The Wine Dark Sea

I walk aft on the 03 level to frame 133 and discover there is pandemonium in Mission Planning. We are transforming a long steel box, approximately thirty feet by twenty feet, into the dim homey cave in which we will spend the next half year. Since this will be my own personal Spac, my personal responsibility to manage for half year, let me describe it.
It will make all the rest of this much easier.

 

It is a steel rectangle, a box maybe thirty feet long. Along each wall are a series of fold down planning tables, nearly all covered with some sort of computer gear. Beneath these are file cabinets which prevent the tables from folding, but provide the necessary storage for the reams of classified documents we must drag around with us.

 

Across the front wall are two enormous sliding charts of the Mediterranean. Our television camera faces the podium which stands before the charts and television arclights dangle from the ceiling, perfectly positioned to smash you in the head. Two long trestle tables are erected lengthwise in the middle, with chairs scattered around them in disarray. My little desk sits all the way in the rear, under the Plexiglas window of the television control room. Cruise boxes are everywhere.

 

Two reps from the Defense intelligence Agency are in the corner, looking disoriented and a little bored. They are living the maxim that every time you step on a Carrier you immediately want to eat dinner, take a nap and find out what the evening movie is.

 

The Troops are packing things away. Nooks and crannies are filling up with debris and the tools of the planning trade. Overhead transparencies. Compasses. Sheets of acetate. Pens and paper and all the magic markers in the universe. Maps are unfolded and messages and computer manuals are  strewn everywhere, on the tables and chairs and in the odd spot of deck. Some sporadic cutting and pasting is going on. The place needs focus and direction.
"Bulgaria!" I shout at the top of my lungs. Some of the Junior Officers look up in amazement and one of our Petty Officers stops cutting the lock off a file cabinet. "Get to work on the Bulgaria chart!

"And for Christ sake, turn up the radio! We need tunes! We've got work to do!"