The Lieutenant placed the medal and citation on a rostrum which an orderly set up near the Admiral’s desk and glanced piercingly around the cabin to make sure everything was shipshape.
Meantime, the PubInfo Officer had spotted Fatso’s Navy Cross with the Gold Star in it and said to Fatso, “My people will want to see you afterwards and talk about those two Navy Crosses you got ... Might be a nice little story in this.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” said Fatso.
Soon the door at the far end of the cabin opened, a Marine barked “TEN-SHUN!” and the Admiral and a half dozen staff officers strode in.
When Fatso saw the Admiral, his eyes almost popped out of his head. But he stood fast.
The Admiral nodded to the three Captains, said “Good morning, gentlemen,” and walked over to his desk. There he fiddled with some papers in his incoming basket while everyone bustled to their places for the ceremony.
When the Flag Lieutenant said that things were ready, the Admiral went to the rostrum, picked up the citation, and started glancing through it. Suddenly he did a doubletake and looked up, just as Fatso stepped front and center. His eyes popped even further than Fatso’s had. “Well, I’ll be gah ... Fatso!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, SIR,” said Fatso, standing at a rigid attention.
The Admiral strode out from behind the rostrum, stuck out his hand and said, “How the hell have you been, Fatso? Glad to see you.”
He grabbed Fatso’s hand and pumped it up and down, reaching out with his other hand and mussing Fatso’s hair up. By now, all eyes in the cabin were popping - as were also the photographers’ flash bulbs.
The Admiral turned to the astonished spectators, put his arm around Fatso’s shoulder and said, “Gentlemen, this is John Patrick Gioninni - otherwise known as Fatso. He’s responsible for me being here today. He saved my life when the Lexington got sunk. He got one of those Navy Crosses for doing it ... and if any of you gentlemen who now have the misfortune of serving on my staff think that was laying it on a bit thick - you’re entitled to your own opinion about it.”
Polite laughter greeted this sally, followed by a round of applause as the Admiral returned to the rostrum, assumed a stern scowl, and said “Attention to orders.” He then read the citation, pinned the medal on Fatso, and posed for more photographs.
Then he said, “Okay, gentlemen. That’s all. Now, Boatswain’s Mate Gioninni and I want a few minutes together to talk about - matters of mutual interest.”
As the others filed out the COS said “Don’t forget, sir, you’ve got to meet the Italian Chief of Naval Operations ashore in half an hour.”
“Okay,” said the Admiral. “If I’m a little late, he’ll wait ... Orlando!” he yelled at the pantry. “Two cups of coffee.”
The two old friends sat down at the table together, and the Admiral said, “Well, Fatso - it’s grand to see you again ... I’ll never forget some of the jams I had to bail you out of when you had that incinerator job on the Guadalcanal. That’s where most of the gray hairs I’ve got now came from ... What kind of a racket are you working now?”
“Well, Cap’n - I mean Admiral - right now I’ve got this LCU.” (Old sailors always have trouble addressing a former skipper as anything but Captain - no matter how much higher he goes.)
“What ship?” asked the Admiral.
“Well ... er ... no particular ship, right now. We’re in the boat pool over here at the Amphib Base.”
“How come you’re not attached to some LSD? I thought those LCU’s always were.”
“Uh ... yessir. Usually they are.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Well, I suppose in a way, I am, sir,” conceded Fatso.
“And what does that mean?”
“Our status is a little unusual at this moment, sir.”
“As I remember it, your status always has been unusual - ever since I’ve known you. So there’s nothing unusual about that.”
“Nossir.”
“Well - are you going to take me into your confidence or do I have to pry it out of you?”
“Well, Cap’n - that is, Admiral, sir - this is a touchy subject. It’s something you really ought to know about - but not officially.”
“Here we go again,” said the Admiral. “This reminds me of the conferences we used to have in my cabin on the Guadalcanal when you got involved in high crimes and misdemeanors ... all right, let’s have it. What kind of skullduggery are you mixed up in now?”
“Right now, in nothing, sir. But we really belong to the Alamo.”
“So - why don’t you rejoin her?”
“The trouble is she’s out in Vietnam.”
“Vietnam?” said the Admiral. “Then what the hell are you doing here?”
“She went off and left me.”
“Now wait a minute,” said the Admiral. “There must ho more to it than that. I’ll admit I was tempted to do that several times on the Guadalcanal. But unfortunately, we’re not allowed to maroon people any more. Some of those fine old customs, like that and keelhauling, should have been retained.”
“You see, sir - they sent me to Malta to pick up some stores. When I got back to Crete they were gone. They were supposed to go to Athens after Crete, so I went up there. I tried to report in to SOPA there, like the Regulations say, but I didn’t get anywhere.” He then explained as diplomatically as he could about the brush-off by the irate, bleary-eyed Lieutenant Commander.
“Well - that wasn’t your fault,” said the Admiral. “I’ll have that young skipper on the mat first time I get a chance.”
“After that we looked around the eastern Med for the Alamo, and when we couldn’t find them, we came up here and reported in.”
“I don’t see why you have to be bashful about that,” said the Admiral. “You haven’t told me anything wrong no far.”
“No, SIR!” said Fatso.
“But it seems strange Alamo didn’t leave any orders for you. Are you sure they didn’t?”
“We check the FOX schedule every day for radio orders. There were no orders in Athens - and none here.”
“Hmmm,” said the Admiral. “This is strange. It looks like the Alamo goofed and the skipper should get a crack over his knuckles for it ... I’m going to send him a sharp dispatch,” he said, reaching for the buzzer that hung over the table.
“Just a minute please, Admiral,” said Fatso. “I think it might be better not to do that.”
“Hunh!” snorted the Admiral. “It’s all very well to stand up for your skipper. I understand an old-time sailorman doing that. And I approve of it. But we just can’t tolerate gross carelessness and slackness.”
“Nossir, Admiral,” agreed Fatso. “But there’s more to it than that.”
“There always is, in anything you’re mixed up in,” said the Admiral, shaking his head. “All right - let’s have it.”
“There were a couple of things happened that maybe you wouldn’t really want to know about.”
“By gawd I might have known it,” said the Admiral. “Just like old times. But whatever hanky-panky you had going there, the Alamo is out in the Far East now, and you’re here. So you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Nossir. But this really has nothing to do with the Alamo.”
The Admiral scowled, squinted one eye, and pondered this statement for a moment. Then a light began to dawn - a red light.
“You’ve been up to some kind of mischief since leaving the Alamo?” he stated.
“I wouldn’t really say we done nothing,” said Fatso. “But it all depends on how you want to look at it, sir.”
The red light was flashing now, and the Admiral could almost hear an alarm-bell ringing. Admirals often are nowhere near as dumb as they look. “Where were you around the time of the Liberty incident?” he demanded.
“Lemme see,” said Fatso. “We were south of Crete - off the coast of Africa.”
“Oh migawd,” said the Admiral. “The Egyptian coast?”
“Yessir. But way outside
of territorial waters.”
The Admiral weighed his next question for some moments and then asked, “Would you by any chance know anything about the USS Turtle?”
“Well, Yessir ... quite a bit.”
“So now we’ve found the skunk at the lawn party,” said the Admiral. “Gioninni - I’ve said this before, and I say it again. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my life was letting you rescue me. Things would have been much simpler if I had just gone down with the ship.”
“Yessir - I mean, nossir. I wouldn’t say that.”
“Now I’ve got real trouble on my hands,” said the Admiral.
“Not yet, Sir. Depends on who else hears about this.”
The Admiral buzzed for the orderly. “Tell the Chief of Staff to come in,” he said.
The COS entered looking anxiously at his watch and said, “We have to be leaving pretty soon, sir.”
“Our Italian friends will have to wait,” said the Admiral. “We’ve got a top-level international problem to consider here. Sit down, Captain.”
The COS sat down.
“Joe,” said the Admiral, “You are of course cleared for Top Secret, and I suppose have a Q clearance, too, from CIA and the Atomic Energy Commission?”
“Yessir. I have.”
“Well, I’m giving you a higher clearance now. A special one held only by the three of us seated at this table.”
The COS looked puzzled.
“You are about to hear something that could embarrass a lot of Very Important People. It’s something you have a right to know as Chief of Staff and on which I want the benefit of your advice. But I don’t want a word of it to go outside this cabin.”
“Yessir.”
“This man and his LCU were left behind by the Alamo when she went to Vietnam. There was a snafu somewhere, and the Alamo never notified us. He’s been on his own in the eastern Med for the past three weeks, unbeknownst to any of us ... All right now, Gioninni - tell us about the Turtle.”
So Fatso related the saga of the Turtle, beginning with its birth the day they sent the signal to the Russian Admiral about the destroyer that had almost run them down. He told about their visit with the Russian fleet in the Gulf of Laconia and their hasty departure when the Russian motorboat blew itself up. He recounted their chicken game with the Russian destroyer, the hanging of Charley Noble, and finally, the repelling of the Egyptian boarders.
At the start of this narrative the Admiral’s face was stern, and the COS’s face soon assumed a look of shocked horror. As the tale went on the Admiral had to struggle suppressing a grin that kept trying to break out. When the Russian boat blew itself up, the grin finally forced itself loose. The chicken game and hanging were just too much for even the Admiral’s strong will, and he burst into uproarious laughter.
Meantime, the look of horror on the COS’s face was deepening, and by the time Fatso finished, he looked like a man about to ascend the gallows and get hung.
“Well, Captain,” said the Admiral. “What is your advice in this matter?”
“Migawd,” said the COS. “This is awful.”
“Is that all the advice I’m going to get from my Chief of Staff in this important matter?” demanded the Admiral.
The COS did not remain flabbergasted long. After all, he was a battle-seasoned veteran with medals to show for his quick thinking and bravery, had been a brilliant student at Naval War College senior course, and could whip out a sound estimate of a situation with the best of them. “This thing could have very high-level repercussions,” he said. “We have gone on record officially several times saying the Turtle was no U.S. Navy ship. The Navy Department has assured the President that it wasn’t. The State Department has sent official diplomatic notes denying that what the Russians and Egyptians said was true. This has to be handled very carefully.”
“Now wait a minute,” said the Admiral. “Let’s walk back the cat a little on that. We did not go on record saying it was no U.S. Navy ship. We said it was no ship in the Sixth Fleet under our Opcon. I insisted on that. Remember?”
“Right you are, sir. I stand corrected.”
“So we haven’t made any incorrect report. The Turtle was never under our Opcon. She still belongs to the Alamo, and the Alamo is out in the Far East in Skinny Jones’s Seventh Fleet. If this is anybody’s headache it’s his - not ours.”
“Hmmm,” said the COS. “I suppose, in a way, that’s right sir.”
“In a way, hell! This craft belongs to the Alamo, until we get a proper set of orders for her, records, and pay accounts. She’s Alamo’s responsibility and that’s that. We haven’t done anything wrong so far. Now, the question is, where do we go from here?”
“I see what you mean, sir,” said the COS. “I think maybe the smartest place to go is nowhere. After all, the United States has done nothing really wrong in this matter. The ... er ... Turtle had some provocation for the things she did. It would be very embarrassing for our government to back track now on what it has said about the matter. Even if we made a full report to the Navy Department now, the President and State Department might prefer to suppress it rather than admit to the whole world they had made a blooper. The case has been closed, and it’s probably best to leave it that way. I recommend that we do nothing.”
“A very shrewd suggestion,” said the Admiral. “I wish I had thought of it myself,” he added, with a wink at Fatso.
“Of course we do have to get this craft properly transferred to us, and get the records and pay accounts of her men,” said the COS.
“I think that is being taken care of, sir,” said Fatso. “The Supply Department here has sent a reminder card about it to the Alamo.”
“Good. That keeps it on a low, routine level,” said the Admiral.
“By George,” said the COS, “I think maybe I know what happened here. The America lost a helicopter about a month ago.”
“Yes, I remember that,” said the Admiral. “We had to ground all the whirlybirds and make a fix on the rotors. What’s that got to do with it?”
“When that accident happened, the whirlybird was returning to America from Crete, with mail from the Amphibious Force. The papers from the Alamo about this craft were probably in that mail.”
“Of course!” said the Admiral. “And the Alamo never found out that mail went to the bottom, so we can’t hold anything against her ... Now - what does the Commodore know about all this, Gioninni?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Fine. That’s all he needs to know about it ... Now get my boat alongside, Captain - I don’t want to keep that Italian Admiral waiting.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said the COS, buzzing for the orderly.
“And - oh yes, one more thing,” said the Admiral. “Tell that young Public Information Officer I want to see the negatives of all pictures taken this morning before any prints are made. Some of the shots may be a bit - too informal.”
“Well - yessir,” said the COS. “But they are fine human-interest stuff. They would project a good public image.”
“The hell with the public image,” said the Admiral. “I’m not running for office. And God knows we don’t want the public to think that the safety of this country depends on Admirals and Boatswain’s Mates like me and Gioninni in our relaxed moments.”
When the COS left, the Admiral said, “Well, Fatso - that pays off another installment on what I owe you. For gawd’s sake, take it easy for a while now.”
“Aye aye, sir, Cap’n,” said Fatso.
“I would have given a month’s leave to have been there when you hung Charley Noble and to see the face of that Russian skipper.”
“His eyes bugged out like a tromped-on toad,” said Fatso.
“And when you made that Egyptian gunboat haul ass ...”
“Most fun I’ve had with my clothes on since the day the Master at Arms fell down the forward elevator!”
“Well - I gotta go,” said the Admiral, getting up and sticking out his hand. “God bless you
, Fatso - and keep your nose clean - if you can!”
On deck the journalists plied Fatso with questions about how he saved the Admiral’s life. Fatso tried to beg off by pointing out they were holding up the Commodore. But the Commodore waved this aside. “No hurry at all - take all the time you need,” he said tolerantly.
Going back ashore in the gig, the Commodore was no longer mildly condescending as he had been coming out. It would be an exaggeration to say he was respectful. But deferential comes close to being the right word.
“1 guess you and the Admiral had a lot of old touches to cut up,” he said.
“Yessir. We been shipmates a couple of times. He was my skipper here in the Med for a year in the Guadalcanal.”
“He seems to think quite a lot of you - naturally.”
“We get along pretty good, sir. Finest skipper I ever served with.”
The Commodore pondered for a few moments and decided that a man of Fatso’s obvious talents and high-level connections might be more useful to the Amphibious Force (and its commander) in some other job than running an LCU in the boat pool. Employment on a somewhat higher level seemed to be indicated.
“Gioninni,” he said, “I need a new coxswain for my gig. How would you like the job?”
Coxswain of the Commodore’s gig is a sort of chairman-of-the-board job. It involves few command responsibilities and, in fact, he is usually defrauding the government when he draws his pay. But it is a nice status symbol and gives you elbowroom for outside activities. “Why ... uh ... yessir,” said Fatso. “That would be fine.”
“Okay. You’ll hear from my office soon.”
So - in due course Fatso turned over command of LCU 1124 to Scuttlebutt, duplicate records and pay accounts came in from the Alamo, and Fatso became a hardworking, regulation sailor setting a fine example for young recruits just out of boot camp. The Russian fleet retired from the Med to the Black Sea and never bothered us again. The Arabs and Israelis quit picking on each other - and we all lived happily ever after.
Cap'n Fatso Page 21