Cap'n Fatso

by Daniel V Gallery

  “Gawd almighty!” observed the rapt listeners.

  “When he comes in the cabin, he hands the skipper a card engraved Madame le Clair and the address. The skipper gives him a big hello without looking at the card and sits him down at the table for a cup of coffee. The skipper says, ‘I want to be sure everything is arranged so my sailors can go ashore.’

  “‘We take care of them,’ says the Frenchman. ‘All of them. We stay open all night.’

  “The skipper didn’t quite follow that, but he says, ‘Okay - that’s fine.’

  “Then the Frog says, ‘Capitaine. Perhaps you like to be with nice young French girl tonight?’

  “The skipper still didn’t click - so he just says, ‘No, I’m going to Paris.’

  “Then the Frenchman says, ‘Maybe you prefer older lady. We have some very good ones.’

  “Then the skipper looked at the card, and it dawned on him what this guy was. He buzzed for his orderly, got up and said, ‘No. Get the hell out of here. I’m not interested in any of your gals. I want the Captain of the Port.

  “The Frenchman looks kind of surprised, and then says, ‘The Captain of the Port! Eet ees vary deefeecult - but perhaps I can arrange.’”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Official Visit

  Next morning the boys gathered around the 20 mm gun on the starboard wing of the bridge to try the saluting charges.

  “Should we run up the powder rag at the yardarm, Cap’n?” asked Jughaid.

  “Yeah,” said Fatso; “I guess you can say we are conducting ordnance tests - run her up.”

  Jughaid broke out a square red flag and two-blocked it at the yardarm. This officially notified all ships within visual range that experiments with high explosives were in progress and prudent seamen should keep clear.

  Webfoot broke out a box of the denatured shells, which now had wads of cotton where the bullets had been.

  “Permission to commence scheduled exercise, Cap’n?” he said, loading a shell into the gun.

  “Fire away,” said Fatso.

  Pouf went the gun, emitting a cloud of smoke but not much of a bang.

  “Hah!” snorted Ginsberg. “Anybody who got saluted that way would feel insulted.”

  “Needs more wadding in it,” said Webfoot.

  They stuffed a little more wadding in the next one and got a little louder pouf but still not a very impressive bang.

  “Put a big wad in the next one, and ram it down real tight,” advised Scuttlebutt.

  The third shot produced a sketchy sort of a bang and blew out chunks of burning cotton leaving streaks of smoke behind them.

  “Well, there you are,” said Webfoot. “It looks like that’s about the best we can do, Cap’n.”

  “It still ain’t good enough,” said Fatso. “We gotta remember we’re representing the United States, and we can’t afford to fire no half-assed salutes. Maybe we better skip it.”

  One of the interested observers at this ordnance test was Satchmo. While everybody was sadly pondering Fatso’s command decision, he said, “Cap’n, I think I know how to make that bang a lot louder.”

  “What the hell do you know about interior ballistics?” demanded Webfoot.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about stuff like that there,” admitted Satchmo. “But I do know something about music and how to build up sound.”

  “What are you gonna do? Try to play the Star Spangled Banner on that goddamned gun?” demanded Webfoot.

  “What’s your idea, Satch?” asked Fatso, who knew from long experience that Satchmo’s ideas were usually good.

  “We got a small boom because we’re shooting with a small barrel,” said Satchmo. “We need a sort of an amplifier to magnify the boom. If I took the bell off the end of my horn, all I’d get out of it would be a small squawk, no matter how hard I blow. But if you made the same kind of a boom we got now inside a big barrel, it would come out a much louder and deeper boom. It’s like the pipes of an organ. The high-pitch notes come out of a small pipe. The deep low-pitch notes come out of great big pipes.”

  “We’ll bear that in mind when we install a pipe organ on this bucket,” said Webfoot scornfully.

  “You’re just like every other ordnance expert I’ve ever seen, Webfoot,” said Fatso. “When somebody else comes up with a new idea, the first thing you do is hang out the NOT INVENTED HERE sign ... What’s your idea, Satch?”

  “We got a lot of steel pipe on board, that the Marines use for laying pipe lines. The inside diameter is six inches. If you slide a piece of that pipe over the barrel of our little 20 mm gun, it will act like the pipe of a big organ. It will make a big hollow boom, like a real six-inch gun.”

  “I think he’s nuts,” said Webfoot, using the standard Navy argument against any new idea. “You’d blow that pipe into a million pieces and kill everybody on the top side.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said the Professor. “I think Satch has got something. Those blank charges we’re using won’t hurt the pipe a damn bit. It oughta make a real deep boom, just like Satch says ... I think it’s worth trying, Cap’n.”

  “Okay,” said Fatso. “Let’s try it.”

  Half an hour later, Scuttlebutt and the boys had completed the job of converting their standard 20 mm gun into a six-inch smooth bore. An eight-foot length of steel pipe had been slid over the barrel of the popgun and jammed in place with wedges. A wooden sleeve around the muzzle of the small gun held the pipe with its center in line with that of the bore. Spot welds to the mount held the pipe in place.

  I doubt if the Bureau of Ordnance would have approved this alteration to standard equipment if it had been submitted through official channels. And it would have taken at least two years, anyway, to get an answer out of the Bureau on a technical matter like this.

  Fatso inspected the job carefully and said, “Looks okay to me. But I want all hands under cover the first time we shoot it.”

  A few minutes later, with all hands crouching behind the bulwarks on the port side, Fatso gave the signal to fire, and Webfoot yanked the long firing landyard.

  The gun made a great hollow BOOM.

  All hands let out a respectful “Ah-h-h ...” which was suddenly cut short. A swirling mass of smoke erupted from the pipe in the shape of a large doughnut and sailed out, expanding rapidly to the size of a giant tractor tire. It was the most perfect smoke ring that any of them had ever seen. As one man, they all said in awed voices, “Well, I’ll be gahdamn!”

  “Will it ever do that again?” demanded Fatso, when they recovered from their amazement.

  “By gawd I think it will do it every time,” said the Professor. “It has to.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Webfoot. He reloaded the gun, they took cover again, and the gun duplicated its spectacular performance.

  “It can’t help doing it,” explained the Professor. “The gases start expanding at the muzzle of the small gun. The pipe holds them in; but the explosion blasts through the center and drags the gases along after it. They’ve got to come out in a perfect ring every time.”

  “This is the most important advance in naval ordnance since the breach-loading gun,” said the Judge. “Satchmo will go down in Naval history alongside of Professor Diililgren.”

  “Hell, I’d make it stronger than that,” said Fatso. “I’d say its the biggest thing since the Chinks invented gunpowder.”

  Next morning, LCU 1124 made her landfall as planned, twenty miles north of Tel Aviv, ran in to within a mile of the beach, and turned south. An hour later she sighted Yaffo light at Tel Aviv. A big set of U.S. colors fluttered proudly at the gaff, and all hands were in their dress-white uniforms, at their stations for the formal evolution of entering port. When a man o’ war does this officially in a foreign port, it is like a duchess entering the throne room to be presented at court. High level protocol is involved, and things must be done exactly by the book. Fatso and his boys had studied the book carefully and were determined to uphold the prestige of the Unit
ed States.

  The Israeli colors were made up in a neat wad and two-blocked at the masthead, with the halyard rigged so that a good jerk from below would stream the colors in the hreeze. Ginsberg was standing by to supply the jerk on the first boom of the salute. Webfoot stood by the starboard saluting gun and Jughaid by the port. Satchmo had the wheel, and the rest of the crew (all three of them) lined up in ranks (or rather, one rank) in the bows. Fatso had the conn, of course, and would double in brass as the gunner.

  The LCU’s approach to the harbor entrance drew only casual interest from the lookouts at the fort. There certainly were no Arab naval craft prowling around in these waters at this time. And from dead ahead, an LCU looks like many other nondescript small craft that inhabits the eastern Med.

  When they were about a mile from the fort, Fatso throttled down to slow speed and said “Okay - commence firing.”

  “BLAM!” went the starboard gun, and a beautiful smoke ring rolled out of the pipe as the Israeli colors broke out at the masthead.

  Fatso went into the time-honored gunner’s ritual for spacing shots in a salute 5 seconds apart. “If I wasn’t a gunner - I wouldn’t be here,” he intoned. “Port - gun - FIRE!”

  “BLAM!” went the port gun, and blew another perfect smoke ring.

  “Far from home and my friends so dear ... star - board - FIRE,” continued Fatso.

  “BLAM!” went the starboard gun - and so on for twenty-one good solid BLAMS and twenty-one perfect smoke rings.

  Ginsberg had predicted that the salute would catch the Israelis with their obis down. It did - even more so than the Israelis had caught the Arabs.

  All the high-ranking regular Navy officials of Tel Aviv were up in Jerusalem, still trying to explain the Liberty fiasco. The only naval officers in Tel Aviv that morning were reservists, of low rank and little experience. The Liberty affair had put the Israeli Navy in bad odor at a time when the Army and Air Force were covering themselves with glory. So the senior reserve officer present at the fort this morning wasn’t about to make things any worse by failing to answer a national salute perfectly. He didn’t fiddle-faddle around with the diplomatic authorities checking on the authority for this visit. He hit the panic button. Bugles blew, drums beat, and boatswains mates bawled, “Man the saluting battery - ON THE DOUBLE!”

  It takes only a minute and forty seconds to fire a twenty-one-gun national salute. But within a minute of the last gun, while you could still see some of the smoke rings, the U.S. colors went up on the signal station, and the first answering boom rang out over the harbor.

  The crew of LCU 1124 stood at attention with Fatso saluting while the fort banged away twenty-one times. Everybody always counts the number of guns fired in a salute because after all, there isn’t much else to do while you are standing there at attention. On the last gun, all hands announced, “Twenty-one!”

  “Carry on,” said Fatso. “You know,” he remarked to Scuttlebutt, “If I had thought of it in time I would of fired twenty-two - like old Joe Fife did one time.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of stories about Joe Fife - but not that one,” replied Scuttlebutt.

  “Joe’s ship came in to Plymouth, England, for Queen Victoria’s jubilee, and the dopey gunner lost count and fired twenty-two guns. When the Admiral asked him what the hell was the idea, old Joe said ‘Twenty-one guns for Queen Victoria and one for Joe Fife.’ ... I doubt if I’ll ever have another chance to fire one for Gioninni.”

  “Well, anyway. - This makes our arrival here pretty official,” observed the Professor.

  “Most official arrival I’ve ever made anywhere,” agreed Fatso, “except for the day I was born.”

  Fatso then kicked her ahead slow, eased in to about one hundred yards from a nice sandy beach, and let go his starboard anchor. “As soon as we can get permission I want to put her in on that beach,” he observed. “Keep an eye open for an official boat heading this way,” he added, to Jughaid. “The Captain of the Port will send somebody out soon. I want to pipe him aboard as if we did it every day. We’ll need two or four sideboys depending on his rank, and Satchmo, you take my Bosun’s call and pipe him over the side. All you gotta do is start a long blast when he gets out of the boat and hold it till he passes through the sideboys and salutes.”

  “Ycssir, Cap’n,” said Satchmo. “I know how to do it.”

  Fatso got a reminiscent look in his eye and said, “The last lime I piped a VIP aboard I got busted from First to Second Class.”

  “How come, Cap’n?” asked Satchmo.

  “It was on the Memphis, and Bugler Bates was skipper,” said Fatso. “The Memphis was the damndest spit-and-polish bucket I’ve ever been on. Old Bugler wasn’t much of a seaman - damn near knocked the dock down every time he put us alongside. But he was a flat-bottomed son of a bitch on protocol. Whenever you set foot on the quarter deck you had to act like you was in church. And whenever a VIP came aboard, it was like a formal White House reception.

  “Well, one day in Hampton Roads I had the watch when a drunk VIP came aboard. He was some big shot Congressman, and he was drunker than a fiddler’s bitch. It took him so long to stagger up the gangway I thought I’ll blow a gasket keeping my whistle going. When he poured himself aboard and tried to shake hands with the sideboys, I busted out laughing. And old Bugler busted me two minutes after the guy left!”

  “Well, I promise you I won’t laugh, no matter what happens, Cap’n,” said Satchmo.

  “Speaking of old Bugler Bates and sideboys,” said Scuttlebutt, “reminds me of the wooden side boys we had for a while on the Missouri.”

  “Wooden ones?” said Fatso. “I’ve seen lots of wooden headed sideboys, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No. These were all wood. Our skipper was ‘Turn-To’ Tucker, and he couldn’t stand the idea of having eight sailors hanging around near the gangway doing nothing all day but just standing by in case some VIP might show up. So he had eight sideboys made up out of plywood, like those traffic cops they set out in the street near a school.”

  “Not a bad idea, at that,” observed Fatso.

  “We painted dress blue uniforms on them, and they looked real good. The first few visitors who came aboard got a big kick out of them. We even had a couple of VIPs who never noticed the boys were phony. But then old Bugler Bates came aboard, right after he made Admiral. Boy oh boy! He got six real live sideboys when he left a few minutes later, and the wooden ones had already gone up the flue in the incinerator.”

  In about ten minutes Jughaid spotted a gig flying an official pennant heading that way. Embarked in the boat was an Ensign in the Israeli Navy in full dress uniform, swab epaulettes, cocked hat, and sword, representing the Captain of the Port.

  He was brought aboard in a manner that would have satisfied even Bugler Bates. He got two side boys; “attention on deck”; Satchmo did the honors with the Bosun’s pipe; and Fatso met him at the head of the ramp with a big salute.

  “I have come to call on the Captain,” said the Ensign.

  “Yes, SIR!” said Fatso. “That’s me.”

  “Oh?” observed the Ensign.

  “Yessir,” said Fatso. “Would you like to come up to the ... er ... wardroom and have a cup of coffee?”

  In the “wardroom” the Ensign, who was making his first official call on a foreign man o’ war, removed his fore-and-aft hat and held it on his lap, but had trouble getting his sword out of the way so he could sit down. When he got himself squared away, he said, “The Captain of the Port is away today. I have been de-sig-nated to rep-re-sent him, to present his com-pli-ments and ask if there is anything we can do to fa-cill-tate your visit.”

  Well - yessir,” said Fatso. “I would like to run my ship up on the beach instead of anchoring out here.”

  Certainly,” said the Ensign.

  “And I have an automobile on board,” said Fatso, “That I would like to put ashore while we are here.”

  “That’s all right too,” said the Ensign. “But it is not
necessary. The Israeli Navy has assigned an official car and driver for you during your visit.”

  “Harrumph,” said Fatso. “Well, now, that’s goddamned ... I mean that’s very nice indeed. Thank you.”

  “Can we do anything else for you,” asked the Ensign.

  “No-o-o, I don’t think so,” said Fatso. “When should I call on the Captain of the Port and the senior naval officer?”

  “It is not necessary,” said the Ensign. “You can consider this visit to take care of all official pro-to-col.”

  After the Ensign had been piped ashore, with all due ceremony, Fatso remarked, “Well boys - it’s just like we figured. They’re going to fall all over themselves, to be nice to us.”

  And - in general - that’s exactly what they did.

  There is no point in cluttering up this saga with an account of the shoreside activities of Fatso and his brave lads for the next few days. This is a sea story about the hard times, perils, and intrepid deeds of the sailors who defend this country battling wind, wave, and foreign enemies on the briny deep. It is concerned with their feats of daring-do on the seven seas rather than how they kill time ashore while resting up and preparing for their next venture out on the raging main.

  On the high seas these men uphold the traditions of John Paul Jones, Farragut, Dewey, Halsey, Nimitz, and all the other great naval heroes. Their conduct in battle is a legitimate field of interest for naval historians. What they do when they go ashore is their own damn business - except when the MPs butt in. It would be a flagrant invasion of privacy to gumshoe around behind them and record in this family journal how they wile away their hours visiting museums, public libraries, and other points of interest in the various seaports of the world. It’s really no different from what Eagle Scouts, college professors, or even Supreme Court justices would do if they had the chance, were able, and thought they could get away with it.

  And no reader of the current best sellers on life in the USA today would be interested in even the most uninhibited account of what our sailors do on liberty in foreign ports. Compared to the queer capers in polite society ashore these days, it would be very dull reading indeed. In fact, it might hurt recruiting. It could lead adventurous young men of draft age to figure that they can make out better and get more action on any of the college campuses ashore than they can in far-away waterfront bistros.