Show of Force

by Charles D. Taylor

  The duty steward, a Filipino in dungarees and a work shirt, stuck his head cautiously in through the pantryway. “Mr. Donovan, you call me?” he asked in broken English.

  “Damn right I did, Santo. Would you drink that crap?” pointing at the thick mess in the coffeepot.

  The steward shrugged his shoulders, maintaining a neutral expression.

  “You can be damn sure the crew wouldn't touch that.” He waved his arms above his head. “I want another pot super fast.” The little dark-skinned man came around from the pantry to pick up the pot. Donovan looked down at his slippered feet. “And after you do that, go back down and get on the uniform of the day and report back to me.” Turning away toward David, he muttered, “The little bastards will always take advantage of you, if you give them half a chance. And you better believe they understand English! I said last night that he didn't have to make breakfast for us, since I always let Goorjian sleep in on the weekends, and I don't eat breakfast anyway. You can be damn sure he won't do that again.”

  Apparently satisfied, he sat down in the chair at the end of the green table, swinging it around toward David and stretching his legs out in front. “Now tell me a little about Ensign David Charles, other than your last four years at the barge factory.”

  That day, in the second ship of a four-ship nest, Joe Donovan learned a lot about the new ensign who was bunking with him and who would stand watches with him both in port and underway. And, David Charles learned about a new Navy that hadn't been included in the curriculum the past four years, one that seemed to have been forgotten by his landlocked instructors.

  FROM THE LOG OF ADMIRAL DAVID CHARLES

  I'm going to make this as a side entry that I might tear out later, especially if I'm going to have to turn this journal in to a department head later on.

  In a way, I was kind of scared when I reported aboard Bagley. I've been on other ships before, during middle cruises, but this is my first actual tour of duty. I'm finally an officer, but I don't know if I want to stay in forever. When I saw this ship, as I was coming down the pier, I just said to myself, “Oh, shit. It's really a rust bucket.” I guess we all had dreams of guided missile cruisers or giant carriers, as far as being part of a spit-and-polish organization, but everybody kept telling us the real Navy was in tin cans. Well, if they're right, and I'm not saying they're not, it's sure a different Navy from the one we were taught about for four years.

  joe Donovan, the CDO whose section I'm in, thinks Annapolis was some kind of prep1 school, and only people who wanted to give up working early went there. As a matter of fact, he's explained two or three times that when the Navy gets into a crisis they call up the reserves. And after the reserves win the war for the lifers, then they go home until the lifers get themselves in trouble again. Wow! On the other hand, deep down he really likes the Bagley. He knows the ship as well as the captain, and I guess Captain Carter has tried to talk him into shipping over, but Joe says there's too much to do in the real world. Maybe he's right.

  Some of the other reservists are pretty good people, too. But, boy, do they ever party! After everything I was taught about Navy etiquette, I think maybe they're right. Going to sea on a Monday morning is a hell of a good way to dry out, and it also keeps you from getting too involved with the women. But some of the parties I've been to when the ship comes back are unbelievable. They work like hell when we're at sea and then they act like they've never seen the water when they get back. They rent an apartment every time they're in any port for more than a couple of weeks. Right now they've got one in Virginia Beach and they've asked me to come in with them. The hard core is Donovan, FitzGibbon, Hogan, Mezey, Werwaiss, Mundy, and Kerner. Whenever the Bagley's tied up, their place is overrun with women. I think I'm going to like it, and I think I'm going to like the Bagley a lot more than I expected that first weekend, if I can survive the pace they set.

  Even the commanding officer, Captain Carter, never went to the Academy. But he doesn't say much bad about it because he's steamed with a lot of graduates over the years, and he said he's met some pretty good ones. Right after I reported aboard the Bagley, the Monday after, the ship started to look like it was part of the Navy again. Captain Carter came aboard at seven thirty that morning, had an officer's conference at breakfast, and right after quarters he had a meeting with all the chiefs, too. By the end of the day, every space was shiny. All the stanchions had been replaced and the ship was scraped and covered with red lead. By Tuesday, she looked like she was ready for an admiral's inspection. Donovan explained to me that Sam Carter likes to have the fleet see that even the old buckets like the Bagley can hold their own with any new frigate, and that's why she always comes into port showing where she's been. And he always lets the crew off as soon as the brow goes over, and gives the duty section the chance to take it easy for a few days.

  There's something special about Captain Carter. I'm not sure what it is yet, but it's obvious not only from the way the officers respect him but the way the crew looks up to him. A lot of mornings will find him having coffee down in chiefs quarters instead of the wardroom, and he doesn't just wander in on his own. Apparently, they gave him a standing invitation, which is pretty rare for any officer. I wouldn't go down there unless I was invited or if I had business with one of the chiefs. And Carter sits down in the spaces and talks with the troops while they're working. He'll stop and shoot the shit with some deck apes chipping paint sometimes, and Donovan says he'll even stick his head into the firebox when the snipes are groveling around inside cleaning the boilers. Sailors don't take to any officer very easily, but I think they'd follow Carter into the middle of the Russian fleet.

  One of the first things that made me more comfortable in this old wreck was the talk he had with me that Monday morning. Right after he'd finished with the chiefs, the XO told me to go up to the captain's cabin, Captain Carter told me right away that this was my formal visit with him, that he and his wife didn't need any ensigns making calls on them and leaving cards on their front table. He said I'd get to know them better at the first bash the bachelors threw at their place. Sam Carter said his first job, after the safety of the ship and crew, was training young officers so they'd find the Navy was a good job and stay in. He also wanted to sort out any that should leave. If I was serious about the Navy, I could learn more in my first year than I could learn in ten years at the Academy, He said all of his officers would have every opportunity to do everything possible with the Bagley, and he was just there for the ride and to train officers. He'd drive only when the ship was in danger or he felt the officers on the bridge didn't yet have enough experience.

  Everything he said was exactly the way he operates. His officers get the ship underway, take it out of the harbor, con it in fleet exercises, take it alongside tankers or carriers to refuel, and just about any other possible ship's evolution. He's always there, hovering in the background, just in case of an emergency, but he never says a word of criticism until he's alone with whoever made a mistake. No wonder they love him.

  And he sure was right about the parties. It's a tight wardroom in more ways than one, and Sam Carter never misses a party. Neither does his wife. After that first one, I realized why they didn't want any ensigns making social calls and leaving cards. If a war had ever started that first night, they would have had to warp Bagley out so the other ships could get underway, and the next day she would have caught up. His wife, Ann, is the belle of the wardroom. I imagine we all secretly love her cause she's everything a Navy officer's wife should be, lovely, charming, dances with everyone, organizes the wives, checks out everybody's date to make sure they're okay, and she loves Sam Carter.

  Now that I've had time to sit down and write about the Bagley for a few minutes, I think I'm going to enjoy this tour after all. And I'm going to promise myself to make a lot more entries like this one. I'm finally in the real Navy, and this journal may teach me more about myself and how I want to be part of the Navy than any JO journal ever will.
/>   CHAPTER THREE

  David watched the shells hit just prior to the sharp explosions. Long shots landed in the water, throwing up great clouds of spray. But they were becoming fewer as pointers found their range. Then he saw people thrown into the air, landing awkwardly, rarely moving afterward. He had briefly known some of the ones that now lay there., although he couldn't distinguish faces through his binoculars. Only hours before some of them had been aboard the Bagley, nervously pacing the deck in their fatigues, chattering sporadically in Spanish with each other and sometimes joking in broken English with the crew. In such a short time the Bay of Pigs' invasion force had become a ragged gang, hiding from the withering fire behind broken palms or even the bodies of their comrades.

  “Reverse your course, Palmer,” Ensign Charles ordered his boatswain. By looking at the groups of palms that still stood he knew that they were near the end of that invisible line that marked his sector, five hundred yards from the beach. The sun was already high enough in the sky to make the life jackets and helmets uncomfortable.

  “Op orders are like party platforms,” David thought. “No one ever pays attention to them after they're written.” He had read carefully through Operation Order 8 - I6. After all, it had come out of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the orders of the President. There were over two hundred pages -of details, starting with designation of the task force and ending after interminable pages of detail with even the call sign of his unit—Lucky Duck. Lucky Duck, like many of the other whaleboats from the parent destroyers sitting another three thousand yards beyond the small craft, was just a number among the elements of that huge force that had set out a few days before. At sea, it was magnificent.

  There were carriers, cruisers, destroyers, amphibs, LST's full of marines, and aircraft of all types overhead.

  And not one unit had done a thing. The order from Washington, the one that had been promised, never came. Men like David were to follow the landing force close to the beach to provide fire-support targets for the larger ships. The carriers would launch flight after flight of jets to provide close in-support after the beachhead was established. The LST's would land supplies, food, ammunition, blood for the wounded, and they would take back those who could fight no more. The troop carriers circled overhead with the trained men who would parachute behind enemy lines to help surround Castro's army. It was planned to be over in three days or less, except for mopping, up in a few of the mountain areas. The Communists were said to be ill-trained and would run at the first sight of the landing— perhaps into the paratroops' arms. They were not expected to support Castro. They were said to be waiting for this liberating force, the one that would free them.

  Within half an hour, David knew it was a sham. Not one shell whistled overhead toward land. Not one jet shattered the air. Not one parachute blossomed over the beaches. And Castro's army wasn't running.

  “Good morning, Senor Charles, or should I start calling you Lucky Duck.” It was Jorge Melendez, the commander of the troops that would be landing in David's sector.

  “Good morning, Jorge,” he replied. The sun was just coloring the horizon to the east. Cuba was a darkened smudge to the north, still too distant in the early dawn to pick out landmarks. He had become close to Melendez during the three days they had been at sea together.

  As soon as the Bagley had gotten underway, Carter called him to his cabin and introduced the young ensign and the short, swarthy Cuban. They shook hands, the jungle fighter staring deeply into David's eyes, looking for that desire that so many of his small army had. Instead, he had seen a self-assurance that was uncommon among young men. There was then no understanding of the Cuban's problems, but Melendez had been told often by the C.I.A. that few Americans knew of the plans or the part the American military would take in recapturing their island 'home.

  “David,” Sam Carter had said, “I'm going to put you in charge of a call-fire team for Colonel Melendez.” At the same time, he handed over a copy of the heavy op order that was to be their bible. “The colonel and his staff will be quartered aboard this ship until we reach our position. Their men are aboard the amphibs behind us, and they will join each other only when they get close to the beaches.”

  “Excuse me, Captain Carter,” Melendez interrupted in only slightly accented English, “Does this young man understand what we are here for?”

  “He understands only what my crew has been told since we got underway—that there will be an invasion of Cuba by a trained army of exiles, that the U.S. government is in full support, and that we will likely assist, once the invasion is underway.”

  “Your word 'likely' makes me nervous, Captain. All our training has been built around support from your forces. It would be senseless to appear off the coast with this armada, and then send in an army with no assistance.”

  “You are correct, Colonel, but I can only follow the orders I have received to date. I am assigning Ensign Charles to you because most of our other officers have been trained as a shipboard team for just the type of support I hope we can give you. He also has just come from a gunnery school with the training necessary to back you up with call fire. I think you will find him a pleasant and serious officer to work with.”

  Melendez found that Carter was correct. The young American was serious about his assignment, read every page of the order, asked many questions about Melendez and his army, and also became attached to the team that would go ashore.

  The Cuban's hair was longer than the American sailors', and he had a thick, black moustache. His dress was casual" from the Navy's point of view, and he did not look like a military man. But David learned rapidly that his friend, Jorge, as he soon called him, was very much a fighter and a leader. He was fiercely devoted to his men, whom he missed on the amphibs. He and David spent many long hours during the day discussing the invasion plans and how the necessary support would get them from the beaches into the trees where more safety was available. They wandered in various parts of the ship, sometimes leaning on the depth-charge racks on the fantail, or stretching out on the deck by the bow, watching the flying fish leap in front of the rising and falling bow and listening to the Caribbean race by through the hawse pipes.

  David developed a deep respect for the Cuban. The pride in country and the determination to liberate it were something unfamiliar to his young mind. Americans were not subject to this deep nationalism, and he was just beginning to learn it through his immersion in his military life. Jorge was willing to die on the beaches of his native land, if necessary, to bring back the world that he had grown up in. He wanted it for his wife and children in Miami, and for the many other families who also waited back in Florida not knowing where their men had gone or when they would be back. Cuba became a nation to David, home of a fiercely emotional people whom one could easily become attached to. And he was suddenly worried for them.

  He had gone to the bridge the night before to talk with Carter. “Captain, is there any chance we won't help Jorge when they hit the beach? He seems to be the only one concerned. The others feel there's no problem. They're sure that Castro's army will join them within a few hours after they see us behind them.”

  “I wish I could answer that, David. The orders say 'yes.' Enterprise is out there now with enough firepower to take Cuba without troops. Long Beach is joining up tonight with missiles that could knock down anything Castro could put in the air. Our squadron is ready to lay down enough five-inch gunfire so they could walk up the beach a mile undisturbed, but I don't know what's going to happen.” He paused for a moment, picking out a bright star in the clear sky, enjoying the tropical breeze running over his face. “The orders come from Washington.”

  “I know that, sir.”

  “We don't move a goddamn muscle until we're told to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sam Carter picked out the same star again, cautiously selecting his next words. He often worked that way when he was serious, and tonight he wanted to make a point. His blue baseball cap was in his la
p and the moon reflected vaguely on his bald head. Carter was one of those men who lost his hair early, and in his late thirties he had already had ten years to get used to the reddish fringe that grew around his head. It never really bothered him and at no time had he even considered the old ploy of growing it long on one side and sweeping it across his head. He was short, too, about five and a half feet tall, but that hadn't particularly bothered him either. Size wasn't important in the Navy. It hadn't seemed to concern his wife, and he had accomplished so much in his short career that most professional acquaintances probably couldn't have remembered how tall he was. His sharp, dark eyes commanded his face whether he was laughing at a party or angrily chewing out a subordinate. But he never did or said anything without thinking about it first, and he wasn't about to now.

  Finally, his thoughts in order, he said, “David.” Carter pushed himself upright in the bridge chair and turned to look the young man directly in the eyes. “You're now a naval officer. A lot of money has been spent on putting you through Annapolis and graduating a young man who will learn to make the right decisions in a time of crisis. Often, the decisions you make will be based on orders from Washington, from people who don't know you and don't want to know you because they might hesitate to give those orders if they did. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

  “Yes, sir. You don't want me to say anything more.”

  Carter's eyes looked back at his, glistening in the dark night. “More than that, David. Jorge Melendez is a soldier of his country, and that's how he will act when he goes ashore. You are an American sailor, and this may be the time you'll be hurt if you don't stand back a little. I know you've gotten attached to Jorge. This is your first real combat assignment, and I want you to carry it out without the emotional concern that you're worrying about now. I like Jorge, too. He's a very brave man. I'd like to march into Havana behind him, but my place is on the bridge of the Bagley. Yours will be in a whaleboat five hundred-yards off the beach, trying to help Jorge march into Havana. But,” and he pointed his finger at a place above David's head, “you must remember whom you work for.” The finger turned around and pointed at his own chest. “Me.”