(Senior Chief Bobbie K. Hubbard, USN-Ret. Photo Socotra)
We are having a cold spell on the East Coast. No snow yet, but some places in the Midwest already have feet of the white stuff. Low clouds, intermittent rain. We are only permitted to smoke outdoors by management, so our attention to the wet chill breeze made us think about the horrors reported each day from Ukraine. And what it would be like to be deployed in sodden cold muck. The incidents reported lately reflect both sides lobbing allegedly precision weapons at airfields hundreds of kilometers across old national boundaries.
As a diversion from frigid misery, talk of warmth has been popular in the Socotra House Writer’s Section. And one of the favorite topics combining tropic pleasures was the latest news from the Philippines.
There has been some bubbling interest by the Old Salts about events in the South China Sea. It is a familiar faraway place to some. There used to be two major American bases located in the Republic of the Philippines, the remnants of American facilities held since the war with Spain in 1898.
One was the sprawling Clark Air Force Base near Angeles City in central Luzon. We used to go up there to manage tax affairs for our squadrons and ships. The other one was one we knew personally: the Subic Bay Naval Installation on Luzon’s coast northwest of Metro Manila. It was a huge complex on deep water under green rich hills. There was an associated major airfield on one of them called Cubi Point, named after the SeaBee unit that plowed it out.
Outside the Subic Gate was Olongapo City. The low-hanging lights beckoned to Liberty Hounds from the R.P. side of what was known as the Shit River.
Warmth and a cool Cubi Special cocktail were enough to bring memories back. Romi was the name of the lean Filipino of indeterminate age who served the drinks up at the BOQ bar at NAS Cubi. Due to healthful ingredients, they were served all day, with Romi stirring or shaking based on preference on flavor of preferred ingredient, an assortment of Mezcal, Ancho Reyes and lemon bitters. Or it could have been fruit juice from a can muddled in Dragonfruit. If the glass was cold enough it always seemed to work.
Anyway, things changed abruptly after the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991. The event is said to have been the most violent ever recorded. Ash buried everything. Meanwhile, the US had just won the Cold War, and howls for “Peace Dividends” in Congress resulted in the decision to pull US Navy and Air Force units out.
Which is what brought up Senior Chief Bobbie Hubbard’s final decision.
China’s rise and military activities in the SCS had raised issues about how- or ‘if’- they might be contained. Word of the Vice President’s visit to Manila a couple weeks ago actually mentioned the possibility of a US return to facilities in the RP.
That naturally brought on some animated conversation because some of us never left.
Hub was interred at the cemetery at the former Clark Air Base. His decision to be buried there reflects a decision legendary in the old WESTPAC community. Which we will get to in a moment. Hub was the consummate Old Navy Master Chief, salty as the sea and crusty as wash khakis after a night of liberty that ended up in the Barrio Baretta.
His passing fourteen years ago caused memories to surface among the Salts that remembered. Our Boss Vince called him “one helluva Intelligence Specialist. The very best leading chief for our division on Midway, and the best shipmate we could have had later at the PACIFIC Fleet Activities Support Team. We’ll remember him for all the special things that made him one of the finest E-8’s that ever served!”
Along with that were recollections of Hub once arguing with Vince to a degree that his assistant started to get nervous there would be a fight in the Intel Center, and we all remembered the story of the confrontation with a new Ensign without much experience for how things work that got a little physical.
We all seemed to get through it, though, and Hub obviously saw opportunities after the US pull out. Back he went.
The old legend was that any Chief who retired to live in the P.I. would last a year before flood of cold San Miguel’s and the company of lovely ladies would do them in. Hubs beat that tale by a few years, but his end was hastened by a cancer. Sense in the salty community was that had been married to three local ladies and wanted to stay where his heart was.
That is just one of a million stories in which the Philippines feature. Hub lies in the soil of Clark Cemetery, part of a consolidation project of US Government property after WWII. By 1950, markers and headstones from at least four other US cemeteries were moved to the new 12,000 plot cemetery located just inside the main gate of Clark Air Base. The dead from the war just concluded were moved to the American Cemetery in Manila.
It is possible there will be more memorable moments coming out there. But the thing we recall now is that Master Chief Bobbie K. Hubbard and thousands of his comrades will remain for as long as this adventure plays out.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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