The latest swirl of real estate and literary works showed up this morning. There were a couple boxes containing copies of “Voyage,” the book I swore I would get published in honor of CDR Ed Gillfellin. It is partly his story of the voyage of the last Imperial Navy Battleship to sail the seas. The story was classified at the time, not approved for release until sometime in the Clinton Administration. Ed was dying then of melanoma he suspected was related to his exposure to the atomic tests at Bikini Atoll.

I was in the process of joining the Navy at the time, but swore I would get the remarkable story into print in a manner that enabled his tale to be told. What I did not know then was the depth of the tale wrapped in the major refurbishment of the American military structure that followed the victory of World War Two.

Since the Constitution was signed, there had been a War and Navy Department in the cabinet with equal standing as Secretaries managing the Army and Navy. The onset of the Atomic Age changed everything, and elements of the old Army Air Corps now had the capability to deliver weapons of horrific power on demand to any point on earth.

The reconstruction of the Defense establishment- not “War-” had been under discussion since President Truman determined that Hiroshima and Nagasaki would perish to bring Peace. The legislation establishing a new structure for national defense began with the Japanese surrender, and lingered until final passage of the National Security Act of 1947. Part of it was the establishment of the United States Air Force, and there was talk about the elimination of things like the Navy Department, which had it’s own ground force in the form of the United States Marine Corps.

Things would get more complicated with the North Korean invasion of the Republic of Korea to the south, a forgotten war now whose echoes linger today. CROSSROADS contains part of that story, and the sacrifice our leaders were prepared to accept in order to have a more balanced global power with America at its summit.

The publication of this book did not completely fulfill the promise I made all those years ago. But it did complete a literary trilogy I worked on with Admiral Mac Showers in “Cocktails With the Admiral” to tell his view of the great reorganization, Ed Gilfellin’s story of how the pieces were aligned while still in motion, and my own little story of being deployed in the Mediterranean for the end of the Cold War when Mr. Gorbachev said “enough was enough,” and the Cold War Ended.

As it turns out, there may be more to tell about how that struggle ended. This morning, the Wagner Private Army has abandoned the march to Moscow. Russia’s legacy of atomic weapons are being distributed on the flank of Ukraine, and the Wagner forces may have more missions ahead. We will see how that works with a China boldly insisting the world has a new order.

We will see how that works out- but you can get a glimpse of how it all began at Amazon in “Voyage to the CROSSROADS.”

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com