Remember The Alamo

               


     One of the first ships our group served aboard in Vietnam was the LPD USS Alamo. The Alamo was a newer amphibious assault ship.  Not only did it carry Marines their equipment and our boats it also had a flight deck for helicopters. Being a newer ship they seemed to have the best of everything.
     One of the great things about the Navy was the chow.  They had great cooks and I guess the only thing I could fault them on was the powdered milk and eggs, powered food isn't natural.  It was years before I would eat eggs again and milk never tasted the same so I eventually gave it up.
     On the Alamo we could count on two sure things the first of which was that the chef's surprise was fried chicken. A lot of fried chicken, once in a while we were served something that looked like fried chicken that one of the guys said was rabbit but it tasted like chicken. When I got home I told my wife not to cook me chicken again. Only in the last few years have I begun to eat chicken breast -  but not fried.
     As for the other certainty, movies were a big deal aboard ship but there were times when new movies couldn't be had so watching a rerun was inevitable. The Alamo had a remedy for reruns.
     The story was that when the Alamo entered service the actor John Wayne presented the ship with it's very own copy of his majestic movie, " The Alamo ". I had never seen this particular movie until then but by the time I got off the ship a few months later I was damned tired of it. I swear the Alamo was shown every week.
     The Alamo showed movies on the mess deck which was a large space for feeding all of the troops and ships company. They dropped a screen down in the middle of the mess deck and turned out the lights. When you got tired of watching the movie as made you could go around and watch it from the other side of the screen. The sound was the same but the characters were now reversed. It was different.
     One Saturday the ship pulled into Da Nang harbor and dropped anchor. On this particular Saturday the captain decided the crew needed a day off so he loaded up the crew, beer and a picnic lunch  for a day of softball on shore. Three of our boats were used to ferry everyone to shore, my boat was left behind in case a boat was needed for whatever reason.  I was left as boat coxswain, I had driven the boat several times but always with the senior petty officer close by.  It was a lazy day and it was doubtful we would be needed.
      We were tied up along side the ship soaking up the sun when this four stripper ( captain ) came down the Jacobs ladder. The captain walked up to me and said he needed a ride to his ship about a mile away.  It was a troop ship.  I had the engines lighted off and away we went.
     Coming along side of a ship in a Mike boat is really kind of simple.  Having twin screws enables you to actually walk the boat sideways. I had performed this maneuver several times but not yet perfected it.
      When we came along side the captain's ship I started maneuvering the boat into position with the captain  standing next to me. WHAM !   My boat slammed into the ships gangway ( new gangway ). WHAM !  I hit it again.  It would be hard to bust an E-3 seaman but I felt as if the captain was figuring how to go about it. The third time was a charm and all the time the captain never said a word.  When at last I held the boat in position the captain looked at me and asked if I had been driving the boat for long.  I told him this was my first time alone he said, "you'll learn"  then stepped off on to his freshly dented gangway.