A Veteran's Journey

Trivia Questions (Answers @ end)

1. Who said, “Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world. A veteran doesn’t have that problem.”?
2. In what movie (series) did we hear (and who said it), “It requires the best of us… from all of us.”?
3. In what song (and who sang it) did we hear the following?
   Pretty woman, walking down the street
   Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet
   Pretty woman
   I don’t believe you, you’re not the truth
   No one could look as good as you

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The “Definition” of Port Liberty

From The Bluejacket’s Manual, 18^th Edition issued to me during Boot Camp (Orlando RTC, July 1973):

It is well to note and remember the old saying, “Liberty is a privilege—not a right.”

The days of your Navy career will not form an unbroken series of on-duty days. Rather, they will be broken up from time to time by leave and liberty. The shorter periods are liberty. The longer periods are leave. Both are controlled by your commanding officer.

Liberty is authorized absence from your ship or station for a period of up to 48 hours and is not chargeable as leave. Most liberties in the Navy consist of leaving the ship or station around 1630 and returning before 0730 or 0800 the next morning. The normal 48-hour liberty that is granted for weekends may be extended to 72 hours if the period includes a national holiday. At a few stations in the U.S. that are far from any city, there are 96-hour liberty periods.

Well… that’s what the BJM states. That looks good on paper, but in reality, I think every duty station and commanding officer interpret liberty their own way. And… that’s not a bad thing.

In reality, at least from my experience, liberty was a most welcomed tradition, especially after being at sea for several weeks, working long hours on the flight deck.

I know everyone’s got their own opinion, but in my four short years (’73-77), I associated liberty in the Navy with a ship pulling into a foreign port after being at sea for a period of time.

NAS Agana, Guam

My first duty station was NAS Agana Guam. I was in Crash & Rescue and we worked 24 hours on and 24 off for my entire 15 months on the island. I didn’t really consider my time off as liberty; probably similar to most land-based duty stations.

Yeah… we “worked” hard–if you consider sitting in a crash truck with 3-4 other crew between parallel runways for two, 4-hour shifts waiting for an aircraft to crash hard work. I just don’t see it. No complaints by any means; it was just a different type of assignment. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my time on Guam, both on duty and off duty. And there were times when the adrenaline rush was high.

While we didn’t necessary “work hard,” I can tell you that when we got together for section picnics at the beach, we “played hard.”

Shipboard Liberty

USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), was a different story. I worked on the flight deck in the V-1 Division/Crash. When at sea, we worked hard and endured long hours of flight operations. It was common in the 70s for flight ops to begin at 1000 and cycle through midnight.

And since I worked in Crash (we only had 14 total crash crew members), we had to maintain 11 men on the flight deck during flight ops. That left 3 for the night shift. I didn’t like working night shift duty, though I took my share. It was just too boring for me. I’d rather be in the middle of the action, even if the day shift hours were longer.

While docked at North Island (San Diego), I think it was just considered off duty. Those that lived off the ship went home after a full day’s work. Those that lived on the ship and left, “Permission to leave the ship, sir,” just played hard.

But when aboard Kitty Hawk during a Westpac cruise (for me, Westpac ’75), hitting a port would be considered “liberty call.”

Ready, Willing & Able…

Imagine this… you’ve been at sea with 5,500 other men (we didn’t have women aboard in the 70s) from various backgrounds, crammed in a ship, and working 12- to 18-hour days for three weeks. You’ve had no beer and you haven’t seen a girl during that entire time, unless you received a photo from your honey in the mail (we didn’t have email back then, either).  

Now imagine, 5,000 (some sailors remained aboard for duty) of your closest friends all lined up ready to disembark the ship onto a pier—long lines and the old saying, “Hurry up and wait!” comes to mind. But you don’t think about that. All I thought about at the time was to stand on dry land, drink beer, listen to some great music, eat all I wanted, and then stumble back to the ship.

Yeah… you remember those times.

PI (The Philippines)

I’ve written about our port calls before in PI, Hong Kong, and Japan.

PI was our overseas home port (forward deployment), meaning we’d be at sea for a while—usually several weeks at a time—then return to PI for a week or so. Most of the time, we’d operate in the South China Sea conducting naval training exercises.

Apparently, just before entering port for the first time, every department head gave a lecture on V.D. and what to do to help protect yourself. I mean, I was 20 years old and had already been in the Navy for 2 years; what more did I need to know? I’ll spare you the details, but Bos’n Robuck (the Crash Officer) gave us “the lecture.”

Big Willie, the Assistant Crash LPO, was also one who’d been to PI before and knew something else: many times we’d pull into PI a day or two before payday and many sailors didn’t have any money to go ashore. Need money? See Big Willie—$20 now, $40 payback on payday. Yeah, Big Willie knew how to work the system.

This was in the mid-70s—we had to keep in mind that PI was under martial law and there was a strict (“you could be shot”) curfew at midnight.

Out of all the things I remember about my first port liberty in PI, those were it. All the rest of those early days in PI, I… forgot—I claim CRS (Can’t Remember Stuff).

Hong Kong Liberty

When we left PI for Hong Kong, it rained for four days straight. I’m not talking about little Seattle-type drizzle. I’m talking about a continuous, big frog-strangler torrential rain like we had in Florida. It was miserable.

The old man (Kitty Hawk’s CO) had scheduled a white’s inspection on the flight deck. That made a lot of standard Navy issue sense—forty-plus knot winds and rainstorms. He finally decided instead of a ship-wide white’s inspection, each division would hold their own.

We arrived in Hong Kong in the middle of August. At that time, Hong Kong was still under British rule in the 70s—it’s a lot different now.

We didn’t have a pier to pull up alongside like in PI or Hawaii. Instead, we anchored out in the harbor near Green Island and took ferries from Kitty Hawk to Hong Kong. We also had “max liberty,” meaning we only needed to be on the ship if we had duty. I had duty the first day in port, so I didn’t make it into Hong Kong that first day, but I did make a few bucks: “Borrow $20 today, payback $40 on payday.”

But the following day, I took full advantage of my liberty. However, instead of bar hopping, like I did in PI, several of us went on a couple of tours.

Hong Kong: Aberdeen

Steve Cummings, who had just been promoted to a third class petty officer and went from a Blue Shirt to a Yellow Shirt director, Smitty (another good friend and Yellow Shirt), and I found an all-day tour that took us up to Victoria Park, the highest mountain in Hong Kong, to have a grand overlook of the Hong Kong harbor.

Kitty Hawk was certainly the biggest ship in the harbor, and she was… beautiful. It’s rare when we could see her from this vantage point, but she really felt like home and I was proud to be a part of her crew.

We also toured a few other places, stopping at the Tai Pak Restaurant, a floating restaurant with exquisite décor. We received a full six-course meal that was absolutely fantastic. I don’t know what I ate, and I learned a while back in PI to never ask what I was eating as long as it was good. Best of all, beer was free with dinner, but water cost about three HK dollars.

Japan Liberty

After Hong Kong, we began our longest time at sea without hitting a port—about five weeks. I know some of you will scoff at that (“that’s all? 5 weeks?”), but that’s what it was for us during Westpac ’75. Our transit to Japan found us at the edge of a typhoon. I wrote about that earlier.

As we pulled into the harbor, it was a bright clear day, a “Champagne Day,” as my mom used to call it. We could easily see snow-capped Mt. Fuji off in the distance. Similar to Hong Kong, we had “max liberty” during our 6-day stay in Yokosuka, Japan.

And… we were ready for liberty. Several of us took a bullet train up to Tokyo for the day. More sight-seeing, which I very much appreciated. I knew we’d hit the bars at some point, but while in Japan, I’m grateful I saw more than just the inside of a bar. Not that I drank that much, but I was… Navy.

The bars in Japan were something else, cleaner than in PI or Hong Kong. But I simply could not drink the beer, it was so bad. However, we found a wonderful place that served great corn dogs and ice cream, something that the crash crew craved. We frequented that cozy little spot several times—no beer, though, at least not for me.

COVID Times “Liberty Call”

I know I’m stretching it here, but bear with me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Like many others, we’ve been living in “pandemic mode” for a year. “Not a fan,” as my daughter-in-law commonly calls it. But we’re enduring the best we can with what we have.

My wife & I are at “that age” where we’re in the high-risk category, even though we’re both healthy. But we just hit the magic retirement age, so we try to be more cautious, especially during these challenging times. Since we’re retired and usually homebodies anyway, it hasn’t been as difficult for us to adjust as for others.

Having said that, two things recently occurred that I want to share. First, we both got our second vaccine shot. Second, we just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary last week. And… we celebrated… in style. We met after I left the Navy… in a karate class, of all places. “She threw me and I fell for her,” is our standard line.

We’d talked about traveling to a foreign destination (not Guam, mind you), but somewhere overseas to celebrate. We knew that wasn’t going to happen, at least not this year.

A Reason to Celebrate!

Instead, we made plans to celebrate with some long-time friends, who have been married 39 years and their anniversary is a day later than ours. We’d celebrated many anniversaries together over the years.

But this year… this year felt different. This year, when we walked through the restaurant, sat down, and removed our masks, it was a freedom… a liberty call if you will… that in a way, reminded me of those first few steps on solid ground after being aboard Kitty Hawk for several weeks at sea.

It’s hard to describe but it felt like a great relief after being “cooped up” for a year. Although, we’d picked up takeout dinners several times and even ventured to eat at a restaurant on their outdoor patio, but this was different.

This was almost… normal.

In these challenging times of COVID, I continuously look for “nuggets of normalcy,” as I like to call them. And believe me when I tell you, last week’s outing for us… celebrating our 40th anniversary was way more than celebrating an anniversary.

It was a “big nugget” of normalcy.

Stay safe, my friends.

Until we meet again,
Andy

Andy Adkins is a US Navy veteran (’73-77) and the author of several books. His newest novel, NEVER FORGET, is the story of A Vietnam Veteran’s Journey for Redemption & Forgiveness. NEVER FORGET is FREE (eBook, PDF) for all veterans. Download your FREE copy HERE.

Previous posts mentioned in this blog:

• #53—You Always Remember Your First…
• #26—That Adrenaline Rush
• #68—Flight Ops: Another Fine Day in the Navy!
• #24—Hurry Up and Wait!
• #20—Port Call: Philippines
• #43—Port Call: Hong Kong
• #23—Rough Seas: Sea of Japan

Answers

1. Ronald Reagan.
2. Away (2020, Netflix Series), Commander Emma Green (Hilary Swank).
3. Pretty Woman (1965), Roy Orbison; written by Roy Orbison, Bill Dees.