Author’s Note: The current Hospital Stint is lurching to the end, we hope. The ankle wound feels better, and release may be forthcoming this week. Proof of the ability to return to life on my own is progress on the book about the end of the Cold War. So, in that spirit, there we are this morning in Spain…

– Vic

25 January 1990.

A very nice day to pull into Spain. I was stuck on the ship all
day and it must have been important.

Got a late morning start after late night conference with Moose
and Toad and watching the Sound Of Music. After the bizarre last
line period we had a good case of Channel Fever.

Now unfortunately alarmless, I awoke late the next morning. In
fact the only thing that dragged me out of the rack was a TARPS
meeting at 1030 in TFCC that had my interest. We had a nice
smilex; the problem with this thing is the same as it is with
everything else. People have to talk to each other to make things
happen. You would think that a bunch of professionals all
trapped inside the same 1000FT Tuna Can wouldn’t have a problem
with that but alas not the case. It is a perpetual problem, one
we beat down and comes back with appalling regularity. We all
agree to be better and more communicative people and adjourn the
meeting in a record 37 minutes.

Wandered down to Planning and made a desultory start on the Mid-cruise
Intelligence report. Something was wrong with the picture
so I went up on the Roof looked at the azure sky and the harbor.
Gorgeous day. Made a stern effort and beat back the agoraphobia
which seems to set in after a couple weeks in the Can. Got ready
to run at 1400; listened to loud rock music in the room to build
up my latent adrenaline. Then down to the quarterdeck and down
the long skinny brow.

The brows all always different, since they belong to the port
service where we tie up. This one had stairs covered with planks
and distinct quiver when you walk down. I started my rusty muscle
machine up and slowly moved off past the FID and around the
corner and into Spain. Nice run up town. 50 minutes long. Pretty
City in a broken down funky kind of Spanish way. An active
rehabilitation program is underway on some belle epoch
warehouses, apparently built for a turn©of©the©century
Exposition. The concrete features appropriate nautical
embellishments and bas relief. Quite pretty and the contrast
between the untouched and completed buildings quite remarkable.

I jog uptown for 25 minutes before turning around; that will make
something shy of an hour and that will be plenty for the first
run in a while. The port area is an eclectic mix of funky grey
buildings, broken concrete and empty holes where trees should
have been. People walking everywhere and frantic traffic. There
are already FID sailors in all the sidewalk cafes and I wave as I
go by.

I return to the ship in good spirits and with a good sweat. I get
changed and it is starting to push 1800. The Liberty meter is
running and I want to get moving. I stride purposefully to CAG
Admin but to no avail. Moose and Toad are still in khakis,
looking blankly at the TV which is showing the eighteenth rerun
of No Way Out. Granted the beginning is pretty exhilarating I
can’t believe it. They are going to wait until 1900 to go out
with the Deputy; I can see that it isn’t going to happen, not on
schedule anyway, and I would like to see something else of the
town in a bit of daylight. Accordingly, Lutt-man and I walk away
from the Staff which is still in the grip of acute agoraphobia.
We bounce off the ship, meet a bunch of the Kitties, grab a map
from the USO trailer and we are rocking and rolling away from the
ship in a cab. A split hour later in anarchic traffic and we are
safely ensconced in a little cervecarilla off the Calle Hernan
Cortez, sipping a cerveca or four. This is the life!

Later, dinner with DCAG….almost. Instead, we wind up with a
crowd of VF©11 bubbas in an outdoor cafe. We try to call home but
lose the battle with a Spanish Telephone. We can’t crack the
code. Back to the ship in order to take an early flight physical.

26 January.

Flight physicals at 0730 should be illegal. I can barely see the
vision machine, much less what is on line nine.

Doc Flynn squeezes me in later to complete the physical, complete
with the most memorable of all experiences, the examination of
the prostate gland by digital manipulation of the lower colon
from the inside. Yuck. I say it’s OK, Doc, just so long as I
don’t feel both your hands on my shoulders….

I pass and get my upchit enabling me to go flying for the rest of
the cruise.

Back to CVIC to work on the Mid©cruise report which I have to
complete today in order to go to Rota tomorrow. I bustle around
and get my orders and wire details together. Two OPNOTES to John
Hedlund. Add Josh to the team; it’s me, Lutt©man and Josh going
as the CTF©60 Strategic Studies group.

Finish the report at 1600. Hand that in and go for a shorter jog
of about thirty minutes. The are hundreds of Spanish lined up
down on the pier trying to get tours of the Ship. Some dirty
urchins try to get me to do something but I don’t understand.

Dinner with DCAG for real this night and it is wonderful. We have
one of the best paella’s ever, elegant dining; CAG is expansive;
wine flows and we have a wonderful elegant meal. Lutt©man is
confined to bed trying to beat a cold so he can go to Rota
tomorrow. Chop and Doc want to see a little of the town later and
so DCAG gives Doc Flynn the car. We bomb around town till about
four in the morning and see all the usual suspects. A wonderful time is had by all.

We observe a disco where I discover to my surprise that no one
dances with anyone anymore. In fact, everyone is simply dancing
with themselves. I surrender and just start doing the frug next
to our table. The last song of the night is from Lou Reed. A
wonderful evening. I will have to sleep on the airplane tomorrow.

26 January.

Which is the airplane from Hell.

An endless C©130 ride on jump seats. First stop on the flight to
Rota is Barcelona; which is in the wrong direction by one hour.
We stand around on the ramp of a Spanish airbase with no
airplanes for an hour and a half, watching the Spanish troops
watching us. The lavatory facilities are novel; the urinal in the
back of the airplane isn’t connected to anything except a tube
that runs to the bottom of the airplane and out the bottom. A
larger and larger puddle is forming there and I am hoping no one
mistakes it for hydraulic fluid….which mechanics often
determine by smell or taste, I understand.

A hour and a half later we find out that the MEDEVAC which we
stopped to pick up has been trucked to Valencia. We have wasted
our time and it looks like we are not going to get to Rota on
time and I am supposed to brief at 1600…

We saddle up the airplane and the bring the starter cart on line.
The crew chief indicates we have to deliver two guys to Hyere,
France. We have now traveled about three hundred miles in the
wrong direction, we are starving, deaf and stiff from the sling
seats on the slow C©130. The craft is appropriately named the Sky
Pig. We enjoy French bread, jambon avec frommage sandwiches
(Josh is the only one who brought francs on a flight within
Spain!) and I see Andrew (Don’t call me Andy) McMullan after we
get thrown out of the Operations Building, which a sergeant
informs us is for Frenchmen only. Mac is flying for VR-22, and
went through Denver and the Midway experience with me as an AI
before getting his wings. Funny world.

Then three hours of agony into Rota before we can start to
process our orders, make calls, go to the BOQ, check-in and
wonder what the hell we are going to do.

John Hedlund shows up at the Q and whisks us away to Puerto to
meet the gang. John looks great.

We meet the gang and tapa hop like crazy through Puerto. Tube
tunas, fresh lemon and bread. Delicious. Sherry. Dru and Judy
very nice and relaxed. John’s new wife Natalie is wonderful; very
cute and smart as a whip. She loses her engagement ring at one of
restaurants; miraculously it is found on the floor. A
potential major bummer is averted.

We dance some Spanish folk dance at a local club. Lutt-man says
he never saw a Sevillana done with a bunny hop before.

We finish speaking German at The German Bar at 0200 and go to
work. The town is still jumping. When do these people sleep?

27 January 1990.

Up at 0800 to arrive at FOSIF (Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility) at 0900.

The only things that saves the day is the blessed wonderful free
flowing steaming hot shower. We take a base cab to the Fosif and
the watch is ready for us. A large screen display over the watch
floor says:

“WELCOME Vic Socotra
WARRIOR
AUTHOR
SYCOPHANT”

Around the wall one of those moving displays is flashing: “BIG
GUYS UPDATE: WELCOME VIC, LUTT-MAN AND CTF-60 SPECIAL STUDIES
GROUP.” It is great to see the vast taxpayers dollars spent on
the technical miracle of Rota put to good use.

We give brief; well received. Meetings till the afternoon. Fosif
bodies clearly eager to go about their weekends, so we go to
exchange and change clothes and go out to the Playa de la Luz to
have a beer and a sandwich and watch the angry grey ocean
pounding the seawall. Grey day as grim as steel. The wind cuts.
We elect to take a quick nap before John Hedlund picks us up.
First to the FOSIF to use the phone to call home, everything
else is too hard, and this very nearly is too as they claim my
credit card number is no good.

Lutt©man can’t get through at all and Josh gets bummed and
doesn’t even try. The Boys and Jane sound wonderful (Nicky’s
voice has changed a little? The tonsillectomy?) Vi is doing fine
and I just want to go home.

A beer and a snack at the casa Hedlund begins to change the
somewhat pensive mood, then off to a fine dinner at the Bar
Jamon in Puerto. Natalie wears leather pants and looks great. We
bar hop later and get back to the BOQ at a reasonable hour
(Puerto is still raging). Showtime for the flight is 0630 and we
do not want to screw this one up.

28 January 1990.

It is still way too early but the shower is great; boundless torrents
of hot water. We get down to the terminal and are
briefly disconcerted by the troop who isn’t sure he can get us on
the airplane. We make it, though, and after breakfast John
returns our TS brief material from its vault at the FOSIF.

Against all odds, this flight is a miracle. It takes only an hour
and seventeen minutes, versus the twelve it took to get here. We
are in a Navy mini©van, listening to the Doors on the cassette
player by 1015 and on the ship before 1100. Luttman takes his
Lladro china to his room (boy do I hate that stuff!). I advise
him he should have bargained for pre©broken ones and saved
himself a lot of money. I swing by CAG Admin to see if there is
any mail.

Then to Planning, where I see the Captain’s departing port
brief, chat with the Deputy and here about the big demonstration
scheduled for later in the day. Then the planners start showing
up for the briefs to be given to the SHAPE guys and we work
straight through lunch.

The 1MC crackles to life and I hear that the brows have been
secured. I assume this means something is going on down on the
pier and I race up to the flight deck to check it out. I look out
at the slate grey skies and I start to walk out but not so fast.
There has been an episode of rock throwing at the fantail and
MAA’s are getting everyone off the weather decks and out of
sight. I’d hate to miss a good demonstration, so I take a chance
and head up to the Flag Bridge. There is no one around except for
a Master Chief and he doesn’t throw me out so I have a grand view
of about 160 people shouting and waving fists and supporting five
or six large banners. Six or seven Spanish National Police
confront them from behind the thin rope barrier. The crowd seems
much bigger than it is because there are literally a couple
thousand people down on the pier out for their sunday stroll.

Things get interesting after about then minutes when a knot of
the protestors break down the rope and begin to march behind one
of the banners toward the afterbrow. The cops rush to stop them
and then more people surge across the line and then fists fly and
truncheons begin to flail and there is a pretty good brawl going
on. First chairs and then stanchions and stones are hurled and
the innocent people are fleeing and banners are being ripped
down.

After a few protestors are clubbed down they run away but reform
and the stuff is really flying and they are advancing and the
cops are going at the ringleaders and I have a ringside seat for
it. Maybe the high point came when a red©headed girl who had lead
the initial advance tried to punch out one of the cops and was
clubbed down as were the two men who came to her assistance. The
girl was dragged by her red hair to a police car. Very colorful.
‹f‹åSomeone set fire to a bundle of cardboard hat boxes (the ship
must have sold about a zillion FID ballcaps to the crowd) and I
watched the media types hunker down behind the little bonfire to
try to shoot the image of the Carrier silhouetted by the flames.
A kid picked up one of the banners© I think it was one that
mentioned Panama (the Spanish had such a wonderful track record
in Latin America)© and threw it on the little fire. With the
exception of a couple more rocks and cops chasing isolated
rascals that was it. First riot I had seen since about 1970.
Interesting. Then the sunday promenade resumed and the strollers
and Moms were back as though nothing had happened.

Once the cops have arrived in force there doesn’t appear to be
much chance of further action so its back to work for a few
hours.

My glands are still charged, though. I like this place. Liberty
expires at midnight; DCAG has offered the use of his car if any
of the staff wants to go to dinner. Doc Flynn has to make a phone
call home and a small group of hardy souls determine to have a
last dinner and a glass of vino tinto ashore. I make a concerted
effort to clean up the madness that is my room and skip into
jeans and a sport jacket. We rendezvous in Admin after a slight
delay caused by two SPECAT messages only I can pick up from MAIN
COMM. Then off the ship and into the darkness.

Which is filled by thousands of Spanish, apparently attracted by
the excitement and publicity of the afternoon. They are a
friendly crowd but it is so vast that it is scary. We can’t get
the cars out without inching through the close packed mass of
humanity. What could be so interesting about a simple 1000FT
Carrier?

The traffic jam takes an hour to negotiate. Dinner fades into a
series of wonderful tapas (shrimp, olives, calimari, fried
potatoes and garlic mayonnaise) and icy cold Aguilla cervesa. Doc
misses most of it in a near successful attempt to contact the
United States. After three hours and three thousand pesetas he
finally gets through…..to her answering machine.

We call it quits at 2230 so we can make curfew and arrive back at
the boat an hour before liberty secures to find that Scooter and
Master Chief Fillosi have succeeded in getting the Super Bowl on
Ship’s TV. The perfect end to the perfect day, which culminates
in the Niners beating the Broncos 55©10. Tomorrow we sortie at
0800…….

29 January.

Into one of the Monday©est of Mondays. I get up with Chop about
0630 and see CAG at Breakfast. He is less than sanguine about the
day because with our customary elan we will be launching our
first event into the Valencia Traffic Control Area, only ten
miles away from the Palma TCA with only a narrow corridor where
we can avoid the dreaded Flight Violations.

It is a gross morning. No one remembers how to talk with one
another; conflicting agendas collide in mysterious tasking beyond
mortal ken; airplanes are broken and sorties missed through
malevolent intervention; we fail to find an export submarine of
interest; my plan to relieve my watchstanders in SUPPLOT has
been confounded by devious bureaucrats; a high level delegation
of NATO functionaries requires tender care and feeding; the
French send a Super Etendarde which flies by the ship without
being intercepted. It is a thoroughly tiresome and disagreeable
day.

On the positive side, I am pleased to discover I have not lost a
single TOP SECRET message; my inventory is complete and returned
to the Staff for their turnover. I suppose even a Monday under
the Valencia TCA has got its positive side.

Tomorrow we run three separate exercises against three separate
navies, we fly against the westward transiting Kirov Task Force
and the SHAPE representatives must be briefed at 0900, the same
time the French delegation arrives. DCAG has to cancel a morning
flight in order to accommodate the schedule change and he is
racing with the rest of the deployment to make his 1000th trap
before his flying days are over. This will be his last tour in
the cockpit, and he wants to make the list of immortals before he
turns into a desk jockey. I have to find his log book so I track
his progress.

It could be fun. You never can tell.

30 January 1990.

Hit the rack last night by 0300. Up this morning in time for the
0800 brief; then preparation for the SHAPE Distinguished
Visitors. Had the space waxed and polished and it looked pretty
good. Naturally, there were about fifty things going on at the
same time and I am dragging already.

This could be a good day because I expect the Admiral will be in
a good mood. He got the message that he received his second star.
He is now a Rear Admiral Upper Half and entitled to two stars.

We are operating est of Palma, generally a couple hundred miles
south of Marseilles. The skies are clear; or appear to be so on
the electronic window. There is a Royal Navy Task Group, the
French Battle group built around the Carrier Foch and a group of
Italians. We are playing games with all of them, and none of it
is connected. So we are to run three different strikes and each
has different specifications and pre-exercise messages. The
Dreadnought Kirov is transiting westerly just to the south
of us and we have to lay on a TARPS mission to document her
again. Of particular interest is the TASS news report that she
has suffered a steam casualty and is being recalled to the
Northern Fleet. It reminded me of the old joke about how you
could tell a Northern Fleet Sailor….because they glow in the
dark. We see ’em come and we see ’em go.

Rocco Montesano, Shakey Jake and Bobo Kimmel briefed strikes and
AAW stuff to the DV’s and it seems to go well. Except for Shakey,
who is a general embarrassment, lurching in dense Navy slang
through his plan and patronizing the Danish Major General. We get
them out of the space with seconds to go before the second event
brief. Of some considerable interest is the fact that the
prospective skipper of the FID is in the party and he wastes no
time in telling CDR Kirkpatrick that he isn’t sure why that blue
paint can is over in the corner and why doesn’t he write AirLant
a message and tell them that they should upgrade the Strike
Planning Space during the next SRA period?

If CAPT Thomassy knew I am fairly confident he would have a nice
chat with the good P©CO. I wind up doing some of the tasking
which flies over at CAG, and then answer a screwed up Program
Change message from JCS. I am running on empty by that time.

After lunch I am convinced my sleep quota is used up and I
exercise the option to stand the General Quarters drill
horizontal in my rack. Refreshed, I manage to get through the
rest of the flight schedule and the three or four crash messages
I have to draft responses to. It is only a six event day, which
would normally mean an early end to the cacophony. Not to be. We
manage to flail around with some of the day’s loose ends, like
why the Italians didn’t want Sweetpea to fly the Sardinia Low
Level until about 2200 and I really hoped the day was pretty much
over when DCAG rolled in and began planning the next joint war-at-sea
strike for tomorrow morning at 0800 sharp which we hadn’t
quite got to yet.

No sense rushing into these things, so we did that for a while
and finally had the operators out of the space by midnight. I
don’t have to get up until 0530, but I imagine that means I
should leave, too.

I got back to the compartment to discover that the engineers were
just starting to have fun. The boat was shuddering and quivering
in a manner which suggested we were on a high speed run. I dialed
up the SINS channel on the TV and saw that we were inching slowly
through 28KTS, headed for 30, and that accounted for all the
commotion. I switched back to a movie and chewed on some
wardroom popcorn when the shuddering got worse. I decided the FID
wasn’t going to sink without a lot more of the same and turned
out the lights. I discovered to my interest that what the rascals
down below had done was back the ship down from 30KTS to full
astern and then driven the ship backwards at 15KTS for 15
minutes. Wild stuff. You can never tell what sort of madness
those Engineers will get up to. Like securing the flush water to
our head to do preventative maintenance. Little jokers.

31 January 1990

Started out wild and wooly today. I actually got outside for a
while…but I’m getting ahead of my story.

The pandemonium level was extraordinary right through the early
hours this morning. Finally had wrestled the genie back into the
bottle; we had the DCAG’s graphics built, ready to pull the big
combined CVW-6/Foch airstrike into Corsica together. Notable
through this was the fact that we couldn’t talk to Foch, which
was putting quite a crimp into little details like the timing of
the rendezvous. The plan as last I understood it was to brief
everybody at 0600, hold until we figured things out and then go
for it. I had just closed my eyes in the blackness of my
compartment when the phone went off and startled the shit out of
me. I had placed the unit on the chair next to my bed because I
knew I was going to have problems launching after four hours of
sleep.

Instead, it was Murph on duty with the glad tidings that Rookie
Word, the CDC officer, had somehow cracked the code. The French
would rendezvous with us at about 1000, but would provide
complete details via an airdropped package at 0815 on the flight
deck. I grunted my deep thanks because I could now sleep until
0730. I let the blackness settle over me….

…and rejoined the circus at 0729. When I walked into Planning
most of the aircrews had drifted in and I heard the Boss warning
the Flight Deck guys to get their heads down and get in deep
shelter because a Super E was going to make a run on the flight
deck with the package. I looked at Murph and we raced out of
Planning and up the ladder to Vultures Row. We popped out to see
Scopes from the Staff with his video camera and brilliant
dazzling wonderful sunlight. I peered around owlishly until a rap
on the glass of the flag bridge caught my attention. It was RADM
Allen, and he pointed out to the abeam position. As my eyes
focused I saw a slim dark shape starting to make the turn into
the 270. He disappeared behind the bulk of the Island but I
started to count off the seconds as he rolled into the groove and
made his approach.

He appeared suddenly, 50ft over the deck at about 200KTS and
popped his speed brakes. A long cylindrical object dropped out,
bounced once around the three wire and rolled gracefully to a
stop on the four wire. Perfect pass. The Super E rocked his wings
and disappeared swiftly over the angle and arched off to the north.
As DCAG said later, “That guy would be welcome here; he’d
get aboard the first pass.” Sweetpea summed it up in his message
to the French later in the day when he said it was the neatest
piece of flying he had seen in 30 years.

When we got the package down to mission planning and took it
apart, we found maps, a cunningly illustrated strike plan, a
Michelin road map of Corsica and target photos. DCAG briefed
each object as it came out of the package and after a hurried run
through the aircrew fled to man up the airplanes.

It wasn’t flawlessly executed, but everyone who went had great
fun and nobody got into trouble. At the same time we had a mini-strike
going against the Italian carrier Garibaldi, which seemed
to go well and all the other usual sort of things.

Only problem of the day was the refusal of Capo Frasca Target
Control to let our guys get on the target at the scheduled times.
The Flag Staff drafted a strong message; after some examination
of the problem it appears that the enemy may not be our Italian
Nato Allies, but our compatriots in the USAF who jointly manage
the target. Hard to figure.

Journalists come aboard tomorrow to document another routine day
on the Boat. We have to get started on updating the orders of
battle for East Med where it all gets kind of real again.

70 days to go.

01 FEB.

It was a pleasant day to spend inside next to the fire. If you
had one, that is. It was grey and misty and generally vile. The
clouds hung low and the boat was moving pretty well right through
the day.

Only one bilateral exercise on the menu today; this one mostly
featured the fighters going out and hassling with our Tunisian
buddies from the 15th Squadron. The rest was straightforward
operations as usual as we transit down south of Sardinia. Despite
the potential for miscommunication, everything worked out well.
Hard to believe we pulled out the maze of permission from the
Ministry of Defense. VS©28 may have gained contact on the sole
Soviet Nuclear sub in the Med this morning. Even our friends at
the Sardinian Target cooperated and let our guys on the complex.

Things were going so well I put off doing the eight things I
should have been doing and did some house cleaning. I destroyed
the residue from the Campaign brief; all the working papers and
the four intermediate briefs it took to get to the final smooth
version. In fact, I was a burning fool with the TS stuff and am
now within striking range of getting rid of it all, and clearing‹f‹the books. After all the stomach churning anxiety of seeing
hundreds of documents with my name affixed to them strewn around
the center I think (barring an act of belligerence) that this is
going to work out OK.

The stuff I should have been doing includes the concurrent
fitness reports on the troops, letters of commendation for the
enlisted guys, a welcome aboard letter to my relief (whose orders
I found on the board this morning) and a formal command letter to
the same guy. After the message from DIA I know that they are
processing my nomination; from bitter personal experience I know
that can take quite a while. Still, it removes the potential
threat from a change of Detailers and having to deal with yet
another face. Of course, if it turns out to be Larry Clark
instead of Jack Lautenschlager maybe Naval War College could be
back on the menu….oh well. Better to live with the threat as it
is constituted, I suppose. CAG asked me last night if I was happy
with those orders. I guess so, but the thought of leaving the
Wing just when we get back to 0730©1600 hours with weekends off
and going back to the center of the octopus is a bit daunting.

The weather continued to deteriorate through the afternoon,
becoming truly bleak with about 40kts of wind over the deck.
Shakey Jake came aboard hard, saying later his nose gear
collapsed and gave us a spectacular arrested landing with just
the tiniest of starboard wing scrapes. Thereafter the powers that
be rethought options about finishing the flight schedule that
night. They wound up cancelling the last two goes; seemed like
the reasonable thing to do with OPTAR so tight these days. Save
the gas for sometime when we can do something valuable with it
rather than launch guys to go orbit around marshall and bolter
all night. Word is also out that the JO bag©ex and bombing derby
are cnxed for tomorrow; so as a line period this started like
gangbusters but fizzled quickly.

As it is my firm belief that idle hands are the devil’s workshop,
I set the troops to putting together the charts for the Passex
and building the kneeboard card package. I’m supposed to brief
the Fucking Steeljaw ready room tomorrow on Intelligence
Architecture (whatever that is) so I suppose I ought to get a
good start on it.

69 days to go.

Copyright 1990 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com