Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:27:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Macout Mann <macoutmann@yahoo.com>
Subject: Before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" 10

This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or
to actual events is purely coincidental.  Some chapters also contain
explicit sexual activity between males.  If such is objectionable to you,
or if you are below the age where reading such material is legal, please
read no further.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated, pro or con.  All emails will be
answered.  macoutmann@yahoo.com


		       BEFORE "DON'T ASK DON'T TELL"

			      by Macout Mann

				Chapter 10


Morgan was escorted to the cabin of the executive officer, an affable
lieutenant commander named Warren.  He accepted Morgan's written orders and
turned him over to the operations officer, a more senior jg named Sandy
Westinghouse, who would be his department head.  He in turn saw Morgan to a
cabin in forward officers' quarters, which he was to share with a junior
engineering officer.  Forward officers' quarters consisted of two
compartments, each shared by two officers.  It was just below the wardroom,
which was on the main deck, and convenient to CIC, which was just above the
wardroom and just below the bridge.  Sandy was also berthed in FOQ, which
was also convenient, since he and Morgan would be working together very
closely.  His bunkmate was a junior gunnery officer.  The third officer in
the operations department, the communications officer, was an ensign named
Eric Johansen.  The fourth was in charge of sonar. He was Carl Clunney,
also an ensign and a former merchant mariner.  They were berthed in aft
officers' quarters, where the majority of the ship's officers bunked.  The
logic was that if the front part of the ship was blown away, there would be
officers from all departments still alive aft, and if the back end was
blown away, at least one officer from each department would be alive
forward.

After Morgan had stowed his gear, navalese for belongings, Sandy took him
on a quick tour of the operations areas and aft officers' quarters, where
he met several of his mates.  (It was odd, but in the almost eighteen
months Morgan was aboard the Stough, he never set foot in either the
engineering or gunnery spaces.)

It was dinner time before he met the captain, Cdr. John Richardson.  Gruff,
stern, a man's man from the word "go," he was also one of the finest, most
understanding, and smartest men Morgan would ever know.

On larger ships, the captain dines alone.  In fact on the other side of the
nest, where the Spencer, "flagship" of DesDiv 17, was berthed, the
commodore, Commander Destroyer Divison 17, dined alone.  In the wardroom of
large ships the executive officer was the senior member of the mess.  On
destroyers and smaller vessels, however, it was the custom for the captain
to dine at the head of the wardroom table.  And that's where Morgan met
Capt. Richardson.  He was asked to sit to the left of the captain, so he
could be properly quizzed.  The exec sat to the captain's right.

The food, Morgan thought, left something to be desired.  Again on larger
ships the wardroom generally ate better than the general mess.  At least it
was different.  On destroyers and smaller vessels officers still paid their
monthly mess fee, but ate the same fare as the enlisted men.  Stewards
mates did serve it from pewter serving dishes, however, and it was consumed
on china plates.  The exception on the Stough was a monthly dinner of
Polynesian Curry, which Morgan came to consider the culinary highlight of
his naval career.

At quarters next morning, Morgan officially became the O Division Officer,
the person to whom the enlisted men with operations ratings would report
administratively.  He found most to be "good guys."  The big majority were
radarmen or electronics technicians with whom he would be working closely
in CIC.  The senior radarman was Henry Bonner, a quiet but very intelligent
RD1, whom Morgan would learn was called "Tender" by all his mates.  A
second class, Egerston, was a boisterous, outgoing guy.  But the fellow
that really caught his eye was Cockrill, RD3, a really hot blond, handsome
and well-built, who seemed to be poured even into his navy dungarees.

After provisioning, the division got underway for exercises.  After two
days they were to join a carrier for flight operations.  Morgan was
surprised to learn that his first watch would be on the bridge as Junior
Officer of the Deck.  He had thought that all his watches would be stood in
CIC, but it was assumed that all officers of the line would qualify as
Officer of the Deck Underway.  Morgan had no desire to achieve this lofty
position, and very soon another problem presented itself.  Most of the OODs
on the Stough were ensigns.  Since Morgan was a "jg," the enlisted
personnel on the bridge assumed that, since he was senior, he was the OOD.
This caused special consternation to Mr. Johansen, who, as the son of the
CEO of a Fortune 500 company, was especially full of himself.  (In fact his
father was already working on a shore billet for him, which came through
before the Stough returned to the United States.)

Morgan conferred about this with Westinghouse, who conferred with the exec,
who conferred with the captain, who in turn conferred with Morgan.
Convinced that Morgan was not going to remain in the Navy beyond his
present assignment and that he really had no desire to become an OOD
Underway, Capt. Richardson agreed that Morgan could stand all his watches
in CIC, which freed other officers from that responsibility and which
pleased the radarmen, because someone who really knew what he was doing
would be supervising them more often.  And Morgan demonstrated very quickly
that he had learned what he was supposed to have learned at CIC School and
that he was also a capable leader of his men.

Capt. Richardson had a quirk, which Morgan found interesting.  Normally the
Primary Tactical Radio Channel is guarded on the Bridge and monitored in
CIC.  On the Stough, it was guarded in CIC and monitored on the bridge.
That is tactical messages were acknowledged and originated from Combat.  A
secondary operational channel, linking all the CICs in a formation of
ships, was also guarded in Combat.  Having run a land-based communications
center, this peculiarity didn't bother Morgan, but it gave CIC greater
responsibility in the operation of the ship.

Morgan readily adjusted to the ship's, the division's, and the carrier
group's routines.  He got along well with the other officers, and had only
one man in his division that was a problem.  Mason was an eighteen-year-old
seaman who behaved like a fourteen-year-old.  Normally the more senior
enlisted men could keep such little boys under their thumb, but Mason was
heedless of their jibes.

Upon their return to Yokosuka, as was to be expected, patterns of
association among the crew became apparent.  On some occasions the entire
cadre of off-duty officers would go out together.  On others groups of two
or three special friends would "hit the beach" together.  Some officers,
such as Morgan's cabinmate and Ens. Johansen were loners.  Morgan could
detect no "relationships," however.

One evening several officers, including Morgan, went to the same
whorehouse, where he and Pas had dined during his first R&R.  The Deck
Division Officer, Lt(jg). Searle, had a regular girl there and it was
apparent from the beginning of the meal that he would stay the night.  A
cute Japanese girl had joined each of the seven officers.  The dinner was
excellent.  And for reasons unknown Morgan was more amorous than he'd ever
been with a woman before.  Maybe it was that he'd been celibate since
coming on board.  Anyway, when dinner was over, he joined Searle in
remaining, while the others left for other pursuits.

Unfamiliar with whorehouse protocol he skipped foreplay for the most part,
but found inserting his dick in a pussy to be surprisingly pleasant, so
much so that when he woke up in the middle of the night he tried it again.
Come morning, his companion awakened him in time to get a cab back to the
base before quarters.

He discovered that the escapade gave him some extra clout with many of his
peers, and that somehow news of it even reached the enlisted ranks.  So the
next time he was Officer of the Deck as liberty expired, one of his
radarmen came onto the quarterdeck with one of his seaman and proudly
announced that the seaman had lost his cherry that night.

Morgan became good friends with the only other Ivy Leaguer on board, Roger
Hamilton.  A Harvard man, Hamilton was from St. Louis, destined to join his
father's medical practice after going to the Harvard Med School upon
separation from the navy.  Hamilton was straight, but shared Morgan's other
interests and sense of humor.  He also stood half his watches in CIC and
was the ship's Gunnery Liaison Officer, whose post at General Quarters was
also in Combat.  They went on liberty together and a couple of times went
to Tokyo, where Morgan showed him some of the places he'd enjoyed before.
Dinner at the Nikkatsu was a real treat.

Back at sea, the routine continued as it had before.  When the division was
operating alone, there was a nightly exercise among the four CIC watches.
In rotation a designated watch officer would devise a maneuvering problem
starting from a fixed point, and test to see if each ship had arrived at
the correct end point at the end of the exercise.  When it was Morgan's
turn, he always added spice to the problem by describing all the maneuvers
in terms of tactical signals, as if it were a real situation.  Soon, all
the ships were doing this with the result that although the problems were
more complicated, the watch passed much more quickly for everyone.

Then the Stough was detached from the division.  She was to make a formal
call on the Philippine Island of Cebu.  This was highly unusual, but a most
welcome break from routine.  And more important from the crew's standpoint,
it would mean liberty someplace where navy ships didn't ever call.

Morgan was looking forward to the enterprise, until he learned that once at
Cebu the uniform of the day would be Dress Whites.  It had never occurred
to Morgan to retrieve his Dress Whites, when he was home; so now he would
be the only person on board without a uniform.  And since it was not common
at the time, in the Pacific Fleet anyway, for officers to have more than
one pair of whites, there was no place he could borrow any.  He was sure to
be "put in hack" for god-knows-how-long, once the exec found out.

Since his duties in CIC were especially strenuous as the ship maneuvered
its way between the thousands of islands of the Philippine Archipelago,
however, he decided to wait and not face the music until the last possible
moment.

Fortunately, when they were within a day's sail of Cebu and Morgan was on
watch in Combat, the ship suddenly made a one-hundred-eighty degree turn.
At first Morgan was annoyed.  The bridge had violated protocol by not
informing CIC and asking for a new course recommendation.  Before he could
raise the issue, however, Westinghouse appeared to say that a message had
been received from Seventh Fleet ordering everybody to the China Sea.  The
Chinese Communists were threatening to take some insignificant islands,
which were claimed by Taiwan, that is Nationalist China, and the U. S. Navy
was to prevent that from happening.

Thus, the uniform crisis was averted, and Morgan got to participate in the
largest naval operation since the Second World War.  The assembled armada
stretched forty miles across, contained four aircraft carriers, two
cruisers, and god-knows-how-many destroyers.  For over a month it steamed
in a square within radar contact of the Chinese mainland, probably much to
the amusement of the ChiCom government.

Of course, the whole operation was taken very seriously at the time.
Flight operations were conducted around the clock.  The entire formation
was at "darken ship" from sundown to sunrise (shades of World War II).  And
the destroyers were especially alert for submarines that might try to
penetrate their twenty mile radius screen, and in CICs they searched
diligently for unidentified surface ships or aircraft that might pass
nearby.

Just by chance a squadron of Atlantic Fleet destroyers on an
around-the-world cruise happened by, and was ordered to join the task
force.  Also by chance the squadron commander of the Atlantic Fleet
destroyers happened to be most senior, so he was designated screen
commander of the task force.  No matter that the Atlantic Fleet seldom if
ever conducted carrier task force operations, their mission being much more
aligned to joint NATO exercises, as often as not under British command.


After the task force had been conducting air operations for more than two
weeks, a group of supply ships arrived to replenish it, and Jupiter—that
was the task force commander's call sign—declared that the replenishment
was to be done at darken ship.  So began the most significant night in
Morgan's sea-going career.

Morgan told Westinghouse that he suspected there would be chaos during the
replenishment and asked if he could have all his CIC guys on duty during
the operation.

"Not unless the ship goes to general quarters," the operations officer
replied.

"Maybe we ought to," Morgan rejoined.

"I'll tell the captain about your concerns," Westinghouse said.

As it happened, the First Lieutenant, whose deck hands would bear the
burden of taking on both fuel and stores had similar worries, and he was a
full lieutenant.  So it was decided that the ship would go to general
quarters just before the operation began and would remain there at least
long enough to assess the situation.

Hamilton had the watch, and as Gunnery Liaison Officer would remain in
Combat at GQ.  Morgan watched the radar scope as the replenishment group
approached.  The image was picture perfect.  As the two formations began to
merge, the ship was called to general quarters.  Morgan put a radarman on
each of three scopes and assigned each man a sector.  He told them to mark
each of the ships in his sector and to keep track of them whatever
happened.  The voice of Jupiter began the instructions that would culminate
in the carrier task force becoming a bunch of ships taking on whatever feul
and supplies each needed, in order to continue the patrol.

"Execute!" Jupiter said; and Morgan watched in horror as the picture
perfect image he'd been looking at disintegrated into an unrecognizable
blob.  He was sure CICs in most of the other half-a-hundred ships present
shared his amazement.

"O.K., guys," he said, "be sure you know where your ships are.  Don't worry
about anything else."

Bonner, his senior enlisted man, had plotted on a large sheet where Jupiter
had told everyone to go, and based on information provided by the men on
the scopes, he was able to determine which ships actually got there, and to
plot where those that didn't, did wind up.  Three of the division's
destroyers had initially remained at their screening station.  The fourth,
whose call sign was Cattail, had been assigned to a lifeguard station near
one of the supply ships.  That is, she was to cruise aft of the supply ship
in order to pick up anyone who might fall overboard while supplies were
being transferred.

Things seemed to be moving fairly well.  Task force ships would go along
side supply ships, take on stores, and go to their next assigned station,
to be replaced another ship to be replenished.  All of the ships knew where
they were, even if others didn't.  Generally the larger ships were the
first in line, and the voice of Jupiter kept everything on keel with
precise instructions read from a carefully worked-out plan.

The voice of Jupiter, who was the staff operations officer seated in flag
plot on the flagship, presumably with Jupiter himself at his side, could
easily have been a radio announcer in the heyday of network radio.  His
round, pear-shaped tones were legendary.  Morgan had amused himself and
everyone else in CIC throughout the operation by using his Yale Theatre
experience when talking to Jupiter.  He put on what Radarman Cockrill was
fond of calling his "important voice" in radio exchanges with the flagship.
Thusfar tonight he had had no call to answer.

Suddenly, "Jupiter, this is Aztec."  Aztec was one of the supply ships.
"Rasputin's important cargo has fallen overboard!"  Aztec went on to say
that Rasputin, one of the carriers, had pulled away to try to recover the
important cargo and that it would be sometime before another ship could
come alongside, because Rasputin had torn away all the rigging on the
starboard side of Aztec.

"Very well," replied the unperturbed voice of Jupiter.  "Advise when ready
to continue.  Cattail, Moultree, assist Rasputin in recovering her
important cargo."

"Rodger," replied Moultree.  On the radar, Morgan saw a destroyer leave the
formation in pursit of Rasputin.  Cattail did not answer, nor did she move.

"Damn," Morgan said, "their PriTac must be out."  He waited for several
minutes, but no one spoke.  Finally, he tried to contact Cattail on the CIC
net, but got no response.  So he waited until Jupiter ordered another
destroyer into Lifeguard Station 2.

"Jupiter, this is Copperhead," he intoned.  "Cattail is in Lifeguard
Station 2."

"Roger."  It was evidently only now that flag plot realized that a ship was
in fact there.

A very long minute passed.

"Copperhead, this is Jupiter."

"This is Copperhead.  Over."

"This is Jupiter.  Do you know where all the ships are?  Over."

"Affirmative.  Out."  Everyone in CIC burst into laughter.

Another very long minute.

"Copperhead this is Jupiter.  Please tell us where all the ships are.
Over."


"Sugar station one...," Morgan began, reversing the normal order to give
the "small boys" their due, and he recited the entire formation at
dictation speed in order to give everyone the benefit of knowing where the
ships really were.  He ended with "Rasaputin and Moultree aft of the
formation."  He often wondered if classified information had been
compromised by his recitation, but, after all, he'd been commanded to do
it.  He also never found out, but he always thought the "important cargo"
had to be a nuclear device.

After Jupiter's "Out," Morgan thanked his men for their good work and
everybody again had a good laugh.  They all figured that now things might
run like the manuals said they would.

The executive officer's general quarters post was in Combat.  Same
thinking: if the captain was taken out on the bridge, the exec would be in
CIC and could take command.  At GQ drills, he was hardly ever at his post,
however; he was checking on everything else.  Tonight, although "This is
not a drill" was not stated, when GQ was ordered, everyone knew that the
task force wasn't under attack.  So Morgan and everybody else in Combat was
surprised when the exec suddenly materialized.

"We've been listening in up on the bridge," he said.  "Seems like you saved
the task force commander's ass, Morgan."

"It was these guys that kept track of where the ships were, Sir," Morgan
responded.

"Was still an unauthorized use of PriTac," the exec laughed.

A little over a year later LCdr. Warren would write in a letter of
recommendation to the Wharton School, "Mr. Bowen was the most brilliant and
innovative naval officer with whom I have ever served."  He added,
"Regrettably, had he remained in the navy, these same sterling qualities
would have prevented him from ever becoming an admiral."

Once everyone, including the ChiComs, had rediscovered where all the ships
were, the operation continued smoothly.  The Stough was finally sent
alongside one of the supply vessels and was replenished without incident.
Shortly before the ship was to pull away, Morgan went to the bridge for
some reason, turning the CIC watch over to Hamilton.

On the bridge the captain was present, but the Officer of the Deck had
control of the ship, when it slipped out ahead of the supply ship and its
radar mast cleared the supply ship's superstructure.  The bridge talker, a
seaman manning the telephone to Combat, said "Combat reports ship off the
port bow at constant bearing and closing range."

As it happened, in the turmoil of maneuvering away from the other vessel
Morgan was the only person on the bridge that heard what the talker said.
Terror almost overcame him.  Above everything else drilled into him at CIC
School was "Constant bearing and closing range means collision."

 "Captain!" Morgan shouted.  Then to the talker, "Repeat that to the
Captain!"

"Combat reports ship off the port bow at constant bearing and closing
range."  The young sailor had no idea of the impact of what he was saying.

"I have the conn!" Captain Richardson announced.  "All engines stop!  All
engines back full!  All engines back emergency full!  Right hard rudder!"

Out of the darkness appeared another destroyer seemingly sliding to the
left.  The two ships passed so close to one another that bridge personnel
could almost have shaken hands.  "Fucking Atlantic Fleet," Morgan heard the
captain whisper as the ships drifted apart.  The Atlantic Fleet destroyer
in passing in front of the formation had set course without maintaining the
required distance from the main body of ships.

The captain brought the Stough to formation course, then turned the conn
back to the OOD, who maneuvered the ship to its next screening station.
The captain went to the 21MC, a speaker system that could be directed to
any compartment on the ship, and commended the engineers on their quick
action in reversing engines.  "You saved us from a collision!" he said.

Morgan thought he'd saved them from a collision too, but then one "attaboy"
a night was plenty, he figured.


Copyright 2011 by Macout Mann.  All rights reserved.