The Edge of Honor (3 page)

“Seem to know their names,” observed Brian as one of the men trotted aft to find coffee.

“Yeah, well, they all been dickheads one time or another or they wouldn’t be deck apes, so they jump. Safer that way.”

“Roger that,” said Brian. He had almost jumped himself.

The chief lumbered aft to supervise bringing the tug alongside, and Brian walked back out of the way to the base of the missile launcher to observe the workings of the forecastle crew. He glanced up at the windows of the bridge two levels above the forecastle, but the green tinted outward sloping windows spreading across the front of the superstructure revealed nothing but reflections of the pier lights ahead.

At twenty-eight, Brian Holcomb was a tall, spare man with an unruly shock of corn-straw hair and blue eyes in an unlined boyish face. His youthful features had long been a secret source of insecurity in a Navy culture where craggy, weather-beaten features seemed to command more respect than blue eyes and a ready smile.

Deceived by his boyish looks, officers who were his contemporaries in age and experience would often dismiss him, only to be surprised later to find out that he had almost seven years commissioned service in the Navy and was in the promotion zone for lieutenant commander.

As he watched First Division get ready to come alongside, he reflected on the past few months that had brought him to his first WESTPAC deployment and a critical juncture in his career, a department head tour in a frontline guided-missile ship headed for Vietnam operations.

He had reported aboard in San Diego six weeks ago, as John Bell Hood was completing final preparations for return to the western Pacific after a brief seven months back in home port. As a senior lieutenant relieving a lieutenant commander, it was clearly expected that he would be on the next promotion list in December. But the words of his detailer still echoed in his mind: “Your first department head tour fitness reports were not as good as they should have been; we’re going to have to retour you in a second department head job. You apparently pissed somebody off.

You are prpmotable, but just barely; if we didn’t have this war going, you’d have a problem. So, you’d better ring a bell in Hood. And given the timing, with the lieutenant commander promotion board meeting in November, it would be helpful if they’d write you a special fitness report before the board convenes.”

He would really have to impress his new captain to get a special. Make or break time, hotshot.

The news that he had not done well in his previous department head billet had come as a surprise. His skipper in Decatur had given no indication that he was anything but pleased with Brian’s performance as Weapons officer. In retrospect, though, Brian thought he knew what the problem had been. He had reported aboard from the Navy’s new Destroyer School up in Newport, where they trained up-and-comers to take on any of the three line department head jobs in the tin-can Navy— Weapons, Operations, or Engineering. He had hit Decatur as maybe a little too cocky, a little bit too much of the know-it-all. Brian knew he was smarter than the average bear; his top standing in all the Navy schools, starting with the Naval Academy, demonstrated that. He had spent his first year in an elderly destroyer that had been decommissioned, and then had two and a half years in a more modern destroyer, all of which gave him more sea time than the average lieutenant. But he also realized now that he still had a lot to learn about how to handle himself in a professional culture where there were many officers whose value was not measured in class rank alone.

The tugboat came alongside smoothly, snubbing up under the overhang of the bow long enough to let the pilot climb through the lifelines, and then eased herself out a bit so that the deck crew could make her up alongside. The pilot was met by Ens. Jack Folsom, the ship’s first lieutenant, who escorted him aft on his way up to the bridge. The piers at Subic were so crowded with ships that traditional destroyer-force ship handling was not really safe. Tugs were used to push a ship as big as Hood sideways into her berth with a minimum of fuss.

The tugs were made doubly necessary by this “frigate’s”

glass jaw, a huge, bulbous sonar dome right at the foot of the bow, which meant that razzle-dazzle, “drive up to the pier and back her down hard” ship handling was out of the question.

Brian glanced back up at the bridge and saw a cluster of khaki moving out onto the port bridge wing. The captain and the Operations officer, Lieutenant Commander Austin, were standing in the conning position along the bull rail. Brian recalled with some warmth the friendly welcome-aboard extended by Capt.’ Warren L. Huntington on Brian’s first day. In contrast, Austin had been noticeably cooler. As the senior department head, Austin was Brian’s designated sponsor. He had made it clear at the outset that while he, Austin, was an old hand in WESTPAC, Brian was going to be playing catchup ball in Hood. Brian was well aware that the four department heads competed for ranking in the fitness-report system. One of them would win the coveted 1 of 4 ranking; somebody else would have to be 4 of 4. Brian also knew that he had better place in the top half of that ladder or he could forget lieutenant commander. As the new guy, and a novice at Seventh Fleet operations to boot, he knew he faced an uphill battle.

The tugboat drowned out his thoughts with a loud blat

of its horn, answered by another horn from the tug made up back aft. The ship was making bare steerage way now as the pilot brought her close in to her designated berth at the bulkhead pier. Brian could see Filipino line handlers waiting on the pier and men standing out on deck on the destroyers already moored to the pier, watching as the newest ship to join the Seventh Fleet was brought alongside.

There was a sudden blaze of bronze tropical light as the sun surmounted the eastern mountaintops. He realized that he was already perspiring freely in the damp tropical heat.

The destroyers at the pier looked well used, with running rust and a weather-beaten look to their paint jobs. The older ships, some dating back to World War II, clearly showed their ribs through the thinning hull plating.

The long line periods of escorting the heavy carriers on Yankee Station, or conducting night-and-day firing missions on the shore-bombardment gun line off South Vietnam, beat both men and ships down. Brian was suddenly acutely aware of how clean and new John Bell Hood must look to these salty veterans. He glanced at his watch. The briefing team was due onboard at 0730, and he was designated to greet them and take them up to the wardroom. He started aft toward the quarterdeck as the first heaving lines snaked over the side to the pier.

Professionally, Brian had jumped at the orders to be Weapons officer in John Bell Hood. Hood was one of the ships that operated the Red Crown station up in the Gulf of Tonkin. With her powerful three-dimensional air search radars that could see over two hundred miles, long-range surface-to-air missile systems, and large helicopter flight decks, Hood would serve as the air-control nerve center for all the air operations over the Gulf, including the surveillance flights, the combat air patrols, the strike flights of Navy carrier bombers into the North.

The Red Crown station also coordinated search-and rescue operations whenever Navy, Marine, and Air Force pilots bolted out over the Gulf with their Phantoms, Prowlers, or Voodoos in flames, looking for a safe place to eject.

For Brian Holcomb, whose sea service up to this juncture had been in conventional gun destroyers of the Atlantic Fleet, this was a dramatically new and exciting world. Professionally, he was also stepping up to the Seventh Fleet, which, after years of conflict in Vietnam, was the premier operational fleet in the Navy. While Atlantic Fleet ships conducted rote-step exercises in the politically sensitive waters of NATO Europe, the Seventh Fleet did it for real in Vietnam. The first team, as anyone with Seventh Fleet experience would proudly point out.

All the rest of the Navy was training and drills. Out there, in WESTPAC, it was the real thing, man. Brian knew that any officer coming from the Atlantic side would have to prove himself to the old WESTPAC hands, learning a whole new operational jargon in the process. When he reached the flight deck, he stopped to watch the big ship come alongside.

“Attention on deck!”

The officers stood up from their chairs as first the captain and then the executive officer entered to take their seats at the head of the senior table. Capt. Warren L. Huntingdon was a distinguished-looking officer, with silver gray hair, a pleasant, fatherly face and demeanor, and a trim figure on a five-foot-ten-inch frame. To Brian, the captain looked like a captain should: dignified without being stuffy. Huntington projected quiet authority but was engaging in his approach to people, soft-spoken and yet able to command immediate attention. Brian thought the only discordant note in the captain’s otherwise-immaculate persona was that his uniforms looked to be slightly too large for him. The exec, Comdr. David Mains, was the captain’s exact opposite in appearance and personality: a beefy, round-faced ex-football player type, whose rough-and-ready personality, edged occasionally with a hint of’steel, made a perfect foil to the avuncular style of the captain.

The captain greeted and shook hands with the senior briefer, an aviator commander from the air station across the bay at Cubi Point, and his briefing team of one lieutenant and one chief petty officer. Everyone then took his seat except the captain. There were two tables in the dining area of the wardroom, one designated as the senior table, which seated the captain, exec, the four department heads, and some of the senior lieutenants. The rest of the ship’s officers were seated at the larger junior table. Standing against the bulkhead on either side of the wardroom were several chief petty officers and, conspicuous in their dungarees among all the khaki, the six enlisted air controllers.

As the junior line department head, Brian sat midway down the senior table, following the exec, the Operations officer, Lieutenant Commander Austin, and the chief engineer, It. Comdr. Vincent Benedetti. It.

Raiford Hatcher, the Supply officer and the ship’s only black officer, sat next to Brian. The captain cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “Commander Wingott is here from the CTF Seventy-seven detachment at Cubi Point.

He’s going to give us a quick briefing on what’s going on up in the Gulf these days. I know we’ve all been studiously reading our message traffic on the way over from EASTPAC and that we’ve had briefings up the gump stump back in Pearl. But now we’ve formally chopped to COMSEVENTHFLEET and CTF Seventy-seven, so now comes the straight skinny. Commander.”

Commander Wingott had a ruddy face that bore the marks of recent scars or burns. He wore the pristine, well-pressed khakis of a staff officer, with no little daubs of gray paint or the oil stains typical of ship’s company uniforms. He also displayed an extensive set of ribbons under his aviator wings, including a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, and a pair of mirrored glasses was suspended from the button of his right shirt pocket. Brian noticed that he walked with a slight limp over to a briefing easel set up behind the senior table.

“Gents, welcome to WESTPAC and Task Force Seventy-seven, the first team.

The
. B. Hood is, of course, no stranger to IF Seventy-seven, and you have a first class reputation as Red Crown. I believe I see some of the same faces here as when I outbriefed you all seven months ago. On behalf of Commander Task Force Seventy-seven, we’re glad to have you back.p>

Things have heated up here since you left in January.”

He turned to the briefing easel and flipped down the first page, then proceeded to give them an update on what ships were where in the Tonkin Gulf attack-carrier formations. He reviewed the mission of the Red Crown station, which was to act as the focal point for air-control and air-defense operations for the entire Gulf area, with secondary missions of providing the air-navigation reference point for any U. S. military aircraft operating over northern Vietnam, as well as being the seagoing base for two search-and-rescue helicopters.

Brian listened carefully. Because he was a department head, Brian was designated an evaluator in the ship’s watch bill. As evaluator, he was going to be the senior officer in tactical control of the ship’s operations when he was on watch. The evaluator was the captain’s direct representative on watch in Combat. All of the module watch supervisors in Combat reported to him for direction.

If the ship was subjected to a surprise attack, he would have the authority to launch missiles and fire the ship’s guns at an attacker without having to wait for the captain’s permission. Brian was under no illusions that he would be qualified technically on day one as evaluator, but he also understood that his main job was to ensure that the highly trained watch standers in Combat did their job, namely, to launch the ship’s defensive systems in the critical seconds between detection of a raid and impact. He also knew that, by the end of their first forty five day stint, or line period, on the PIRAZ station, he would be expected to know a great deal more.

The commander emphasized the importance of the ship’s mission in terms of the fact that every pilot and aircrewman who flew the Gulf of Tonkin depended on Red Crown.

“You guys come up on the air as Red Crown, you speak with complete authority for air control, traffic control, missile defense, and search-and-rescue. You guys have done all this before, but I want to stress to you that where you’re going, there are no more drills and exercises. From here on out, it’s all for real, gents.”

The commander paused for effect before going on.

“I understand you’ve had your full-scale briefings from CINCPACFLEET back in Pearl. What we have to give you today is current dope.

Lieutenant Henson over there has a detailed brief with the current overlays for the CIC folks, the buffer zones for Red China and Hainan Island, and the daily flight plans from the carriers. RMC Batter ton, next to him, needs to meet with the Comm Center people, and I need to discuss a few things with the CO and XO. Other than that, I’m done, unless there are any more general questions.”