It had been a long and confusing week, with five separate proposals to the Government in various states of disarray at the office. I was sick of writing creative fiction about capabilities and desparate for a win that would keep Corporate off our backs for a while.
I was a thirsty camper when I glanced at the little clock in the upper right corner of my computer screen and saw that it was time to go to Willow and meet Mac for our weekly meeting. I needed to purge the formulaic language from my brain about how “We fully understand the Government’s critical needs… blah blah…ideal industry partner…blah blah blah.”
I got out of the elevator in the lobby of 901 N. Glebe and went out into the street, my steps getting lighter with each pace away from the office and the crisp Happy Hour white getting closer across Fairfax Drive at the Willow.
I almost bounded up the steps at the bar entrance, and through the vestibule I could see Old Jim with his earbuds plugged in, listening to music at his usual place at the apex of the long dark bar that we called the Amen Corner. Next to him was Mac, looking chipper in an aloha shirt under his sport jacket.
He is a man of style, the Admiral is. I slid onto the stool next to him and fiddled in my jacket pocket for my pen. “How are you, Sir?” I said. “It has been a heck of a week at the office.”
“Fairly calm over at the Madison,” he smiled. “No obituaries of interest this week. That is one of my major hobbies these days is checking that section in The Post first thing.” He said it with a certain satisfaction.
Mac smiled. “I would say I can’t complain, and I suppose I can’t, but I will anyway. The Docs have put me off alcohol for a while while they ascertain the effects of the new drugs for the prostate cancer. So it is Virgin Marys for a while.”
I winced. No guy likes to hear about that, and Mac had told me before that all of us get it, sooner or later. I didn’t need that reminder and realized I should have reminded myself to bring a notebook. I sighed and grabbed a stack of white cocktail napkins from the square black plastic container on the bar and looked for Big Jim at the corner. He was pulling his earbuds out to listen in and did his ritual of carefully winding the white cord around his MP3 player.
I picked up my pen, and thought I would start with a softball we had discussed before. “So Admiral, we heard about how you actually joined the Navy, but how did you become interested in joining the Navy? My Uncle Dick decided he wanted to fly with the Air Corps in 1940 when he got out of Michigan.”
“Well, as you know, I was an Iowa farm boy and attending the University of Iowa in Iowa City at the same time. It was our luck to be getting done with college before things went to hell, but we all knew something was coming, and we had the chance to make some choices.”
“In those days we had to make do with what we could. Iowa City was my home town, so expenses were low, and I played the bagpipes in the band at school. We did what we could to get by in those days.”
“I got a sense of what that time was like when you told me your Mom Hedwig had to sign to let you join up.” Mac smiled and nodded.
“There was a bit more to it,” he said. “I was studying journalism as my major and had the good fortune of being assigned as the editor of the student newspaper known as the Daily Iowan.”
It was my turn to nod. I didn’t want to get into one of those Hawkeye versus Wolverine things, the only area I ever had a disagreement with Mac about.
Mac continued after a sip of the brilliant red Virgin Mary, carefully lifting the two colossal olives on their skewer from the rim of the glass and placing them on a napkin next to the glass. “In the course of my regular campus editor duties I had to write up and publicize the arrival on campus of the various military recruiting teams that were then going around recruiting young college students to join the services. It wasn’t a great deal different than today.”
“Except nobody was protesting their arrival,” I said, taking a sip of the excellent Happy Hour White.
“The first team that came to the campus that I publicized was in Feb. 1940, and it was the Army Air Corps team looking for recruits that would go to Kelly Field for flight training. This intrigued me, as it did many of my friends, so in addition to publicizing the arrival of the recruiting team, I submitted myself for recruitment.”
“The air Corps had the highest casualties of any branch of the Service,” I said.
“Except the Submarine Force,” responded Mac. “I have a story about that I will tell you some time. I passed the physical that they gave me that evening and was directed by the team to submit certain papers — birth certificate, transcript of college credits and stuff to the then-7th Army Corps Headquarters at Fort Crooke, Nebraska.”
“Is that Offutt Air Force Base now?”
“the very same. It was an Indian Fighting fort originally. Pretty base, all red brick buildings and a nice parade ground. Anyway, hey said they would be in touch. I informed the university that I would be completing my Senior year, and be called to training duty the following summer.”
“The Navy had offered a training cruise on a battleship to compete with the fly-boy recruiters, but by the time it came to make the formal service selection I didn’t have the opportunity to take the cruise on the battleship because the Navy had suspended that part of the program. I decided that it was the Navy for me anyway. In June of 1941 I was ordered into Chicago to Northwestern University, and was appointed a midshipmen. I was there for the 90-day training period.”
“You were one of the 90-Day Wonders?” I said, rasing my eybrows.
“You bet. I was commissioned as an Ensign, USNR, on the 12th of September 1941. That is a long answer to a simple question.
“It Is all complex. When were you called to active duty?”
“During the time that I was at Northwestern, the President declared a national emergency. One of the provisions of that was that we no longer had the option upon being commissioned and returning to inactive duty. It was required under the national emergency decree that, upon being commissioned, we would remain on active duty and take up our assignments, which was all right with me. I didn’t have another job lined up in Journalism and it was what I intended to do anyway.”
“Where did they send you from Chicago?”
“My initial assignment was to the headquarters of the 13th Naval District in Seattle, Washington. And, if I may anticipate your obvious next question, that’s how I got introduced to Naval Intelligence.”
I put down my pen and picked up the stem of my glass. “This is where things start to get interesting,” I said.
“We were interested enough at the time, “ said Mac with a grin. “But it was about to get really interesting.”
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com