It is funny- The Creative Section at Socotra House got our start without any intention of so doing. We were on Midway in the IO when the embassy got taken in Tehran. We were afloat in the North Arabian Sea, out of sight of land for more than three months. Similar to what they are doing today, so give a thought to the men and women who are out there doing tough jobs.

Entertainment was different in our time, and hence the jumble about changing times? Then? It was Movies hoisted over from Navy supply ships alongside. Some Beta-tapes of assorted video materials were jumbled in the ship’s library and short-wave radio captured news from India and the World Services in English we could mostly understand.

That is what started the Dick Ranger detective series, and later the course of our lives in the creative business. It was not intended to be anything but a minor diversion, but it got to be fun and made some of us feel a little unique, treating our steel passageways and linoleum-covered decks as darkened corridors of intrigue combatting the malevolent operations of the Fat Man and his crew of thugs.

Who naturally stood in for the ones holding weapons on our diplomats and their staff for more than a year. Like the hostages being executed in Gaza today.

So, the immediate reaction to the news about the former Skipper of the USS John McCain (DDG-56) and the former Senior Chief Radio-person on Manchester (LCS-16), we understood a little about the motivation for why they did the misdeeds that cost them their jobs.

Our misdeeds were done with a IBM Selectric typewriter and sheets of paper carried down to Main Communications and the Print Shop. The ones in the news showed a bit about the times in which our people now serve. The message streams yesterday amused our ground-pounders and horrified some of the Salts. The stories were fairly simple. One brayed about McCain’s now-former commanding officer in a heroic pose, firing what appears to be a Colt M16A4 Assault Rifle. The image is apparently at sea, or at least next to it. Brass is flying dramatically. Heroic.

Problem is that the scope is mounted backward, with the forward lens facing the skipper’s eye, which would render the weapon quite useless if he was actually intending on hitting anything.
The picture had been around for a few months and caused a bit of a stir on social media, and CDR Yaste was relieved “for cause” last Friday in the wake of the spreading misperception. Our circle was not sure how it was possible to mount a scope backwards, since the ones we handled only went one way. But that was not the point of that story, nor the state of the ship he was commanding.

Only a few of us were actual Surface Line types, responsible for safe operations of the gray boats. To have what appears to be what we called “running rust” on display on both of the ships in the stories was a little more concerning than how the rifles were displayed. But that is part of today’s entertainment.

When we deployed on ship’s like Midway, she was already nearly 35 years old with dozens of deployments in at least two wars. She looked better than McCain does in the Navy pictures.

That was had been the vignette that started the morning, followed by the enterprising Senor Chief who did not use a typewriter or a keyboard for her entertainment innovation. She brought Hollywood and the surf-able internet aboard her Littoral Combat Ship. There was a degree of admiration in her initiative, and how she operated the network without her Skipper being aware that the Chinese might have come onboard with the entertainment. We were just relieved we had not invited the Ayatollah and his guys onboard our ship.

Times change, and there is not point moping about it. We had an old Navy Doc stop by who was in town on detached family business. He had operated way out there way back when before he sensibly got out and became a distinguished senior reconstructive surgeon. He laughed at the discussion in progress and said: “When you are dealing with anyone in any trade, check their age. If they are under forty, you might want to check their resume a little closely before the scalpel comes out.”

Johnnie is one of our ground pounders, and his opinions are usually succinct in regard to the people he considers as going to combat with white tablecloths in the wardroom. He shifted on his cast-iron white chair and asked the question many of us have had at one time or another.

“Is it something in the water on that ship? Or is it all of the water we have all been drinking?”

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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