Yesterday, the USS Abrabam Lincoln (CVN 72) pulled back into her home port of San Diego. It was a zoo. It nearly alway is a zoo when a ship that large returns from a deployment to the Southwest Corner, but this was the biggest zoo i’ve experienced since i first was stationed here in 1975.
i will not comment about the affairs of the Lincoln and the longest underway period in modern history, as Alan Hicks researched and verified, nor the impact of social and news media today. After the publicity began flowing and several Facebook exchanges, i realized it had become a political football. i try to refrain from such things (usually, but not always succeeding).
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I do know a good bit about ships returning from deployments. i personally experienced six of them on the arriving side and one as a greeter on the pier.
On thing that struck me. I was on the USS Lloyd Thomas (DD 764) when i was a third class midshipman in the summer of 1963. Before we pulled back into Newport from a 7 week underway period, the captain anchored the ship in Narragansett Bay, and boatswainmates and midshipmen including me were suspended from the weather decks and painted out the rust that had accumulated on the sides of the ship. We didn’t didn’t go into port until the job was done. That was comon practice then.
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The most lonely return was my first one. i had reported to the USS Hawkins (DD 873) in Malaga, Spain in late April 1968 as a brand new, wet behind the ears ensign. That deployment for me was short. We got underway shortly after noon, passed through the straits of Gibralta before sunset and arrived in Hawkins’ home port, May 15, 1968. i had been in the Mediterranean for half a day.
When we moored to the Newport destroyer pier 2, the pier was awash with relatives of the wardroom and the crew. The DCA asked me to help him as he was engaged to two women on the pier. i diverted the one by herself telling her the fiancé was still involved in damage control (ironic, huh?) while he met the other fiancé and her parents, then escorted her off the ship with her parents. When they left, he showed up for the one i was engaging.
Everyone left except the duty section left. Of course, the wardroom duty section consisted mostly of single officers, especially the only newbie ensign, aka me. Since i had used most of my leave before i reported aboard, i was the only officer who did not have leave the first two weeks or the last two weeks after we arrived.
i felt like the Lone Ranger…without Tonto or Silver.
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My other returns from deployments were much better. There were a few when i had that glorious time as a lieutenant commander bachelor when i came back from Western Pacific (WESTPAC) deployments when there was no one waiting. That was okay because i was single and back in San Diego.
In my other returns, someone was waiting. Certainly, my favorite was in 1984. That deployment on Yosemite was one of the most successful i ever had. It was a hero and heroine reception. Best of all, i had left my bride of ten days behind to join the ship in Mayport, except for three days over Labor Day, we had been apart for 71/2 months. Maureen was on the pier. It was a glorious feeling to see her.
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The only one where i was on the pier waiting for someone was in the late 80s. Daughter Blythe was here for her vacation time with us. She joined me on the pier. i have related this return before. To repeat:
JD Waits and i met in Perth, actually Fremantle, Australia in 1981 after i reported aboard the USS Okinawa (LPH 3). There are ma ny stories i have posted here and many more to come about him or by him here.
One of the best is the one that came from my stumbling upon a find at a grocery store. It was in the early nineties. JD was the aviation maintenance officer for ASWWINGSPAC, an acronym i will not try to capture here. Due to a relief for cause of an aviation squadron (that, for non-Navy folks is not a good thing), JD was called upon to take the officer relieved as assistant maintenance officer on one of the carriers, i think it was the USS Constellation (CV 64) for a nine-month deployment to the Western Pacific (WESTPAC).
As they were preparing to get under way, i went to the Navy Commisary on the Naval Station to stock up in groceries for our family. In the back of the commissary, there was a freezer displaying a special. It was boxes of frozen “JD’s Fried Chicken.” The prominently displayed subtitle on the 6″x10″x3″ box read “Mostly White Meat.”
Perfect, i thought, and bought a box, presenting it to JD the next day. He laughed and took the gift. i’m guessing he cooked it before the deployment, but he told me he took the box with him and put it on the shelf above his desk in the maintenance shack. His maintenance division saw it and constantly made jokes about it, convinced it was a joke.
Now, after JD and i returned from our deployment on the USS Okinawa (LPH 3), we became close friends, share a condo in the Coronado Cays with a boat slip, we began to show up dressed as Jake and Elwood from “The Blues Brothers” Movie and named ourselves “The Booze Brothers.”
JD, in explaining the box, told his maintenance crew of his and my adventures as the Booze Brothers. The old sailors weren’t buying it, and it became sort of a running joke for the deployment. When his ship was returning to San Diego, JD’s wife, Mary Lou, was on family business in Virginia and unable to be there for the homecoming.
Our daughter Blythe was here from Austin during summer break. She helped me — actually did most of the real work — in creating a 3×5 foot sign. It read: “Welcome back, Jake. Elwood is cooking some JD’s Fried Chicken tonight for your Homecoming. It is mostly White Meat.”
JD was down in his maintenance office while the ship was mooring pierside at the North Island Naval Air Station. Blythe and i were in the crowd of dependents, loved ones, and friends of ship’s company on the pier. JD’s crew were standing in quarters on the flight deck when they spotted Blythe and i waving the sign. They ran down to the maintenance office and found JD.
They were hysterical, yelling “It’s true, it’s true. Elwood is on the pier waiting for you. His sign says he is fixing you JD’s Fried Chicken with Mostly White Meat tonight.
The Booze Brothers were a legend, but they and Blythe did not eat fried chicken that night.
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This rather lengthy post was motivated by the Lincoln‘s return to the Southwest Corner Thursday. Regardless of all of the political posturing and the turmoil produced by social and news media, those 5,600 officers and sailors who had ridden her for what must have seemed like an interminable time deserved a huge homecoming welcome. They got it.
To the Lincoln, Bravo Zulu, i.e. well done, and Bravo Xray, i.e. have an extra drink of rum (that’s old Navy stuff).