19 October 2010
 
The White Palace

(The White Palace, Belgrade, Serbia. Photo AP)

I looked down at my notes on Willow’s rich wood bar. The happy hour wine made me mellow, and Mac’s stories were washing over me, not sepia toned at all, but real, as if no time had passed at all.
 
“The PARPRO issue was part of what we did out of North Audley Street,” said Mac. “But it wasn’t all of it by any means. There is all sorts of spooky stuff involved in it, and some activities that did not happen in the sky are still locked away in vaults.”
 
“Suffice it to say,” Mac said with a wave, “The Ike’s feelings about the U2 program were shaped by his experience with the PARPRO missions in Europe, and the urgent necessity to assess what the Kremlin was up to with heavy bombers, rockets and atom weapons. As President, he supported all the technology that eventually made the US over-flights of denied territory unnecessary.”
 
“Too bad that Gary Francis Powers had to get bagged on the last one,” I said.

(Admiral Robert Bostwick Carney, USN. Official Navy Photo)
 
Mac frowned. “Too true. But of course we were not in London for long. Admiral Carney became CINCNELM in December 1950, after I bounced around the staff for about six months. In June 1951, Carney assumed additional duty as Commander in Chief, Allied Forces, Southern Europe and CINCNELM Headquarters was moved from London to Naples to become CINCSOUTH. I had to find a new place for my family to live.”
 
“Italy is funny. When people move out, they even take the light fixtures out of the walls. I had to run around Naples to find replacements to mount  so Billie and I could see. Did I tell you about having lunch with Tito?”
 
“You have mentioned it, but how on earth did that happen?”
 

(USS Des Moines (CA-138). Official Navy photo.)

“Special opportunity. It was December, 1951. Lieutenant Art Newel and I were sent from Naples to the northern Adriatic Sea. It was approaching Christmas, and we embarked in the Heavy Cruiser USS Des Moines (CA-138), Flagship of the SIXTH Fleet. We were headed for a berth downtown in the splendid Adriatic port of Rijeka. We are riding a mountain of gray steel bristling with guns, and it is the first to visit Communist Yugoslavia since World War II.”
 
“The people of the city are still getting used to the name Rijecka. The Italians who had seized it at the Treaty of Rome in 1924- those that were still left- called it Fiume. When Tito's partisans arrived in 1945, 58,000 of the 66,000 Italian speakers fled the city, choosing exile to Communism.”
 
“Summary executions of hundreds of suspected 'Fascists' followed the occupation, and there was a well of bitterness filled that only the strong man in Belgrade could keep from overflowing.”
 
“The Croatians walked tall in the picturesque city, having thrown off decades of enforced Italianization.”
 
“Rijeka then had the hallmarks of a great port, desired by all the powers. By turns, it had been Roman, Croatian, Hungarian, Yugoslav, Italian, German and then Yugoslav once more. It was  Tito's deepest incision into the European continent. An international force including American doughboys had even occupied the port briefly in 1919. Now we were back, eighteen hundred SIXTH Fleet sailors ready to go on liberty in a city that, until the day before, had been behind the Iron Curtain.”
 
“There was plenty of potent slivovitz- plum brandy- waiting for our sailors ashore, and pretty girls and the other delights of the harbor that warm the hearts of all seafaring men.”
 
“We were not going on liberty. We waited impatiently for the brow to go across from the high gray hull to the quay. There was an airplane to meet, since the Major General who commanded Military Intelligence was coming by DC-3 to escort us to Belgrade.”
 
“The real meaning of this port call was a state luncheon with Marshall Josef Broz Tito, and brokering a deal to balance the naval might of the SIXTH Fleet against the massive presence of the Red Army to the north and east.”
 


“Vice Admiral Matthias Bennett Gardner, USN, was in command, and Art and I were hand selected to provide intelligence support to the mission. Admiral Carney, CINCNELM in Naples, had authorized us to go with Gardner as his representatives, though he was confident that the SIXTH fleet commander could negotiate adroitly. Gardner was uniquely qualified in that regard. He was not only a naval officer, but a naval aviator. The innate traits of each reinforced each other, and gave him the confidence to make big decisions without a lot of fuss.”
 
“In 1945, while at a conference at a military conference at the Cairene Hotel in Egypt, he had selected the border between Russian and American-occupied Korea by gesturing at the 38th parallel. That matter was under armed discussion at the same time that Des Moines arrived in the harbor.”
 
“Rijeka's airport is still awkward to get to, even today, being located on an island adjacent to the city. There are distinct advantages to bringing your own boats to visit, and I highly recommend it if you have a ship large enough to carry one. It provides a lot of flexibility.”
 
“The General's DC-3 swept down out of the gray skies and picked us up, quickly turning around for the flight to Belgrade.”
 
“There were three days of talks in the capital, and we took up residence at the home of the American Legation United States Naval Attaché, or ALUSNA for short.  He was a destroyerman by training. I will not mention his name, for reasons that will become plain enough, and he was an efficient and tightly-buttoned academy type. He was a prototypical Blackshoe, or ship-driver, just as Vice Admiral Gardener was an Airedale, or dauntless bird-man.”
 
“Oil and water, or water and air, are those types. In those days, only two types of warriors earned special golden badges that proclaimed their specialties: submariners and aviators. The bubbleheads drove diesel subs and wore their golden dolphins with grim pride. They smelled bad when they got back- if they got back- from their dangerous undersea patrols. The Aviators wore the Wings of Gold, and smelled a lot better after an arrested landing on a pitching deck, provided they had not soiled themselves in fright.”
 
“I started out as a Deck Officer, as you know, and our blouses were unadorned with golden warfare devices. We were what the Navy did for a living, nothing particularly onerous, unless you consider dealing with high-pressure steam propulsion and high explosives an inconvenience.”
 
“In Belgrade, once the sedans whisked us away from the airport, there was the official call on the U.S. Ambassador and the Chief of Mission, all of it leading up to the big lunch with the Marshal himself.”
 
“The situation in Belgrade was tense, and the Informbiro crisis still reverberated as a threat to the regime. Tito was under intense pressure from Stalin to toe the Moscow line, and he was not going to do it. He was confronted with the threat of invasion, or assassination, and he desperately needed a card to play against the Kremlin. The US Navy would provide him a jujitsu move, pitting the great continental land power against the undisputed ruler of the seas.”
 
“Belgrade was a depressing place in winter, dark and chill, filled with an air of sorrow tinged with manic tendencies. Art and I did not even want to go out shopping, which is one of the great skills of sailors assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet.”
 
“Like I said, we were billeted at the house of the ALUSNA. His long-suffering minion, the Assistant, was a Lieutenant named Mayo. He had to schlep the bags. Visiting delegations are the bane of overseas duty, and the more senior the members, the more stress. With VADM Gardener there was an emphasis on protocol, since he was the Fleet Commander, and Mayo’s boss the ALUSNA were both thoroughly old school.”
 
“The State Lunch was at the White Palace in the former royal compound in the exclusive Dedinje neighborhood. It was an imposing neo-Palladian pile, and is still so today. Designed by famed architect Aleksandar Djordjevic, it had been commissioned by the King and completed in 1936, though he never got to enjoy it..”
 
“The King of the Croats, Serbs and Slovenes was murdered in 1934 while on a visit to Marseilles. The Queen and the children lived there until the war came, and her taste was reflected in the English Georgian and 19th-century Russian antiques. Tito took the place as his official residence, and maintained the décor, which had been provided by the Jansen firm in Paris.”
 
“It was good stuff. Jackie Kennedy used Jansen when she redecorated the White House in the Camelot days.”
 
“There was trouble at the White Palace, though. As our sedans pulled up in the circular drive with the American diplomats and the naval officers in our Dress Blue uniforms, Tito's protocol officer nearly had a meltdown. VADM Gardner had a fat golden stripe and two smaller ones above it on his sleeves. The ALUSNA had four narrow gold stripes, indicating he was a Captain. I was wearing the two-and-a-half golden stripes of a Lieutenant Commander.”
 
“The burning question was this: was I too junior to dine at the same table with the Marshal of the Jugs?”
 
“The mission was in jeopardy, since the table had been set, and the slivovitz had been poured. The ALUSNA was at his diplomatic best, though, and saved the day. “When I was a mere Lieutenant,” he said primly, “I had dinner at the White House with President Roosevelt.””
 
“FDR had been elected President four times, and the protocol people knew that Tito had only been elected once, on a yes-or-no basis. The ALUSNA's declaration sealed the deal. I was permitted entrance to the vast oval table in the formal dining room. The delegation was carefully seated by seniority, alternating Jugs and Americans, and based on my junior status, I was astonished to find myself placed directly opposite the Marshal's empty chair, the best seat in the house.”
 
“Precisely in keeping with protocol, Tito swept in, severe in his unadorned gray tunic, accompanied by his senior staff and translator. He was in his prime in 1951, handsome and chiseled, and still with a martial carriage.”


(Marshall Josef Broz Tito, 1951.)
 
“This was the man who had faced down Uncle Joe Stalin, alive and in the flesh. It was pretty impressive. Introductions were made, and the toasting began. Slivovitz plum brandy to start, plum brandy with food and wine, and plum brandy toasts after lunch. Diplomacy is hard business.”
 
“I noticed that the Marshal seemed to speak perfectly good English, even if the formal conversation had to go though the herky-jerky of translation. The Marshal laughed at the punch-lines to VADM Gardner's jokes before the translator could get to them.”
 
“The Marshal had a key question, and all the ceremony on both sides of it was just the scaffolding to hold it up. “What can you do for me?” he asked, waiting for the words to bubble through the translator.”
 
“VADM Gardner answered promptly, and with confidence. “We will send you an aircraft carrier, and put it Dubrovnik the second you need it. We will take you out, and show you flight operations. We will guarantee the Adriatic.””
 
“The Marshal nodded. The matter was resolved, and the dining and jokes and toasting went on. Best Friends, forever. What do you call it on the internet? BFF?”
 
“Late in the Balkan afternoon, the gray sky was already darkening as the Marshal bade farewell to us and retired for a nap. The sedans pulled up and collected us for return to our billets at the ALUSNA's quarters on the hill.”
 
“Chief Yeoman Quinley was the OPSCO, the operations coordinator,  enjoying the shore duty, and with the luncheon with Tito a grand success, he ensured that a celebration was in order.”
 
“The ALUSNA waved at the messman for whiskey, and our group settled down to discuss the future balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean. We would be on an airplane back to Rejika in the morning, after all, and the heavy lifting was done. Only the reports remained to be written, and we juniors could handle that chore.”
 
“The whiskey on top of all the slivovitz might not have been the best of ideas. Somewhere along the course of the strategic discussion the matter of special compensation came up. The ALUSNA announced that he thought the concept of “Flight Pay,” a special bonus paid to aviators, was an affront to real Naval Officers, and should be immediately terminated.”
 
“VADM Gardner, as a flyer, was naturally interested by the assertion. He grew more and more engaged as the ALUSNA warmed to his topic, eventually becoming quite fixated. As the level of the whiskey in his glass went down, his voice went up.”
 
“He went on ranting for an astonishing length of time, until Admiral Gardner called for his car, saying he needed to call Washington.”
 
“When he got to the Embassy, he actually made two calls. He told the Chief of Naval Operations that he had secured a deal with the Jugs that was going to poke Uncle Joe Stalin right in the eye. It was a triumph of naval diplomacy.”
 
“Then he placed a call to BuPers, and told the Chief of Naval Personnel to get that son-of-a-bitch attaché the hell out of the country.”
 
“When we arrived at the airport the next morning, we were a little under the weather, what with all the plum brandy and the whiskey on top. But not nearly as much as the ALUSNA, who had been directed by Washington to be on the plane that had already departed into the cloudy Balkan sky.”
 
**********************
 
Notes:
 
When I got back from Willow I did some research about the figures in Mac’s tale.
 
Uncle Joe Stalin died on the fifth of March, 1953. He might have been poisoned, and he might not. His successor, Nikolai Khrushchev, once he was convinced that the monster was really and truly dead, denounced him. He reconciled with Tito in 1956, and the Marshal had a lively career as an independent and mostly benevolent despot thereafter.
 
He was a considered a Father figure by most Jugs, and they sung rousing songs about him, and every year on the Marshall's birthday, a child was selected to make a small speech, hand him flowers, or present the ceremonial stafeta at the end of a relay race.
 
Of course there were problems, but the Marshal maintained the semblance of unity by sending dissidents to work camps, or demoting them from positions of power. With his death came the start of the horror of dissolution of the national agglomeration called Yugoslvia, created in the caprice of the Treaty of Versailles.
 
Slobidon Milosovich lived in the White Palace for a while, but he is elsewhere now, and it has been given back to the Royal Family.
 
The ALUSNA in Belgrade was rehabilitated, and continued a distinguished career. He served another attaché tour, this one in Moscow. He died in 2007, then the oldest living graduate of the Naval Academy. He outlasted VADM Gardner by many decades, but never had a kind word for aviators or their flight pay.
 
USS Des Moines was laid up long ago. The Navy considered her too expensive to operate. After years of disintegration in the yard at Philadelphia, she was considered as a candidate to be a memorial ship in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The effort failed, since there was no public sentiment supporting the heavy cruiser's placement on the waterfront, and no apparent connection to the Badger State. She was cut up for scrap in Texas in 2008.
 
The US SIXTH Fleet continued to call on the Jugs, mostly at Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian Coast, for the next fifty years. My pal Chuck was there for several visits in the Nineties, before and after things fell apart. He saw the graceful medieval Mostar bridge that unified the Muslim and Orthodox sides of town, when it was up, when it was down, and when it was reconstructed.
 
He says the real thing was a lot better, but then, you would expect that. He was a SIXTH Fleet sailor, and thus a most discerning tourist.
 
Mac is still going strong, stronger than I am. He is 91 this Fall.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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