Troubled Water

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Troubled Water Page 9

by Gregory A. Freeman


  One dap, known as Kill the Beast, was recognized even by Pettus as more than just a harmless handshake. The white man was the “beast” because he controlled everything and had the black man’s fate in his hands. When black sailors felt they were being abused by a petty officer or some other white man on the Kitty Hawk, they would dap Kill the Beast to let each other knew they were thinking the same thing and would someday overcome. The last part of the dap was a pantomime of squashing the beast on the ground underfoot. It wasn’t a dap that Pettus used, but he saw it among the more militant blacks on board and, unlike most whites, he knew what it meant.

  Dapping on the Kitty Hawk became a decidedly non-military greeting between men in uniform that signaled an allegiance to something other than the Navy—but it could always be defended as just a harmless handshake. If Townsend, Cloud and the other leaders had realized how much dapping was an open symbol of defiance, they might have been clued in to the serious rebellion brewing beneath the surface. The white men on board, from the lowliest sailor on up to Townsend, completely underestimated the anger of some of these black men. Even those who were not especially angry when they joined the Kitty Hawk crew were pressured into joining the underground black movement; resistance meant being labeled a sellout, an Uncle Tom. XO Cloud already was under suspicion because he was a high-ranking officer who made no overt effort to celebrate his black heritage or show solidarity with the black brothers. As the XO, of course, he could never display black pride the way some of the black sailors wanted. Sailors without Cloud’s rank and responsibility could go along, however. Pettus knew the drill for fitting in with the black brotherhood: Learn the daps, use them openly in front of whites, and dress during shore leave to show that you’re proud of your black heritage. That meant wearing red, black, and green to signify Africa and some type of honor for Martin Luther King and/or Malcolm X. There were those who took all the symbolism very seriously, and there were plenty like Pettus who just wanted to fit in and not be singled out for harassment by more militant black sailors, such as Terry Avinger, whom Pettus would remember as a “hard core black American.”

  MANY OF THE WHITE CREW, like John Travers, admired Cloud and figured that the presence of a black XO could only help calm any racial tension. Travers realized, however, that he was just a naive white kid from California and might not understand the black sailors on board. Chris Mason, the white sailor from Alabama who had formed a tenuous friendship with a black sailor, probably had a better appreciation of the situation. He had seen how his black buddy, an easygoing guy, not at all like some of the angry, inner-city, militant black sailors, nevertheless was allying with those rougher sailors.

  One evening Mason was reading in his bunk when his black buddy came to their berthing area, which, like some on the Hawk, was racially mixed. Mason knew that his friend had been to a clandestine meeting in a secure space near the captain’s wardroom, and he couldn’t help asking why his friend was hanging out with those people.

  “Man, it’s not like I really have a choice,” he told Mason. “If I blow them off, they’re gonna call me an Uncle Tom and cause all kinds of trouble for me.”

  His friend looked troubled by the whole affair. After a minute, Mason asked what they talked about in the meetings.

  “I can’t tell you much about it, Chris,” he said. “But these guys are really out there. They’re rough, man. Some of these guys were in gangs back home, and now they’re taking all kinds of crazy stuff.”

  Mason didn’t want to trouble his buddy any more, so he let it go and went back to his book. But Mason could tell his friend was scared by what he knew.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE DAP FIGHT

  October 10, 1972

  Subic Bay, the Philippines

  By October 1972, the Kitty Hawk had been at sea nearly nine months under some of the most demanding conditions that a carrier crew had faced since World War II. The work pace was fast and unrelenting, the heat off the coast of Vietnam (on the map grid known as Yankee Station) was almost unbearable, and racial tensions were approaching a fast boil. The crew was eager to go home, but the demands of the war kept putting the Kitty Hawk back on line. Every time they thought they had finished their job and could return to San Diego, the captain would come back on the horn and tell them that they were staying in the waters off Southeast Asia. Every time Townsend made that announcement, morale sank a little lower and frustrations moved a little closer to the surface. Tempers were hot. Every sailor was on a short fuse. It didn’t take much to spark an argument, a fistfight, a shouting match.

  All of these factors came together on the Kitty Hawk in October 1972. Trouble had been brewing for a long while but came to a head when the carrier visited Subic Bay in the Philippines for some desperately needed R&R.

  The carrier had left Yankee Station on October 3 after its fifth online period (the fifth time it was stationed off the coast and launching attacks almost around the clock). As the Kitty Hawk sailed to Subic Bay Naval Base, many of the young men on board thought that, finally, this had to be it. Surely after their scheduled six-day stay in Subic, the Kitty Hawk crew would be sent home. They had earned it.

  Captain Townsend was not as eager to go back to San Diego. He was ready to continue fighting as long Washington told him to, but he knew that his crew had earned some respite. The crew had been running about 120 sorties a day and had suffered no casualties while on line, so Townsend and XO Cloud were damned proud of them. The Kitty Hawk had become the ship to depend on, the one that would stay on line and cover for other carriers while they went into port to deal with casualties or damage, and that dependability had cost the crew some much-needed downtime. But perhaps the long journey was finally about to end. Townsend and Cloud talked about the progress of the peace negotiations and the fact that the war might be nearing an end. And they knew that the USS Ranger was supposed to arrive at Yankee Station soon, which meant the Kitty Hawk wouldn’t have to be the primary flight platform. Like the rest of the crew, they both suspected that the carrier might be sent back to San Diego after the Subic stop.

  Townsend and Cloud, the two men at the top of the command on the Kitty Hawk, didn’t realize how troubled the ship was when it arrived in the Philippines. They didn’t know how much volatility lay just beneath the surface. They were well aware of tension among the crew, but they attributed most of it to the long cruise and figured several nights of R&R would cure much of what ailed the men.

  In fact, when the Kitty Hawk pulled into Subic Bay Naval Base on October 8, 1972, the carrier was about to burst at the seams with the pent-up frustrations, anticipations, and hostilities of 5,000 testosterone- driven men. These men needed to get off the ship and let go of some energy. They needed to get drunk, get high, get laid, and then maybe go home. The ship docked at Alava Pier, closest to the bars and nightclubs, rather than on the Naval Air Station Cubi side of the bay, as Townsend usually chose for its accessibility to maintenance resources. For this port call, Townsend decided to do the crew a favor and dock where they could walk to town instead of relying on taxis and buses. The ship could still be serviced, but the crew could spend their money on the important things, like beer and women, instead of transportation. As the crew members were getting their uniforms in order and trying to collect on any overdue loans and poker winnings, they heard a dreaded sound. It was the captain on the 1MC, the public address system that reached the entire ship.

  “Men of the Kitty Hawk. This is the captain. I have to tell you that there has been a change in our schedule. After three nights R&R in Subic, we will be returning to Yankee Station. I don’t know when we’re going home, and that’s all there is to that.”

  The announcement was like swiping candy away from a baby. A wave of depression washed over the crew. Robert Keel, Chris Mason, and Garland Young all joined the chorus of curses that rang through the air. Not again! Goddammit, when are we going home? Not only were they going back to Yankee Station, but they weren’t even going to get their ful
l six days in Subic. Three nights? What a rip-off!

  Townsend had no choice in the matter. His orders came from the Pentagon, and he took the carrier where they told him to go. But he knew the crew would hold the news against him. They would resent that he had kept them at sea for so long. Even if the sailors understood that he didn’t make the call, he still was the face of the Navy command that did.

  As had happened before, it fell on the Kitty Hawk to cover for another carrier that couldn’t fulfill its obligations. In this case, the other ship was the Ranger, which had been sabotaged. In July, a white sailor had jammed an eighteen-inch steel rod in the carrier’s reduction gear, creating major damage that required a long repair in August. Then, when the ship was operational again, the crew had to catch up with disrupted training. That training was taking longer than expected, so the Ranger could not relieve the Kitty Hawk until November 16. That meant that instead of being relieved soon, Townsend’s ship had to get right back to Yankee Station and keep the war going.

  Both Townsend and Cloud regretted the truncated port call, knowing how disappointed the crew would be. And they wondered if the few nights in Subic were going to help release some of the tension or if the change in plans would just make everything worse. All they could do was to let the men go out for liberty and hope that they came back capable of another month or so in a war zone. Townsend’s main concern, as far as any possible problems in port, was drugs. Once the men stepped off the ship, they could obtain just about any illegal drugs they wanted, and Townsend didn’t want men sauntering back on to the Kitty Hawk with a duffel bag full of heroin. So, as he had done for the previous three port calls in Subic, Townsend ordered Nicholas Carlucci, the head of the Marines on board, to post guards at both brows, fore and aft, where the sailors returned to the ship. They were empowered to search the returning sailors for contraband, and they also had orders not to allow any foreign nationals aboard except those involved with the ship’s maintenance. Without the Marine guards, it was not unusual for sailors to sneak a local working girl aboard or for a local drug dealer to board to sell his wares.

  WHEN THEY STEPPED OFF the ship in Subic Bay on October 8, most of the sailors had not seen their families in eight months. For most of them, the recreational opportunities provided on the naval base were not their focus. They marched right past the wholesome offerings of the golf course and the beautiful beaches—they’d seen plenty of water already, thank you—and right out the gates to the raucous offerings in the town of Olongapo. The young single men needed some female companionship, and so did some of the old married ones. Nearly all of them needed a drink or two or twelve, and more than a few needed to score some pot or heroin. It was all waiting for them in Olongapo.

  Everything a sailor could want was easy to find in this classic example of a town that thrives on drunken sailors spending their money on booze, tattoos, and cheap women. (And these were very experienced women. At the height of the war, the base sometimes hosted more than two hundred ships per month.) Much of the entertainment, particularly the many whorehouses, was segregated by race, as the Filipinos were no more racially enlightened than much of white America at the time. A black sailor looking for love in the white section of Olongapo, known as the Strip, would be flatly refused and directed to the whorehouses in the Jungle, easily found by taking a left out of the main gate at the base.

  AS USUAL ON PORT calls, Townsend and Cloud went ashore each night for dinner at the officers’ club on base but then returned to the ship to continue the administrative work that always came with maintenance and repairs. For most of the crew, the first two nights of R&R were wild and woolly affairs, with the men blowing all their money on booze and women. The much-needed downtime was working wonders on morale, though everyone knew that wouldn’t last after the ship headed back to war. Chris Mason and Garland Young just tried not to think too far ahead, to stay in the moment and have fun. Young always enjoyed their stops in Subic, throwing himself into the bars and nightclubs, enjoying the local ladies, and even organizing parties on the beach for his buddies, both black and white. He considered Subic to be one place where the races could socialize pretty easily, though there were the clearly segregated areas, and he enjoyed spending his liberty with both blacks and whites he considered good friends. All of the Kitty Hawk men knew that R&R could get wild as men under stress blew off a lot of steam. Fights were possible, even likely, among the men, but they usually amounted to a few drunken sailors and Marines screaming insults at each other and throwing a sloppy punch in the general direction of the other fellow before staggering off or being dragged away by more clearheaded friends. Robert Keel and Young both were present, however, for something more serious on the first night of liberty at Subic. They had gone separately to the enlisted men’s club at Subic, known as the EM club, and were enjoying time with their friends. Young was sitting at a table near the stage with his friend Martin, who was black, another friend named Kirk, who was half Mexican, and another sailor from New York. The music was provided by local groups and the surprisingly good bands that often formed on Navy ships. Young regularly sang with some buddies on the carrier, their band putting on shows for the crew on the fantail. The Kitty Hawk sailors and men from other ships were partying hard.

  At one point a small fight broke out, and Keel tried to stop two sailors from swinging at each other. As Keel grabbed one of the guys, who happened to be black, and pulled him away, he thought he was just doing what any not-so-drunk bystander would do. But Keel suddenly found himself fighting the black sailor, and then he was thrown to the ground, where a half dozen of the other guy’s friends began kicking him. By the time he was able to scramble to his feet, all of Keel’s assailants had fled. Sore from his beating and seething with anger, Keel wandered the club for half an hour in a near rage, his shoulder aching from what would turn out to be torn cartilage. He was looking for the men who had beaten him. Lacking those targets, he trolled for anyone else who looked at him the wrong way. He was ready to fight, but no one took him up on the offer. Keel wondered if the men had attacked because he had made the mistake of grabbing the black sailor in the fight.

  The joint was hopping with a local band that did amazing covers of Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and other popular performers from back home. At one point Young leaned over to Martin and said, “Man, you just haven’t lived until you’ve heard a Filipino guy sing Janis Joplin!” The night was going great until a black sailor took the stage between songs and started screaming to the crowd about black power. Young didn’t recognize him as a Kitty Hawk sailor, though he could have been.

  “Black power! This war is the white man’s war! The Black Panthers are taking over!”

  The man’s rant went on and on, and the initial eye rolling from the whites in the crowd soon turned to anger. As whites started screaming for the black sailor to shut up, Young’s friend Kirk saw what was coming. “Okay, here it comes,” he said calmly as he turned his chair to the side so he could move quickly. Just then a glass went flying and hit the black sailor in the head. That prompted more bottles, which set off a fight between black sailors and white ones and anyone else who felt like throwing a punch or a chair. Young and his buddies didn’t want to join in the fight. Instead, they dropped under the table.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Young said, and his buddies agreed. Using the table for cover, they maneuvered toward the door like an awkward turtle. As they got to the exit, they discarded the table and rushed out into the night, still on their hands and knees. Young looked over at Martin and said, “Whooo, I’m glad that’s over.” But just as he started to get up, Young noticed that a phalanx of Marines had formed outside the EM club, shoulder to shoulder and holding wooden truncheons.

  “Get back down on your knees!” one burly Marine yelled at him. Young complied. Soon the Marines were ordering everyone coming out of the club onto their knees and then onto a waiting bus. The men were ordered to stay silent on the ride back to the base. At the dock,
the Hawk’s officer of the deck, a white lieutenant, greeted the returning buses and put all the sailors in formation. They waited at attention for all the buses, and then the lieutenant started lecturing them.

  “This is not going to happen on my ship!” he told them. “Is that clear? This is not going to be tolerated. Now, who can tell me what happened at the EM club?”

  No one seemed eager to explain, and probably no one had a clear idea of how the fight started, so finally Young spoke up. “Some black guy started mouthing off and got everybody pissed off,” he told the lieutenant. “We didn’t even know him.”

  The lieutenant didn’t seem satisfied, but he ordered all the sailors back to their berthing areas. The men ran off. The next afternoon, Young and his buddies were in their compartment, still grumbling about the fight, the way the Marines handled them, and the lieutenant’s dressing down. Just then they heard someone yell “Attention on deck!” and saw the lieutenant striding toward them.

 

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