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Growing up
Part-9-of-10
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Life on the Shang------Life on the ship was interesting, to say the least. According to government statistics over 95% of the Shangri-La’s crew chose the Navy instead of jail. In those days if a teenager got into trouble and the authorities thought he could be saved, they allowed him to join the military instead of going to jail. There were guys on the ship from everywhere that you can imagine. One guy from some southern farming state set fire to his neighbor’s brand new and very expensive dairy barn the night before he left for boot camp. He’d been in the Navy for nearly four years and hadn’t gone back home. Needless to say, all the major ghettos were represented, Chicago, NY, Philly, Detroit, DC, New Jersey to name a few. In the two years that I was on the ship about 5-guys were ‘lost over the side’. That’s ‘government talk’ for murdered and thrown over the side.
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The only guy that was lost at sea that I knew personally was from Garland. He was a real ass and being thrown over the side couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy. He was in the squadrons instead of ship’s company. As soon as he came aboard ship they made him a Master-at-Arms, the sea going traffic cops. He went ‘nuts’ writing people up for minor infractions that Master-at-Arms usually just warned people about.
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He ‘wrote me up’ (put me on report) for something real chicken-shit and got me 2-hours extra duty. A couple of weeks later we secured an area and started moving cases of MK-76 practice bombs. There were two bombs @ 25 pounds each plus the weight of the box for a total of 54 pounds. We were passing the boxes by hand out of a storage magazine, up through a hatch to the next deck and into another magazine on the other side of the ship. I was working on the upper deck near the hatch when one of my buddies down bellow told me the MAA was coming down the passageway. I quickly moved over the hatch so that I could see him walking by. As he walked under me I dropped one of the boxes. I was aiming for the top of his head, but my aim was off. Instead of the top of his head the box crashed into his right shoulder and knocked him to the floor. When he looked up there I was my grinning down at him. As he tried to get up, he started yelling about ‘writing me up’. As he got to his feet, my first class petty officer ran up and demanded as explanation as to why he violated the ‘Keep out- moving ordinance’ signs. Because of the danger involved, even MAA must adhere to our restrictions.
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The two agreed that if the MAA didn’t ‘write me up’; my first class petty officer wouldn’t ‘write him up’.
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About two or three weeks later, the MAA took everyone that he’d ‘written up’ to an executive officers inquiry (like a misdemenor court). The XO took one look and sent them all to captain’s mass (felony court), a far more serious trial. When they went before the Captain, He told the MAA that in the two months that he’d been a MAA he’d ‘written up’ more people that all the other petty officers on the ship combined had ‘written up’ in the last year. The only way that was possible was for him to be ‘fucking’ with the troops. He told the MAA that if he eve r ‘wrote up’ another guy while he was on the Shang, he would bust him down low enough that he couldn’t ‘write’ anyone up. Then he had him kicked off the MAA force. That put him back into the squadrons and back to work on the flight deck. The flight deck is not a safe place for a guy with as many enemies as he had to work. He didn’t last two weeks before he was mysteriously lost over board about two o’clock in the morning.
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One night I was waiting in the coffee mess to take over the ‘magazine security watch’. When the watch guy came in, he was as pale as a ghost and scared out of his wits. He’d just been forward on the port catwalk checking a magazine, when he saw two guys arguing. Not wanting to get involved, he hung back in the dark until they finished arguing. As he stood there watching, one of the guys knocked the other one down and started kicking him. When the guy on the floor was unconscious, the other guy picked him up and tossed him over board. Judging from who the two guys were, I’m pretty sure that the fight was drug related. They were probably fighting about who was going to control the drug trade.
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There were two or three other guys lost over the side while I was aboard ship, but I didn’t know them or why they went over the side. Being on my ship was a lot like being in prison. You had to be very careful who you disrespected.
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