Those who hadn’t, quickly heard from their shipmates. Bangkok
indisputably was a great liberty port, and throughout the evening every
bull session on board had but a single topic. Four off-duty sailors sat
at one of the round-topped tables in the crew’s lounge. They weren’t
the only ones in the room. Other small groups were scattered about the
area, reading, watching TV, or playing war games. A gentle rumble rose
from the deck, more felt than heard. The lounge was located far aft,
almost directly above Jefferson’s four massive, twenty-two-foot-wide
propellers, and the room pulsed with their throbbing strokes. No one
noticed, however. The ship’s pulse was part of the background, long
since accepted and forgotten.
Seaman Apprentice David Howard had enlisted in the Navy in April, three
days after his eighteenth birthday. After twelve weeks of boot training
at the Recruit Training Center in San Diego and two dreary weeks in a
holding company, he’d been given his orders for sea duty and his first
ship: the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson.
He’d been at sea for five months now, less two weeks in Yokosuka. After
all that time, he still wasn’t certain whether his luck at drawing the
Jeff had been good or bad. Most seamen hated carrier duty, where the
ship was big enough to get lost in, quarters were as cramped as in a
holding barracks ashore, and twelve- and even fourteen-hour workdays
were the norm rather than the exception. Howard didn’t mind the hard
work, and there was an undeniable romance in the air each time one of
Jefferson’s aircraft was hurled aloft in steam and raw noise. His
hardest adjustment was in his social life.
Howard was quiet, even shy, and had never made friends easily. His
shipmates seemed a decent enough bunch, if a bit loud and profane, but
Howard still hadn’t learned how to let down his own inner barriers with
them. He found himself drawn to their conversations, though, wanting to
belong.
“Aw, shit, man!” Signalman Third Class Charles Bentley leaned back,
hands clasped behind his short-cropped blond head. “Ten fuckin’ days in
bee-you-ti-ful shit-hot Bangkok! Gentlemen, we have got it made!”
“You been there before, Bentley, right?” Radarman Third Fred Paterowski
chugged the last of his Coke and crumpled the can. “Tell, man! Tell!”
“Hey, man, it was fuckin’ A-numbah-one! That was … lessee, ’88, I
guess. When I was on the Arkansas.”
Howard sipped his Coke, listening. He didn’t know how to take Bentley,
who seemed bright but who was only a third class after eight years in
the service. He’d probably been busted, since most ratings could make
second class before their four years’ enlistment was up. Howard
couldn’t help wondering what the guy had done … or did he simply not
care?
The lounge was a large room, with paintings drawn from Navy history,
with comfortable tables and chairs under fluorescent lights and a wooden
lectern at one end. Howard remembered sitting in this room five months
before, listening as Captain Fitzgerald stood behind that lectern and
talked about responsibility, about making something of their time aboard
the Jefferson.
In five months, Howard had done his best to be a good sailor and fit in
with the routine … doing what he was told and staying out of trouble.
As a seaman in the deck division, he was one of hundreds of enlisted men
available for general duties which ran from standing lookout, serving as
roving fire and security patrol, participating in FODs and field days,
and keeping lines and gear up on the roof shipshape. His previous daily
assignment had been a dull but undemanding one: cleaning and stowing the
dozens of wire-frame Stokes stretchers which the medical department kept
ready along the starboard side of the island on the flight deck. A week
ago, though, he’d been transferred to Air Ops, where he stood by as a
message runner.
“Runner,” in this day of radio and satellite communications, meant that
he fetched coffee for officers and chiefs, but he enjoyed being in what
he thought of as the carrier’s heart, a huge room where earnest ratings
bent over radar screens in semi-darkness, murmuring into radio headsets
as they talked with aircraft hundreds of miles away. It gave him a