Remember anchoring out. 'Swinging the hook'? I have no idea how
they decided who laid alongside the pier and who anchored out. I know
that when ships came into port, the order of entering had something to
do with your skippers rank, date of promotion or shoe size. Something
like that. Hell, the old man never explained it to us snipes.
Well, however it was determined, we ended up dropping our hook off
our liberty ports a lot. Personally, I preferred it. When you nested
alongside the pier you had pier responsibilities. Passing drunks. Curious
visiting surface craft and shore duty clowns. Swinging the hook gave you
a different view of the harbor and you got visited by numerous bumboats.
There were two ways you could get to and from the beach... Water
taxi and liberty launch. Water taxi transport was damned expensive... I
only rode them twice. Both times, the only choices I had was one helluva
swim, missing movement or forking over an obscene amount of wampum to
the Jesse James Raghat-hauling Water Taxi. Crooks. Missing movement in
the old days was a damn serious thing. When you finally caught up with
your ship, I think they just soaked you with gasoline and lit you off. I
don't know because we always made it back to turn up for the morning
quarters drunk parade.
If you don't remember good times in liberty launches you're brain
dead. The rides in motor launches with great shipmates were some of the
most wonderful times in my life. Jumping into a motor launch heading into
an exotic port was catnip to a red-blooded American 19-year old lad. At
19, any place beyond 25 miles of your hometown is foreign and exotic.
Returning in a load of happy, rollicking 'three sheets to the wind'
bluejackets. Singing songs your mother would have shot you for singing,
telling about female companionship you rustled up. And laughing like
deranged lunatics. Damn, it was fun.
For anyone reading this who may have no idea what in the hell a
'Liberty Launch' was or still is. I will attempt to describe it as we
knew it. You must remember that today's Navy has for reasons known
only to itself, taken a helluva lot that meant a great deal to her
sailors and done away with it in the interest of proper decorum. I have
difficulty understanding what laughing, singing and acting like a fool
while plowing saltwater back and forth between ships and the shore has
to do with anything but forming men into crews. Teams of hardworking,
fun-loving sailors.
Liberty launches were large motor driven launches (boats) that were
carried on the upper 'boat deck' of large surface ships or utilized
by Naval shore installations to haul supplies and personnel. They
came with a crew of two. A coxswain (pronounced 'cox'un') and a clown
called a 'bowhook'. When the Navy found that an idiot with the brain of
Dorothy's scarecrow had made it through boot camp, they made the bastard a
'bowhook.' The cox'un operated the boat, while the 'bowhook' acted like a
safety patrol on a rowdy school bus. The Navy provided the knuckleheads
with an eight foot pole with a brass skull buster on one end. One tap
with that little fairy wand and it was lights our for the rest of the
ride. I never saw that happen, but there were many nights I deserved
it. Giving the bowhook a hard time about the professional knowledge
required by his naval career choice was great late night entertainment.
Officers had their own peanut gallery aft in what was known as the
'stern sheets'. It kept them separated from the livestock load of unruly
blue jackets in the midships well. It was like having a fifty-yard line
seat at the world lunatic championships.
Saw some great shows in liberty launches. One night the bowhook
yelled at some jaybird, "Hey kid. Yeah, YOU with the inside-out
raghat. Deep-six the bottle. Don't give me any crap. Just toss it over
the side." The kid stood up, took off his neckerchief and did a neat
magic trick where he made the jug disappear. Everyone aft of the kid saw
him shove it up the back of the jumper of some lad sitting next to him.
I was impressed. When we dropped the kid off at his ship, we saw him
pass it to a couple of guys topside who drained the remaining contents
and spiral-passed it into the darkness.
Saw a kid stand up and say, "I forgot to buy something for my
mother!" and promptly hop over the side. And then he started dog paddling
in the direction of the lights of Yokosuka. It took thirty minutes to
fish Catfish Man out of the bay and haul his dripping, sopping wet ass
back aboard.
The Navy in it's infinite wisdom, created a little blue
crescent-shaped patch with your ship's name embroidered on it. It
served as the zip code for inert drunks. The shore patrol would haul the
terminal revelers down to the fleet landing and sort them by ship and
stack them for the 'last round', No officers ever took the last launch,
The 'zoo barge'. Boy, was that one helluva ride!
Somewhere in the vicinity of midnight, the sober guys loaded the
'stove wood drunks' and the officer at the landing yelled, "Cox'un, shove
off and make your rounds." And the coxwain yelled, "aye aye sir!" fired
up his engine and headed out to the tincans.
And we sang. The Navy sang long ago. We sang old bluejacket songs
into the darkness of empty night watching a phosphorescent wake trail off
into vacant blackness. In the glow of a stern light lies Guantonamo Bay,
Called "Gitmo" for short. Not much of a liberty port since Castro and
Eisenhower shut down the road to Santiago. One look at this hole And
you know that you're seein' The gahdamdest place In the whole Carribean."
It went on, and on,
some of you will remember it. We called it, "The Gitmo Song."
And there was, "Charlotte the Harlot The girl I adore, The pride of
the prairie, The cowpunchers whore." And... "I can help you pretty wavey
If you'd like to leave the Navy, Have a baby on me!" And, "My first trip
up the Chippewa River, My first trip to Canadian shore, There I met a
Mrs. Miss O'Flannagan, Commonly known as the Winnipeg whore." And there
were many others; 'She wore red feathers and a hooley-hooley skirt'
was a Brit favorite. There must be millions of the damn things.
Liberty launches were where we came together. Tossed
alcohol-saturated, regurgitated foreign food cookies over
gunnels... Hooted. Hollered, pounded each other on the back. Sang stupid
songs. Yelled, "Sit down, you dumb bastard!" And formed the lifetime
bonds that connect old greyhound crews.
It all started in those liberty boats.