The Lighter Side Of War

                 


     The members of of ACDIV 13 had a fun side, the ships we were stationed on used us for a lot of different jobs. Some times we were used to ferry people and things around, we picked up supplies in Da Nang Harbor every week and at times were sent out so the ship could make repairs to the well deck. Having nothing to do created boredom and you know about idle hands being the devil's workshop.


                                                              Nicotine Fit


     We had several characters among us who were unforgettable. There was this one guy from somewhere around New York, his heritage was Polish and I couldn't even begin to spell his name, maybe that's why we called him Ski.
      Ski was a nice guy and fun to be around, he only had one problem. Ski was a mooch when it came to cigarettes.  He never had any of his own except for those he got from the C- ration boxes and they were 20-25 yrs old. He didn't seem to mind what brand he smoked as we all smoked different brands and he bummed off all of us. Most times Ski would just walk up join in the conversation you were having, pull your pack of smokes from your pocket and pull out a cigarette then put the pack back in your pocket, he was very considerate. When we played cards in our compartment we usually had our packs and lighters ( oh, he didn't own a lighter either ) laying in front of us. Ski would reach over pull out a cigarette as he talked and never broke his train of thought.
     We all just sort of took Ski as he was.  He was a nice guy and cigarettes were about .15 per pack, no big deal. After a while though some things get under your skin and become an irritation. It took a while but Ski finally got the better of one of the guys as we were playing cards one night. It was payday, a day when you drew your pay, settled your debts and replenished your personal supplies - all in that order.
     So here we are playing poker in our quarters and Ski is in the game. A good hour or so has gone by and Ski has smoked 4-5 cigarettes by now when he reaches over and pulls another from a pack belonging to one of the petty officers. I guess this petty officer was losing or something but he slapped Ski's hand and said no. Ski was shocked and asked "what the hell". The petty officer asked Ski if he got paid that day and Ski said yes, then he was asked why he hadn't bought any cigarettes and for that Ski had no answer. The petty officer told Ski he was tired of keeping him supplied with smokes. Ski said he was sorry and he would get cigarettes the next day then he reached for a cigarette from some one else's pack and they promptly smacked his hand. Ski went without a cigarette for the rest of the night as no one would give him one.
     The next day when we came back to the compartment from lunch we were surprised to find a carton of cigarettes on every body's bunk - the brand they smoked. As usual we sat down to play a little lunch time poker. Ski was in the game, he promptly reached over and pulled a cigarette from someone's pack. Seems as though after buying about 15 cartons of cigarettes Ski forgot to buy any for himself, but he was a nice guy.


                                                       Prohibition


     Once a week the ship would drop anchor in Da Nang harbor to pick up supplies. The most obvious thing to do would be to send one of our boats, sometimes two, as they are big enough to carry whatever was needed. So off we would go up a river to what was called the beach ramp.
     This was a place that the marines had set up as an ammo dump and it had a ramp going into the water for loading boats. We would pull up and drop our ramp and wait for whatever we had to pick up even if it took all day (which it usually did) - remember what I said about idle hands.
     Turns out the beach ramp was about 3 miles from China Beach which was an in-country R&R site.  They had all kinds of recreational facilities but most of all they had booze.
     There were several problems getting the booze :
                     1. We didn't have transportation.
                     2. We didn't have ration cards, beer for enlisted men, liquor for officers.
                     3. We didn't have the right kind of money.
                     4. Who would go get the booze.
     Problem #1 was simple - hitchhike, problems #2&3 had us scratching our heads.  Problem #4 was simple enough, some one just needed the balls to go for it.
    We had among us a new recruit we affectionately called Wildman.  We called him that because he was always doing wild and crazy things. Once the above problems were explained to Wildman, we gave him a collection of about $30 and sent him on his way. Wildman walked out to the highway, stuck out his thumb and quickly obtained a ride in a passing jeep.
     About 4 hours later, a Marine six-by truck ( about the size of a dump truck - all wheel drive )backed on to the boat and out pops Wildman. He climbed into the back and shouted to form a line then commenced handing down three cases of beer, a quart of Canadian Club and a quart of Crown Royal, plus he gave us back some change. Wildman was our go to man from then on.
     In the process of passing the booze the Canadian Club was dropped on the deck, miraculously  it landed on it's bottom and only broke off the neck. Our quick thinking 2nd class engine man carefully picked up the broken bottle and placed a greasy rag from around his neck over a small bucket that had been quickly rinsed with river water ( you don't want to know about the river ) and strained the booze into the bucket. His quick thinking saved one of us from swallowing a piece of glass.
     We never asked Wildman how he managed to pull off such a feat, we just toasted him with a drink and started saving our money for next time.
     One of the fine points about being able to obtain booze was the resale value.  Aboard ship a six pack which cost us a couple of bucks would sell for close to $10.  Problem was that some of the guys who bought the beer had a problem keeping it under raps and had to stand Captains Mast. The ship knew we were bringing the booze aboard and searched our boats whenever we returned to the ship.  We were never caught.


                                                        Speaking Of Beer

     One of life's lessons that I learned early on was that the thing you want most usually is unobtainable - nowhere to be found. Another lesson was, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth ".
     The antics we went thru to get our hands on booze were just as described in the last story.  It wasn't that we were addicted to booze and had to have it to survive. We didn't have any but wanted it more because we didn't have any. Any of this make any sense?
     We were young sailors in a far away land or rather floating around in a far off ocean with very little to do. A cold beer would not only quench a raging thirst it would soothe the beast brought on by the heat, boredom, and monotony of waiting for something to happen.
     We had recently completed one of our two amphibious landings and were floating around waiting for orders on our next task of the day. We were told to marry up with another Mike 8 and come into the well deck. Great, done for the day, now we can go into our compartment and play cards the rest of the day. This was not to be as the Marines ashore required more cargo.
     Boy did we get the surprise of our life when forklifts started loading pallets of beer on our boat - bunches of beer. We were loaded two pallets high, five pallets across and about fifteen pallets deep on each boat. Let's see, that is 24 cans per case x 25 cases per pallet  x 150 pallets  =  a lot of beer!
     One disturbing fact was that here we were conniving and scheming to make sure our boat was the one to go to the beach ramp every week so we could buy booze and now we find out the ship is using it for ballast.
     To get back to the problem at hand - no way could a battalion of Marines drink all of the beer we had on our boat and surely we were deserving of a small delivery fee. We figured that no one would miss a couple of pallets that just happened to get knocked overboard by a rogue wave.  (Rogue waves were not known back then so we just said that a wave came out of nowhere and hit us when we were not looking)  - wham!  Two pallets were washed overboard.  Fifty cases of beer were a lot to hide but they say necessity is the mother of all invention and where there is a will there is a way.
     The Mike 8 is a well constructed boat.  It's designers thought of ever possible situation that could hinder the boat from making it to the beach with it's load. Beneath the well deck were five voids that ran across the boat from side to side, a man could duck walk in them. The idea was that if a void was punctured only it would take on water and the boat would continue to float.  Seems like we could flood three of the voids and still remain afloat.  Each void had an inspection plate on either side of the well deck and each round plate was big enough for a man to enter the void, but the plates were secured by about 80 - 3/4 inch bolts torqued to 150 ft lbs.
     Fortunately we kept nuts on one of the plates a little tighter than hand tight for just such an occasion - in no time at all fifty cases of beer washed overboard right into the void.
     The Marines must have been ticked about the missing beer because there was an inspection when we came aboard that night. An officer and a Chief Boatswain mate searched our bilges and storage compartment and came up empty.
     The lesson to be learned here is not to underestimate the resourcefulness of a thirsty sailor.



                                                                 Mail Call


     My Dad once told me of how they would screw around with the new guys aboard ship.  They would tell him he could write a letter home and mail it while in the middle of the ocean.  When the recruit inquired as to how this was possible they explained that he would have to be on deck at some odd hour of the night as the ship would be passing a mail buoy and he could drop his letter in it and the next ship heading in the opposite direction would retrieve the mail and take it stateside. Not everyone was gullible enough to fall for the trick but several stood on the deck in the cold or rain  or both for hours. It was sort of a rite of passage - first time at sea.
     The best part of a serviceman's day was always "mail call".  Not everyone got mail every day but everyone looked forward to hearing their name called when the mail was handed out. Sometimes it was almost as much fun to see what the other guys received.
     The girlfriend of one guy had put his name in the local paper back home and told the whole town that he was overseas and lonely, please write to him. This guy got mail every day and loads of it mostly from people he didn't know.  He got love letters ( some were quite racy ), he got magazines of all kinds, newspapers, etc.
      Then some guys got gifts - cookies, salami, cheeses and sausages.  If we'd had an oven we could have made a pizza.
      Linda would send me packages of grape kool aid and popsrite popcorn. The kool aid we would mix with the water in our igloo cooler - when you couldn't drink beer grape kool aid was the next best thing - beat the hell out of plain water.
     Popsrite popcorn came in a flat aluminum pan with a wire handle.  You had to remove a paper cover and then set the pan on a hot stove.  Soon the popcorn would start popping and the aluminum cover would start to rise and form a round dome as it filled with hot popcorn.  When all of the popcorn popped you just tore open the dome and started eating. There was just one problem - we didn't have access to a stove hot or cold.
     Not having a stove was an opportunity to improvise and we excelled in that area. The Marines had heat tablets issued to them for warming their C-rations. Heat tablets were basically Sterno in tablet form - use enough and you could boil water quickly. This though presented another problem, open flames were not allowed aboard ship.
     During daylight hours cooking the popcorn was not an issue when we were out of the ship on our boats, a five gallon bucket with some busted pallet wood and a pint of diesel fuel to get it started, but after hours cooking presented problems as the Captain frowned on seeing his ship afire.
     Thru experimentation we found that the heat tablets burned a blue - white flame which was nearly invisible even at night. So one night I decided to pop some popcorn for the guys. I got a gallon can from the mess cooks and poked holes in the bottom to provide air for the fire and then dropped in about 9 or 10 or more heat tablets and a match. In no time at all the popcorn was well on it's way, the aroma was delicious and tantalizing. I had selected a cook sight that I thought was well hidden.  I was between a couple of the large Marine amtracks and things were going well when all of a sudden we were surprised by a Marine guard. Turns out the guard was aroused by the aroma of popcorn and was less concerned about the fire than our offer to share.  Sharing some popcorn with him assured us of his silence.
      The popcorn is now popped and ready to eat - just put out the fire and head back to the compartment. The fire though was not ready to go out.  I must have used more heat tablets than I needed because the fire was not even getting low. Throwing sand on the fire was the only thing to do but the heat tablets still got  a supply of air and flame appeared from the mound of sand, it took a whole sandbag of sand to put out the flame.
     The popcorn was great but we decided do our cooking off the ship.


                                                             Game Time


     We liked to play games in our off time especially if we could place bets on the outcome. We played all kinds of card games though poker was the standard fare. I had no idea there were so many different poker games. We played five card stud, seven card stud, seven card no peek, hi-lo. We had deuces wild, low card in the hole wild, low spade wild,  high spade splits the pot, two's and nines and one eyed jacks were wild. There were times while in the middle of a game we would have to be reminded what game we were playing as it was dealers choice and changed with every hand.
     Sailors get serious about their gambling. My first time aboard ship I walked into the compartment and found a game of Acey Duecy going on. This was a game where each player put money into the pot and was then dealt two cards.  Prior to receiving his next card he places a bet in an amount up to the total of the pot.  If the third card falls between the first two cards the player removes the amount he bet from the pot. If the third card matches or falls outside of the first two cards then the player tosses his bet into the pot and the pot grows.
     This particular game had about six players and they were tapped out for cash so they were accepting backers who would place bets based on how good a hand the player had and take half of the winnings if they won. When I walked in the pot contained over two thousand dollars cash, an expensive watch and the title to a 1966 mustang ( this was late 1967 ). The game went on for another 2 hours and as with most games of chance there were winners and losers.
     Once at sea there was a continuous poker game every night in the compartment.  Cash didn't last long so to keep the interest high a bookkeeping system was set up. Come payday everyone settled up or they were not allowed to play again.
     Poker and blackjack were the standard card games but we sometimes adapted other games. Linda's dad sent me a home made board game that was played with dice and marbles.
     The basic idea of the game was to get your four marbles around the board before your opponents. Up to four players could play and the excitement could become quite high. One of the rules was that if your marble landed on an opponents marble the opponents marble had to go all the way back to the starting point and try again. Treachery and intrigue kept the tension and excitement high as each player had put up fifty cents or a dollar in the pot, winner take all.
     I don't remember the original name of the game, the guys  though came up with another name for it, "f--- your buddy ".
     In a time where the future was uncertain and you were far from home it was good to have something to lift your spirits and make us laugh. There were many things to be concerned about but all it took was a little humor to put a smile on our faces.