Main characters: Captain Simenton, Coco (my fiancée at the time), our two mothers and me.
Approx date: Spring/Summer 1978
Scene: USS South Carolina port calls in N. Atlantic and The Med.
The South Carolina’s home port was Norfolk. The ship had been commissioned in 1975 so a significant number of the crew were “plank owners”. When I arrived, she was scheduled to get underway within a month for her second cruise – to the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The communications officer I was to replace had already left so no personal transition from him to me. We should have had a chief as our senior radioman, but that position was also vacant when I arrived. Fortunately, we had two good RM1’s (Radiomen 1st Class) and a decent SM1 (Signalman 1st Class.) And, having already served as a Communications Officer for three years, including the stint in GITMO, I had an inordinate amount of expertise in my billet for a newly arrived junior officer. Unlike on the Ingram, it was my only primary billet – I no longer doubled as navigator. Best of all, I was not tasked as the accursed Welfare & Rec Officer.
At some point before we got underway, Captain Simenton had me meet him in the Captain’s Cabin. I had spoken to him a number of times since arriving. This was our first one on one in his office. Captain Benjamin Simenton was a handsome and impressive man who reminded me of Admiral James Calvert, “Lord Jim”, the Superintendent of the Naval Academy who had so awed me as a plebe. I can’t recall now exactly what he told me, but gist was this: “Don’t be cocky, be humble. Otherwise, you will have a miserable experience on this ship.” He was telling me this because nearly all of the officers on the SOCAR were nuclear power trained and they considered themselves to be a cut above other black shoes. I was one of the few non-nuc officers on the ship. And yet, some of them who were more senior than me would be training under me on the bridge and in CIC. Be chill or I would be ostracized in the Wardroom. “Yes sir.” I followed his sage advice got along fine with the other officers.
Not long after we got underway, I received a marvelous gift. Senior Chief Hawkins, an E-8 Radioman, was delivered to the SOCAR by helo from The Nimitz. His service record was impeccable. No doubt, our ship now had one of the best staffed communications division/departments in the Fleet. Little wonder that within a few months, the SOCAR won the Green C. (The Green C is awarded to the ship with the best communications department within its squadron.)
Being a non-nuc, I had no watch duties in the engineering room. My watches were either in CIC (Combat Information Center) or on the bridge as Officer of the Deck. At sea, the OOD runs the ship, (at the Captain’s pleasure, of course.) We were part of a task force centered around the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), a nearly new nuclear-powered super carrier that was and I think still is the largest warship in the world. We did a lot of maneuvers with the Nimitz’s task force, and I often found this thrilling. Thanks to all the bridge experience I had had, I was a pretty good ship driver. My most important job there, though, was to get the officers who weren’t yet qualified, to become qualified OOD’s. I spent a lot of time on the bridge as an instructor even when I did not have the watch.
The Task Force participated in several extensive wargames and often they included allied ships. There were always two teams: Blue (USA/NATO) and Orange (the Soviets.) I loved it when our team was Orange. Having been through TAO training, I was fully versed in the capabilities of the Orange forces. Orange’s missiles were faster and had much longer ranges. Plus, some were launched from Soviet bombers flying in the stratosphere. As i now recall, their missiles flew to a position directly over our fleet and then dropped straight down at Mach 3 from 40,000 feet. When our team was Orange, we always won. That was disconcerting to say the least.
The SOCAR made numerous port calls including Cadiz, Gibraltar, Alexandria (Egypt), Barcelona, Naples, Gaeta, Palermo, Kalamata (Greece), Lisbon, Amsterdam and Venice. Being a nuclear-powered ship had its drawbacks, though. Some countries feared we might contaminate their shores with radiation and required us to anchor miles out at sea. That meant long rides in motor whaleboats between ship and shore. In the evenings when sailors were typically tipsy, officers were assigned duty on the boats. This was a job that I detested more than any other. There were fights and not infrequently a sailor would go overboard. Rare was the evening that I did not get some amount regurgitated food or drink on me.
A picture was taken on Christmas day in Gaeta, Italy as I was coming off boat duty. It had been cold, choppy, and rainy. I was exhausted, stinky, and homesick. Coco recently painted my portrait from that photo. I decided to contrast it to a photo of me taken seven and half years earlier during plebe summer. Back then, my father had advised me to trust that the Naval Academy would transform me into a man that would be a competent naval officer. Though I doubted it at the time, it happened.
Coco and I planned to get married in August 1978, about a month after the cruise ended. However, we decided to have a “travel experience” in the interim. She was to meet me in Lisbon when the ship was there and we would spend about two weeks galivanting around Europe and then rendezvous with the SOCAR in Venice. My grandmother caught wind of this and was scandalized that we would be “living in sin” before getting married. Our mothers came up with a alternate plan – why not get married first overseas and then have a honeymoon in Europe? Mama masterfully worked her magic such that both Coco and I each thought this was our idea. Well, Why not? We decided to do it.
The question then was where to hold the wedding? Since most of our port calls were in Catholic countries, I visited a priest in Barcelona to get advice. I discovered that in Spain, Portugal and Italy, Catholic wedding or other, there would be a waiting period and significant counseling required before we could get married. That would not do. Gibraltar, however, was British and the rules there were more lax. The SOCAR stopped in Gibraltar in mid-April and I went to work as wedding planner. I found an Anglican Church (The Holy & Indivisible Trinity) and an Anglican priest named Kit Jarman (with a bushy red beard), and two hotels. No waiting time required, just show up and get married. I made reservations for the wedding to occur on May 18, 1978. The best experience of my life was to begin within a month. I could think of little else.