not bad. Tim had graduated from high school and had enlisted in the Navy. He wrote that he hoped that I didn’t mind, but he had requested brother duty and schooling as a fire control technician. His Navy contract stated that he would go from Boot Camp to FT Class A School and then on to the Belknap for duty with his brother. I was ecstatic! Not only was Tim going to serve with me, but—and this was far more important to me—he had escaped. In my mind, this meant that Tim was going to survive.
The number of people moving beyond Dad’s reach was growing. Kathy was married, Tim was in the Navy and, with Patty gone, Mom was able to work full time and earn a better living. But there were still four kids at home, and Dad was still Dad. Tim’s letter was great news, but at the same time, that meant that one less stable head was there to protect the little ones. It was a time for rejoicing, but also a time for worry.
At lunch that first day with Belknap, I met another member of the new crew, a second class electronics technician named Pitt who was also looking for an apartment. We headed out and visited a few rentals before we settled on one that we liked. It was on the second floor of a big old New England farmhouse that had been converted to apartments. It had decent furniture and had a lot of old woodwork and hardwood floors, as well as two bedrooms and two baths. We both liked it, so we decided to go in together on it. We took it on the spot and then spent the rest of the evening at the exchange in Brunswick, buying blankets and household goodies that didn’t come with the apartment. This was a real adventure, since neither of us had never really lived “on our own” before. We made sure that the refrigerator was well-stocked with beer, chips, soft drinks, and candy. I’m not sure that we bought anything that could be considered healthy.
We moved in that night, and since it was only two blocks away, we ate dinner at the same old bar-restaurant that I had frequented two years earlier with my shipyard friend, George LaCroix. As soon as I walked in, the owner recognized me and gave me a hearty welcome. George was there also, still sitting at the same barstool, looking a bit worse for the wear. So we had a few drinks with our cheeseburgers before we gave up for the night.
The next day, I was aboard the ship for almost ten hours. It was about the same size as the Leahy and Yarnell, but had some major differences. It only had two missile systems instead of four. They were on the forward end of the ship and there was a new gun fire control system with a five-inch gun aft. She also had a new type of 3-D search radar which I learned would be assigned to the fire-control gang for maintenance.
Belknap was impressive, and somehow I already liked this ship. I guess John Law and John Hurt had something to do with that. An old Navy adage says that a ship takes on the personality of its first Commanding Officer and never changes after that. In my experience, this is a fact.
I found that the construction discrepancies in my areas of responsibility were almost identical to those I had encountered aboard Leahy. Apparently the people who designed these ships never got the word that we had to have places to store our tools and technical manuals, especially lockable storage for classified manuals, so I put in change requests for those items, and soon the Captain had me going through all the other shipboard electronics spaces looking for similar problems. By the time Mark Wilcoux showed up, I had already submitted over a hundred change requests and was meeting daily with the Navy Supervisor’s Office to get them approved. These meetings were my first real exposure to civilian business and business management, and I loved it.
The supervisor’s representative in charge of the change request approval was another Navy lieutenant named Fox. He was a great guy who became good friends with John Hurt and, many years later, me. He had a full head of glistening grey-white hair, so he was known far and wide as the “Grey Fox.” With him holding the purse strings, and with my boss being his good friend, we really got a lot done for the Belknap.
In the evening, Pitt and I had become accustomed to having dinner at the bar down the street from our apartment, having a drink or two, then going home to watch TV or read. It was becoming a quiet, slightly boring, existence. But all that soon changed.
I had been there a month or so when, one Saturday, I walked into our bar for a drink and met Debbie. She was a nice lady who was about two years older than me. She was tall and very fit, talking about her daily five-mile runs. She was a bit more refined than the average person who came to this bar, and it clearly showed in her every word. She and I started talking while I was ordering dinner, and we hit it off right away. I learned that her first name was Debbie and that she was from the state of Maine, but she wouldn’t tell me more. When I tried to press for more details, she told me, “Back off, or you won’t see me again.” So I shut my mouth and we got along splendidly after that.
Pitt wasn’t too sure how to take it when she was in the apartment the next morning, but after she cooked a great breakfast for us, he forgave me. For the next two weeks, she was a fixture in our apartment, and we had a great time going out and seeing the sights, eating at the better places and hitting different bars in the evening. I really got to know my way around that part of Maine.
Then, at the end of the two weeks, Debbie woke up and told me she was leaving for good and I shouldn’t try to find her. She told me that, if I happened to see her, I was not to recognize her, and she would not know me. With that cryptic message, she left the apartment, and I never saw her again…in person.
I couldn’t understand any of this. She had been mysterious from the start. I still didn’t know her last name or where she actually lived. I had known this was strange,
but I thought that time would break down the barriers, whatever they were, and she would tell me the truth about herself. I guess I was curious, but not really upset. We had enjoyed each other, but I really didn’t have any strong feelings about her.
But my curiosity was up, so I quizzed the bartender where I had met her and other people who had seemed to know her. No one would tell me anything, if indeed they knew anything.
It was Pitt who finally solved the mystery. He was sitting in the apartment one morning reading the Sunday newspaper, when he suddenly said “Holy shit! Look at this!”
I leaned over and there, on the society page of the paper, was Debbie. But she was not called Debbie in the paper. She had a different and quite aristocratic-sounding name. She was dressed in a ball gown and was on the arm of a tall, distinguished-looking man who looked to be about ten years older than her. The write-up under the picture talked about how the man, her husband, had just returned from some time abroad and was once again taking over his duties as a corporate and municipal executive in a nearby town.
Debbie was always nice to me, so I will say no more. She was from Maine, but not from Bath. Pitt and I continued to live our bachelor life, but we seriously missed the good breakfasts we had enjoyed for a while.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Quebec City
The crew was starting to arrive in Bath and the Fire Control Division had already received three new chiefs; one was an E-7 and two were E-8 senior chiefs. The E-7 was a dedicated missile radar specialist who immediately hit it off with Mark and me. The two senior chiefs were both older and did not seem to be overly interested in anything beyond their administrative duties and the Bath bar scene. We all got along fine, and Mark, Chief Hall (the new E-7), and I had no problem covering all of the ship’s pre-commissioning missile system responsibilities. Soon the engineers started arriving in Bath to get the missile systems on line, and we stayed busy, but not overly so.
Then, after we had been living there a while, I decided to get out of Bath on the weekend and see more of New England. So I took off on a Friday and went on a tour of Connecticut and Vermont. It was fun and I saw a lot of very interesting historical sites. When I got back, I told Pitt about it, and we decided to go someplace together the following weekend.
The following week, we received our per-diem checks for the next month, so we were temporarily wealthy. We decided to make a big weekend of it and go north into Canada, to either Montreal or Quebec City. We had heard about this French-speaking part of the world, but neither of us had ever visited it. We looked into it and discovered that Quebec City was about a five-hour drive, and we decided that was far enough. It sounded like an adventure and we were a bit bored with the Bath bar scene, so we were up for it.
The trip north was an adventure in itself. As soon as we crossed into Canada, the language changed everywhere, including on the road signs. Since neither of us spoke a word of French, it was an adventure just trying to find our way, but we managed, and we arrived in Quebec City on a beautiful Friday afternoon. We followed the signs for downtown and ended up at the Chateau Frontenac, a magnificent old hotel with a world of history surrounding it. I wanted to stay there, but a quick check proved that it was far too expensive for two young sailors.
We walked down the street a few blocks and went into a local café. Over lunch, we explained our hotel dilemma to a friendly waitress. She directed us to a small, quaint walk-up type of hotel that was more reasonably priced. She told us that it was where people from Quebec stayed when they came to the city. That sounded great, so we went there, and found a room at a reasonable price.
We checked in, unpacked, and cleaned up a bit. Then we set out to see the city. We left the room, walked down the hall, and when we hit the down button on the elevator, my life changed forever.
The elevator doors opened and we were facing two beautiful ladies who were about our age. We stepped into the elevator, and Pitt started talking immediately. He was much better at opening a conversation than I was, I must admit. By the time we got to the lobby, we were in a full-blown discussion about the city and its people. We sat in the lobby and talked with the two women for almost a half an hour. We learned that their names were Danielle and Yvonne and that they were from a city another hour-and-a-half further north in Quebec.
Yvonne was tall and redheaded, while Danielle was shorter, with dark-hair, brown eyes, and an infectious laugh. Since Pitt was tall and blond, he gravitated toward Yvonne and I was very happy to talk mostly with Danielle. Somehow, it just seemed like a natural fit. Both girls were French-speaking, with Yvonne speaking almost no English. But Danielle was more fluent. She explained that her father was an English professor who taught at a university up north where she lived.
After we talked for a while, the girls volunteered to show us the sights in downtown Quebec City. They were just here on a weekend vacation, much like Pitt and me, so it couldn’t have worked out better. We set out afoot to see what we could see. First we went back to Chateau Frontenac, where they showed us some of the historical aspects of the place, and we picked up some brochures. Then we spent hours walking through the city’s narrow alleyways where artists of every type showed their wares and let us watch them as they painted people and the beautiful sights for which the city is famous. I couldn’t remember ever having a nicer, more relaxed time.
This was something really new for me. I was in a world that was entirely new to me; a world where people spoke in a new and exciting language and artistic people were everywhere. More importantly, I was talking with a sophisticated and obviously educated woman who seemed to be enjoying it as much as I did. I had seen half of the world and known some women, but all those experiences paled to nothing compared to what I was seeing and feeling now.
When the afternoon faded, we invited the ladies to dinner, and they accepted. They took us to a great little French restaurant and from there we again walked through the narrow alleyways and watched the artists at work. Then we moved to a night club in one of the larger hotels where we danced the night away to songs that sounded familiar, but which were sung in a language I didn’t understand. It was definitely an enchanted evening; one that seemed, even to me, to be almost impossibly romantic.
When the night drew to a close, we escorted our new friends back to the hotel and split up in the lobby after shaking hands and agreeing to meet in the morning. I went to bed, alone, with a brand new set of dreams in my head. I don’t think that I slept much that night.
Saturday was almost an instant replay of the day before. We met the ladies over breakfast and spent the day seeing the sights and enjoying one another. Pitt and Yvonne were having a hard time communicating since Yvonne didn’t speak much English and Pitt knew absolutely no French. At first, this was a source of humor for us, but after a while, I could tell that it was working on the two of them.
But Danielle and I had no such problem. Her English wasn’t perfect, but it was one hell of a lot better than my French and I appreciated it. I was trying hard to pick up a word here and there, so she helped me and we got on wonderfully. By the time the day was over, we had agreed that I would come to her home up north in a town called Kenogami two weeks in the future for a weekend. She talked about their little home town in the mountains of Quebec and it sounded a lot like a French-speaking version of St. Regis (except for a larger population), so I was anxious to visit there.
That night, when we said goodnight, I did get a chaste little kiss before we left one another. I noticed that Pitt was not so lucky.
Sunday morning, we met for breakfast again before we split up to go home. By this time, I had all the directions to her home in Kenogami and had every intention of going there as soon as I possibly could go. I was starting to have dreams of the little cottage with the white picket fence again. Maybe if I kept trying, I could someday have a normal life—the life that I dreamed of—after all.
The drive back to Bath was a fog for me. I remember that Pitt was far less excited than me, but that
just didn’t matter. Life had made a big turn for me and I wanted to think about it.
Monday morning, we went back to reality and our work aboard Belknap. I was a bit excited still, and I immediately told Mark about our weekend adventure. He had been raised in nearby Vermont and was of French-Canadian descent, so he was really enthused for me. He spoke French fluently, so he volunteered to help me a bit with that problem. I bought a self-teaching French course and did some work with it, but once again, my lack of any formal high school instruction jumped up and bit me. I didn’t know an adverb from an adjective from a noun, so I was hopelessly confused by the course. I had to settle for some practical teachings by Mark, which did help me a lot. But fluent, I would never be.
We still had almost four months before the ship was due to leave Bath, so I worked out an agreement with Mark that gave us each a three or four-day weekend every other week. That way, Mark could go to Vermont and be with his family longer while I covered his work, and then I would be off the following week for a long weekend.
After studying the map to Danielle’s home in Kenogami, I realized that it was an eight-hour trip each way, so I would need longer weekends. Mark liked the idea, so we talked to Chief Hall and Lieutenant Hurt and made it happen.
Mark and I went out of our way to make sure that all of our work was done to perfection so our new schedules wouldn’t be jeopardized. I wasn’t sure if I would need this new arrangement for more than the one weekend, but I was happy to make it happen for Mark even if it wasn’t needed for me. As it happened, it worked out well for both of us.
The next weekend, Mark went home for a four-day weekend, and I covered the work on his radars as well as my computers. The system lite-off was still in its early stages, so there wasn’t any real excitement. In fact, Chief Hall and I mostly just worked on paperwork that we would need later when the ship was operational.