Editor’s Note: This morning we lurch back to France, just before New Year’s Day of 1989. In order to avoid the possibility of provoking the Russian Bear while the USSR seems to be falling apart, USS Forrestal (CV-59) and her escorts are the sole Navy battlegroup in the Med. As part of trust-building, the National Command Authority has directed us to call at Marseille, France, for an extended port visit. This has given the wives club the opportunity to travel to the Continent to join in what appears to be one of the adventures of a lifetime. We have been on the ground long enough that the babble in the bars and cafes is starting to make sense. It is very cool, and quite a contrast to whatever the hell is going on in the here-and-now.

– Vic

The City of Light

26 DEC 1989:

I am on the ship when I wake, this day after Christmas of 1989. There is a palpable crackling to the air, normally musty and with that smell of ancient and disintegrating electrical insulation. The wives are flying in for a mid-cruise reunion.

I wander down to Disbursing and turn a semi-worthless check into a couple thousand francs. I pack my bag, to include formal wear, for the journey to Paris to meet the flight. I have some pain et brie left over from the picnic on the way back from Cannes to fortify me for the journey. I am just about quivering with excitement.

I have to rouse the Lutt-homme to pass down information on the Campaign Plan for use while I am gallivanting around Paris with my wife. As I am waiting down in Mission Planning, John K, Assistant Ship’s Intel, checks the electronic mail and discovers The OPNOTE From Hell… a sailor got his hands on the teletype and punched in a paragraph of the foulest obscenities I have seen in a Navy message. It is not record traffic, an official message that would have to have been signed out by an officer, but I’m glad I am not on Yorktown (CG-48) this fine French morning. Someone is clearly not having a Great Navy Day, and it is equally clear that someone will hang over this one and miss some great liberty.

Yorktown was the TICO-class cruiser is the one that got rammed last year by the Russians while on a Freedom of Navigation (FON) deployment in the Black Sea. There was still some juice in the Cold War as recently as that. The whole thing is a marvel. If you had told me the Berlin Wall would be in chunks for this holiday when it happened you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Then I see Moose in the passageway and he is frantic. We block traffic as half of the passageway is taped off for waxing by a bored-looking sailor. Moose’s wife Paula is reportedly inbound on her third plane from Jacksonville. The unexpected and unseasonable freeze back there in Florida has everything mightily screwed up. I keep my fingers crossed and hope this does not also screw up my wife’s itinerary, since she should be moving toward her airplane for New York and then Paris even as we exchanged concerns. I checked my watch and pile into the Staff car with Mark and Moose.

Mark is going to chauffeur me to the train station and Moose out to the Marseille airport to greet Paula. There are Air Wing wives flying in all over the continent. Mine is headed for the aeroport at Orly. We drive through Marseilles and get stuck in the massive jam that goes along with the annual Paris-Dakar motor race, this 12th running of the epic marathon having started in Paris on Christmas Day and with the route in Africa being the first to transit Libya.

My pulse is starting to go up. The crowds are horrendous. Suppose I don’t get on the train? There is a vast throng of Frogs inside the station and on the platforms. I start to get apprehensive about getting where I need to be…There is trouble at the ticket window…”There are no reservations possible today, Monsieur,” says the man behind the Plexiglas window.

“Yike!” I say in fluent French. “Well, sell me a ticket anyway, s’il vous plait.” Maybe I can ride in the bar car, I think. There aren’t any reserved seats there, right?

And so began another new adventure in La Belle France, this one on the TGV, the Tres Grand Vitesse. An important bit of information here, should you be meeting a spouse half a country away from your Aircraft carrier: TGV transportation is a two-part deal: passes are sold as a billet (ticket) with the all important second piece of paper, le reservation (yeah, I know). Filled with misgivings, I wander toward the tracks.

The train is a thing of wonder. Bullet shaped, it is exactly like the one from Disney’s Tomorrowland, sister of the Shinkansen bullets we used to ride in Japan. I sneak into the bar car and stake 
out a place with my New York Times. It is a long four-hour ride in the bar car as I anxiously wait for the moment when the conductor will bust me, and put me off the train at some godforsaken siding in le Midi.

All I have is my billet, and some hope. When the awful moment comes I use the American defense, and smile with apologetic murmur. “Pardon, Monsieur, je suis Officier naval Americain. Aussi tres bette.” He gives me a Gallic shrug and goes away and I am not fined (which I later discover I should have been) and nor am I thrown off the train. The scenery is spectacular as we roll at 200KM an hour across the green fields of central France.

The white wine is inoffensive. The sunset highlights the chateaus and villages. I alternate between gazing out the window and the New York Times. I actually finish the paper for a change. Darkness comes on the approach to Paris…I start to get apprehensive. How am I going to find my way out of the station and find the hotel? I am usually traveling with a wingman and alone, I am nearly out of airspeed and ideas.

I debark in the Gare de Lyon with the usual big city disorientation. I haven’t a clue as to where I am going and the darkness isn’t helping matters a bit. My map is suitable for urban combat and house-to-house fighting, but the detail is too small to get oriented. I bite the bullet and do what I normally do when I am hopelessly lost. I take a cab.

After some initial language problems (I have the name of the hotel spelled wrong) I am hurtling through the streets en route the Hotel de Mornay…it is madness as we careen through the Place de Bastille. My driver is an Arab with the clear idea that his martyrdom will translate him immediately to paradise.

I am not laboring under the same delusion and do not expect to be greeted by Virgins in any circumstance. My knuckles get white as we swerve around pedestrians…My terror begins to subside as we arrive alive in the Rue Liege to find a modest but fabulously expensive hotel.

Off the lobby, the elevator is slightly smaller than a shoebox and I don’t quite get stuck with my bag. The room is quiet and clean and has double beds. I turn on French TV and the gentle babble in the background is soothing as I sit with my charts and guidebooks begin with quiet determination to figure out how to get to Orly International in the morning. Having safely negotiated the first portion of the odyssey I feel a wave of agoraphobia coming over me, but beat it down.

I get directions to the Metro from the woman at the front desk and then sortie to the streets. I discover I am located just around the corner from the 42nd street of Paris; Moulin Rouge is three blocks away, just up from the Place Pigalle.

The red windmill is incongruous among the sex shops. Hawkers prowl the pavement in front of their establishments, pawing at me as I walk along. I see a gang of transvestites, presumably members of “Les Amies de Place Blanche” who hang out at le Place Blanche to ply their trade.

They are very tall ladies, heavily rouged, and surrounded by an admiring group of much shorter Japanese males.

The weirdness quotient is very high. I have a beer at a little standup bar and decide it would be easier to just get a bottle of Schweppes Dry to pour over some vodka in and go to bed. It is going to be a big day tomorrow, and there is the very real possibility that I might get lucky.

Vive La France!

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com ;