01 May 2003

Riding the Tiger

It is early and the coffee is beginning to work. I'm on the cusp here. The news washes over me as I think of what is to come on this freshly laundered day. The thunderstorms rolled through just as I was losing consciousness last night. The ozone is right this morning, and though humid it is still cool. The world is restive. There has been an "incursion" in the West Bank, which is shorthand for the tit-for-tat that passes as dialogue between the residents of the former British protectorate of the Transjordan. I don't even have to fill in the details anymore. You know who and why without additional comment.

The wrinkle that titillates this morning is that the bomber was a British national. Mother Nature is restive, too. A major earthquake is reported in an eastern province of NATO ally Turkey and Don Rumsfeld visited Baghdad to see the troops. He was the first senior Administration official to visited the newly-liberated land. He survived, though there is some shooting still going on, grenades detonating, and despite all that the President will greet the returning troops on the USS Abraham Lincoln as it steams back into San Diego. They say he will announce the end of major ground combat in Iraq, and the pull-out of the troops from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

Osama is getting one of the things he wanted, the expulsion of the infidels from the land of the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina. I don't think he wanted it quite this way, though. Reportedly we are going to re-locate our forces in Qatar, so America is departing the sands of Saudi and heading for the Emirates where the climate is more hospitable. We have never had as stalwart a friend as the Emir, and I like his spunk. His family also sponsored the Arabic news channel al Jazeera.

I know the crew of the Lincoln must be excited. The great ship is plowing the vast blue, headed east again under nuclear power. Radars are scanning the heavens, but there is no prospect of a threat in the wide sky, nothing evil out there to harm the ship and crew. The aircrews are sleeping a lot, the tension coming off and no flying to impede the easterly progress. They are close to home, and the prospect of a Presidential visit right at the end of the cruise must have the skivvies of the XO is a knot.

A Presidential visit is a huge deal. The special communications equipment to support his global command and control mission must be onloaded in advance. When the President's father visited my ship, the Forrestal, we were ending another great struggle. There was no prospect of a big parade any time soon, though, and we had to keep things quiet out of respect for the feelings of our still powerful Russian adversary. We were off Malta and I had a bad cold. I didn't go down to the hangar bay to see him, nor to the mess decks to see if I could catch a peek as he dined with the sailors. He was with us to announce the end of the Cold War and meet with President Gorbachev. They couldn't quite crow with triumph, though I think there was a certain twinkle in the Presidential eye.

For us it was both more and less than another day at sea. There was an interesting wrinkle about the Presidential visit, though, and it was the announcement of the departure of the Chief Executive.

Naval tradition dictates that an announcement be made on such departures, not by name but by title. When the skipper of another ship would visit they would call out the ship's name when he alit and when he flew off, each event marked by two sonorous bongs of the brass bell. So all through the timeless days the crew knew who was coming and going, not by name but by title. Once you get used to the strange depersonalization of it, the custom is quite useful. I will grant you that assuming the title of your ship or office is disconcerting. But it is part of the absolutism of Command at Sea.

Our commander, the Admiral of the Carrier Group, would thus be bonged on and off as "COMCARGRU SIX", either "Arriving" or "Departing," as though he was all of us. Captains of other ships in the Group would be announced in the singular. For example, the skipper of a nuclear cruiser whose class of ship was named for the states would be called out as: "California, Arriving!"

It was just as though the entire city of Los Angeles had dropped in out of the sky for a little chit-chat and a cup of joe. We payed it just as much notice, perhaps checking the Air Plan to see how long they were planning on staying and whether we had to put on fresh sheets. Non-naval visitors were a little more tricky, since the bridge had to figure out the precedence and rank of the visitor. If the Secretary of Defense arrived for a visit, and one did, he was announced as "Defense, Arriving!" over the 1MC loudspeaker.

When the President finishes his remarks this afternoon and the Secret Service is done guarding the hatches and ladders on the way back up to the flight deck the helmeted flight deck sideboys will flank the red carpet to the Presidential helicopter. When the Chief Executive is seated and suitably strapped, the rotors will increase in speed and gain lift. The instant the wheels leave the deck there will be two crisp strikes on the brass bell that echoes throughout the spaces and voids of the enormous ship. "America, Departing!"

Everyone on the ship will breath a sigh of relief. Just like the Saudis will. The Emir of Qatar gets to ride the tiger now.