9

THE  DAY  MURPHY  WENT  TO  LUNCH

            In late 1972, Charles was one of the last batch of youngsters facing the draft in the Vietnam War.  For kids his age, it was a tortuous time to be growing  up.  The 1960’s had spawned a generation of youngsters who rejected old values and sought refuge in drugs, rock music and each other.  And then came Vietnam, spilling the blood of 210,000 young Americans killed or wounded in combat, and corroding  the spirits and patriotism of millions at home.  Many saw military service as a cruel and useless exercise of  what they believed to be an unfeeling and arrogant government.

            Charles did not want to enter service.  Yet he knew that I, as one of the World War II generation, would have virtually died of shame if he had turned tail and run off to Canada as did many kids his age.  Even so, neither he nor I wanted him to have to slog through the rice paddies of Vietnam with those poor brave devils in the infantry. 

            So he started shopping around at the various recruiting offices.  I tried to persuade him to join the Air Force.  To his credit, Charles laughingly recognized this as misguided nostalgia growing out of my time in the old Army Air Force in 1944-45.      

            “I hate to tell you this, Dad,” he said, “but they stopped making B-17’s thirty years ago, and the Germans are on our side now.”

            But the Air Force blew its chance to make an airman out of Charles.  Its recruiters refused to accept any enlistment less than four years.   The Navy agreed to let him sign up for three, and early in 1973 Charles dutifully reported for boot camp at the Navy Recruit Training Center in Orlando, Florida. 

            From the very beginning, it was clear that he disliked every aspect of military life.  In a letter home, he wrote, “They’re teaching us how to handle rifles and do close-order drill and to march through puddles of water, but they’re not teaching us much about ships and things like that.”  This, as it turned out, was an omission the Navy would come to regret.     

            Despite his aversion to military life, Charles did his job and kept his nose clean.  When he finished boot camp, he was ordered to report for duty aboard the U.S.S. Sumter, an amphibious landing ship assigned to Squadron Eight, homeported at Little Creek, Virginia, on the outskirts of Norfolk.  Built in the late 1960’s, the Sumter was a far cry from the slow and cumbersome old LST’s which I remembered.

            Powered by six big diesel engines, the Sumter could cruise at 20 knots.  At least that was the figure the Navy gave.  Anyhow, at this point, the ship’s speed was a moot question. For the first few months Charles was assigned to the crew, the ship remained tied up at her dock in Little Creek.

            Because his fireman’s rating made him part of the ship’s engineering section, Charles was assigned to something called the “A” Gang, which sounded more like an Alabama penal road crew than a ship’s maintenance unit.  Even though Navy officers presumably were not aware of Charles’s penchant for modifying vehicle interiors,  they wisely kept him away from the big, sturdy chair reserved for the captain on the bridge of the Sumter.  So, as far as I know, that chair is still in place, bolted securely to the deck, and the captain does not have to sit on a Safeway box.

             But with the Sumter tied up at the dock week after endless week, the crew had little to do.  This was tough on Charles.  Cursed from birth with an excess of adrenaline, he was bored and restless.  And since Little Creek was only a couple of hundred miles from our home in the suburbs of Washington, Charles would leap into his old beat-up van, gorge it with gasoline billed to my credit card, and pop up at home almost every weekend.       

            “When are you going to sail?” I always asked him.

            “Don’t know,” was his inevitable answer.  “They never tell us anything.”

            This went on for months.  Actually I enjoyed toying with the idea of the experiences which might lie ahead for him.  It was sort of vicarious adventure.  In my Walter Mitty fantasies I have often dreamed of sailing to far-off exotic ports, full of mystery and intrigue and danger.  Even though Charles was growing wearier by the week with the humdrum routine of shore duty, I knew he would be shipping out eventually to some exciting foreign port.  I could hardly wait.

            “Don’t you have any idea where you’ll go?” I would ask.  “There’s a lot of neat ports around the Mediterranean.  During the war I remember some other guys and I got into Naples and--”

            “Yes, I remember your Naples story, Dad,” came the patient reply.   

            “Or maybe the ship will head south and you’ll go through the Panama Canal.  I’ve always wanted to see the canal.  And then there’s Hawaii.  That’s an interesting place.  You might even get a chance to check out the hula girls,” I chuckled,  winking. 

            “Sure, Dad,” Charles sighed.  “Sure.”

            Then late one Friday afternoon my dream came true.  Arriving from Little Creek, Charles pulled his van into our driveway and climbed out with a big smile on his face.  “Great news, Dad!” he said.  “We sail next week.”

            “Wonderful!” I cried.  “Where to--Le Havre?  Rio de Janeiro?”

            Charles shifted uneasily.  “I don’t know how to tell you this.  I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

            “No, I won’t.  I’m just glad you’re finally sailing.  Where are you going?”   

            “Well, we’re bringing the ship to Washington.” 

            “Washington?  Washington, D.C.?  You’re bringing your ship here?” I cried.

            “Afraid so.  We’re putting the ship on public display down at the Navy Yard.”

            My romantic daydreams--my son, the swashbuckling, heroic sailor--were smashed.  Instead of standing gallantly at his post on the Sumter’s heaving deck in the teeth of a fierce Atlantic gale, he would come chugging up the muddy Potomac to a dock in the Washington Navy Yard about a mile from my desk in the Capitol.  I wanted him to go to Hong Kong or Capetown or somewhere.  The Navy, for Pete’s sake, was sending him home again.  Only this time, instead of arriving his disreputable van, he would be coming home in a vessel nearly twice as long as a football field.  There was, of course, some solace in knowing that every taxpayer in the United States would be sharing the cost of the fuel with me.

            At first I was really disappointed that my son’s first adventure at sea would be hardly more than just another trip home.  And then, gradually, a wild idea began to hatch in my mind.  But I wasn’t sure Charles would buy it, so I sat him down for a talk.

            “In my job I work with a lot of fellows in the Navy,” I told him.  “Several of them are very good friends of mine.”  These are the officers, I explained, who work in the Navy Legislative Affairs Offices in the House and Senate.  Their job is to work closely with Congress on legislation and other matters important to the Navy.  The Army, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard also maintain such liaison offices on the Hill, for the fortunes of each of the military services are inextricably tied to the day-to-day actions of Congress.  If an important committee chairman eats radishes for lunch, the Pentagon gets heartburn.  True, the Constitution designates the President as the commander-in-chief of the armed services.  But Congress holds the purse strings.  It is up to the House and Senate to decide precisely how many dollars each of the services gets each year, and to a large degree how they can spend it.  Does the Army need more tanks?  Does the Navy want another nuclear aircraft carrier?  Talk to Congress.  

            Moreover, Congressional offices send thousands of inquiries to the military services each year about individual service men and women.   A soldier’s mama in Muleshoe, Texas, wonders why the Army didn’t give her baby boy the promotion to corporal he was expecting.  So she dashes off a letter to her member of Congress, who immediately turns it over to the Army and demands a prompt answer, which the lawmaker can then forward to mama back in Muleshoe.  With any luck, on election day mama will remember this little favor.

            “So why are you giving me this civics lesson?” Charles wanted to know.

            “Because some of the Navy liaison officers on the Hill have invited me time and time again to take another orientation cruise with them.”

            “Didn’t you take a trip like that several years ago?”

            “That’s right.  You’ve got a good memory.  The Navy flew me and several other Congressional staff people out to visit the carrier Independence in the Atlantic.”

`           “And now you’re thinking about asking them to let you sail with us to Washington on the Sumter?”       

            I smiled.  My son may not be much at decorating the interiors of autos, but he’s no dummy.  “Would you mind if I asked?”  I said.

            “It’s OK with me.”

            “I promise not to try to countermand any orders they give you.  In fact, once we’re on the ship, I won’t even get near you.  I don’t want your buddies razzing you about bringing your Daddy to take care of you.”

            To the Navy, the two most important committees in the House were Armed Services and Appropriations.  Jim Wright served on neither of these panels, but he was a figure of increasing power in the House.  Moreover, as a B-24 combat flier in World War II, he knew first-hand the importance of a strong defense establishment and had generally supported Navy authorization and appropriation bills.  He and all of us of his staff had a good working relationship with Navy liaison officers, and they enthusiastically approved my request to hitch an eight-hour ride on the Sumter.

            Clutching my authorization from the Secretary of the Navy, I reported to the Little Creek Amphibious Base shortly after dawn on May 11, 1973, and was promptly escorted aboard the Sumter.  Even through dwarfed by carriers like the John F. Kennedy, the Sumter struck me as being one bigggg ship.  She is 522 feet long, has a beam of  68 feet,  is powered by those enormous diesels, and has a huge, 30-ton bow ramp for loading and unloading tanks and heavy equipment. On this particular morning, the crew roster called for 12 officers and 210 enlisted people--one of whom, Fireman Recruit Charles Lynam, was destined soon to star in a little drama that might have unnerved John Paul Jones himself.

            Once on board, I made it a point to keep out of the way.  If the captain had resented the Pentagon’s cluttering up his ship with some tall, balding civilian from Congress just as he was busy preparing to sail , I would have understood.  But the captain, an impressive young Commander who previously had served in a variety of important Navy posts ashore and at sea, could not have been more gracious.  After a welcome and a brief chat, he assigned the ship’s executive officer to make sure I had an interesting voyage.  

            After the ship dropped her lines, or whatever ships do when leaving port, the exec gave me a quick tour of the vessel and introduced me to a few members of the crew.  On our rounds, we didn’t happen to bump into Charles.  I had no idea where he was assigned, and I didn’t want to ask.  Even if we had run across him, I had promised myself not to try to talk as long as any of his shipmates were around.  The Sumter was going to be his home, and I didn’t want anybody needling him about bringing his Dad along to nursemaid him.

            From Little Creek the Sumter cruised northward into the lower reaches of Chesapeake Bay, one of the busiest waterways in the world.  Immense ocean-going freighters and tankers churned to and from the bustling port of Baltimore on the bay’s northern end.  In this ponderous navigational revolving door, these mammoth vessels shared the crowded bay not only with each other, but with a beehive of recreational boats, any one of which seemed capable of materializing from almost any direction at almost any time.   On a brilliant spring day like this, the Chesapeake teemed with power and sailboats.  As their skippers savored the sunshine, sipped an occasional beer, and tediously picked their way through this maritime mixmaster, each was aware that a collision might reduce his boat to toothpicks and ruin his whole day.  As I stood at the rail pondering this thought, my friend the executive officer asked if I’d join him for lunch.  

            When we arrived in the wardroom, a half dozen or so officers were already there, sipping fruit juice and chatting while the stewards finished preparing the tables.  As the spotless silverware was being placed on the starched white tablecloths, the exec spoke to one of the stewards.

            “Stevens, go up to the bridge and see if the captain is ready to come down for lunch,” he said.  The steward nodded and left the wardroom.

            For the next few minutes the exec and I made small talk with the other officers.  Learning that I worked on Capitol Hill, one or two officers expressed interest in pending bills, including some that I had never even heard of.  But, as Congressional people sometimes do when they are not likely to be challenged, I graciously offered  masterful assessments of their prospects for passage.  As this was going on, the executive officer spotted Stevens, the steward.

            “Is the captain ready to come down for lunch?”

            The steward looked very uncomfortable.  “I don’t know, sir.  I didn’t ask him.”

            “You didn’t ask him?  Isn’t that the reason I sent you up there?”

            “Yes, sir,” the steward replied edgily.  “But they were having some kind of emergency on the bridge.  The captain was furious.  He was cursing and stamping his feet.  I didn’t figure I ought to ask him about lunch.”

            Stunned, the exec exchanged an anxious glance with the engineering officer.  Slamming their fruit juice glasses on the table, they bolted out the door.  They were gone about 20 minutes.  When they returned, the exec apologized for having left me so abruptly.  Naturally I was curious.

            “Have some kind of problem on the bridge, did they?” I asked.

            “No, sir.  No problem at all.  Everything is fine,” said the exec.  

            This irritated me.  “Look,” I said.  “I’m a guest, and  I appreciate your hospitality.  But it’s obvious that you had some kind of problem.  If you don’t want to tell me about it, that’s fine.  But don’t try to tell me that something didn’t go wrong.”

            The exec nodded.  “Well, we did have sort of a minor problem.  We lost steering from the bridge.”

            “You lost steering from the bridge?  You mean the fellow up there on the bridge couldn’t guide the ship?”

            “Yes, but that wasn’t a serious problem.”

            “Sounds like a pretty serious problem to me.”

            “Not at all,” said the exec.  “On steering, like every other system on the ship, we have a backup system.”

            “A backup system?”       

            “Yes.  In the event of just such a malfunction as this, we have a trained technician on duty in stern steering, ready to take control of the ship at a moment’s notice.”

            “And that’s what happened here--a trained technician took over?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            We had an enjoyable lunch.  Since the exec clearly was uncomfortable discussing the flap on the bridge, I discreetly refrained from pursuing the matter--at least for the moment.  But I was really curious about the malfunction or screw-up or whatever it was that caused the captain to curse and stamp his feet, and I intended to try to find out more.  But by this time, the ship was approaching the mouth of the Potomac River.  The exec had gone on an errand, so I sauntered back up to my spot on the rail.  There, by pure happenstance, I saw Charles, standing alone, on deck about 50 feet away.  I walked over.

            “How’s it going?” I asked.

            “OK...now,” he said.

            “What do you mean--’now’?”                      

            He motioned toward the stern of the ship.  “See that hatch back there?” he asked.  As I nodded, I began to feel vaguely uneasy. 

            An hour or so before, Charles explained, he was called to the ship’s “A” Gang engineering office.  When he got there, a big fat petty officer first-class gave him a three-word order:  “Go relieve Murphy.”

            “I said, ‘Who is Murphy?’”  Charles related.  “He said, ‘Never mind who Murphy is.  Just go back to the after hatch.  You’ll find him in a room three decks down.’”

            Dutifully, Charles trudged back to the after hatch, still uncertain who Murphy was, where he could be found, and what he was supposed to relieve him of.

            For some time, he wandered around in the labyrinthine passageways in the bowels of the ship.  The bulkheads quivered with the noise and vibration of the ship’s two massive propellers flailing the water only a few feet away.  Finally, through sheer luck, Charles happened to open the right door.

            It was a tiny room, filled with wheels and levers and switches--and, presumably, a fellow named Murphy.

            As Charles recounted the story to me, it went like this:

            “I thought you’d never get here,” said Murphy, going out the door.

            “Wait a minute,” Charles shouted over the propeller noise.  “What am I supposed to do?”

            “You don’t have to do anything.”

            “Nothing?  Are you sure?”

            “Oh, well, if the phone rings, answer the phone.  But the phone’s not going to ring.  I’ve been down here two years and the damn phone has never rung.”  With that, Murphy shut the door and left.

            Five minutes later the phone rang.

            “Hello?” Charles said tentatively.    

            “After steering--take control!” commanded an authoritative voice.             

            In the tiny room a red light started flashing and a bell began clanging.

            “Hello?” Charles shouted, trying to make himself  heard over the bell and the propellers.

            “We are going aft--you must take control now,” said the authoritative voice.

            “I don’t know how to take control,” Charles said.

            “You don’t know how to take control?”

            “No, sir.”

            “Is this aft steering?” demanded the voice.

            “I guess so.  I’m not sure.”

            “You’re not sure?  Who is this?” demanded the voice, a bit shakier now.

            “Fireman Recruit Charles Lynam,” replied my son, probably feeling  like he did the day his raft broke apart in the middle of the Potomac.

            “Where is Murphy?”

            “Murphy went to lunch.”

            It’s only my speculation, but this is probably when the captain started cursing and stamping his feet.

            In hardly more than a minute,  half a dozen or so officers swarmed into the tiny room.  Ignoring Charles, they began shouting orders and questions to each other.  Even their frantic shouts were virtually drowned out by the ear-splitting shriek of the alarm bell, which was still clanging and which apparently nobody knew how to turn off.  Overhead the red light continued to pulse, bathing the little room in rhythmic warnings of some type of impending cataclysmic event.  In this surreal scene the officers furiously tried to figure out which knobs and wheels Murphy might turn if Murphy were not at lunch.  At this point Charles got the impression that these officers were only slightly less mystified than he as to the purpose of these devices.  Figuring that he personally could make no significant contributions toward helping the officers solve their dilemma, Charles quietly stepped out of the U.S.S. Sumter’s aft steering compartment, never, ever, to return.

            Later that afternoon, the Sumter, fortunately still afloat and free of collision damage, docked uneventfully at the Navy Yard and Charles spent a few days at home with us.  We looked at The Washington Post the next morning, but found no reports of supertankers or even rowboats being rammed by a U.S. warship in Chesapeake Bay.

            It was about this time in Charles’s Navy career that I began to accept the certainty that the mischievous guardian angel assigned to our son in his teenage years had surely been succeeded by a new, more responsible spirit.  Otherwise the episode on the Sumter might not have ended as fortunately as it did for Charles, and incidentally, for the United States Navy. 

            Moreover, it was clear to me that Charles, now 21, had done a lot of growing up during his first year in the Navy--and so had his father.  For one thing, I had belatedly come to realize how difficult the early 1970’s were for young people--especially young men facing military duty in the Vietnam War.  Torn between loyalty to their country and contempt for what many believed was an unjust war, many turned to drugs, rebelliousness and contempt even for their own families.

            It was a joyous day for Eddie and me when Charles completed his three-year hitch and came home.  One day a few weeks later, while Charles and I were driving to the store, we happened to start talking about Vietnam.        

            “I want to ask you something,” I said.  “Did you like any part of your service in the Navy?”

            “Not much,” he said.

            “Yet you didn’t run off to Canada.  You didn’t try to shirk your duty to the country. You didn’t go AWOL like some of your buddies, and didn’t get into dope,” I said.  “I just want to tell you thanks--thanks for keeping your nose clean, and for doing your job.”

            “I didn’t have any choice.”   

            I frowned.  “What do you mean?”

            Charles looked squarely into my eyes.  “I knew if I didn’t,  you would be ashamed of me,” he said.