It is fair to say that Hart hated us. He had acute tunnel vision as he focused, often to the exclusion of all else, on our flawed characters. He knew what we were doing, and he was consumed by an intense desire to apprehend us in midcrime. With any luck, he would rid the Academy of our odious presence. He couldn’t stand the sight of us, and believed me to be the worst of a very bad lot. At times, his loathing was comical.
Every company officer was obliged to host the members of his company in their last year, inviting them in small groups to dine at his quarters. The implicit purpose of the custom was to provide us with a little practical training in the social graces before we began our careers as officers who would be expected to know our salad fork from our soup spoon.
No doubt Hart had by this time wearied somewhat of chasing us, but his contempt for Frank, Jack, and me was still palpable. Nevertheless, he couldn’t contrive a legitimate reason to refuse us our moment at the Hart dinner table. Accordingly, the three of us and our other, more respectable roommate, Keith Bunting, were invited to join Captain and Mrs. Hart for dinner on a pleasant spring evening in 1958. We anticipated the experience with a mixture of amusement and dread. We did not find very appealing the prospect of spending several hours awkwardly pretending to enjoy the company of a man who clearly despised us. But on the other hand we expected the evening to have enough entertainment value to provide material for a few jokes when it was over.
Before the event we laughed while conjuring up the image of our earnest company officer temporarily suspending his blind hatred of us to help us grasp the rudiments of gentlemanly deportment; watchfully presiding over the table; fussing over deficiencies in our table manners; noting whether we navigated the cutlery correctly and whether we paid the lady of the house the proper amount of formal deference; weakly attempting clever repartee; raising his glass aloft and booming, “Gentlemen, the Academy,” or “the Corps.” As it turned out, the captain had planned a considerably less ostentatious affair than we had imagined.
At the appointed hour, Captain Hart picked us up at Bancroft Hall, and drove us in silence to his home, where we presumed Mrs. Hart awaited our presence at her table. When we arrived at his quarters, we naturally headed toward the front door. Hart commanded us to stop. “No, gentleman, come around here,” he ordered. He led us around the house to the backyard, where a picnic table had been set for dinner. The grill had been lighted. Hart entered his kitchen through the back door. He returned a moment later with hot dogs, beans, and a few bottles of Coca-Cola. We ate the meal in silence, quickly. No formalities were observed. No toasts to the Academy or the Corps. No strained attempts at witty dinner conversation. No Mrs. Hart. A half hour after we arrived, he loaded us back into his car and returned us to Bancroft. Quite an etiquette lesson.
To Hart’s severe disappointment, I managed to remain at the Academy despite what he perceived as my seditious intentions. For all my antics, I avoided accumulating the number of demerits required to discharge a midshipman from further service. My grades were usually poor, but, as I had at Episcopal, I showed greater aptitude for English and history, subjects I enjoyed.
The eminent naval historian E. B. Potter was one of my professors, and I liked him and his classes very much. For my term paper in one of Professor Potter’s classes, I chose to write about my grandfather. In preparing the research for the paper, I had written Admiral Nimitz to ask for his impressions of him.
I received a very prompt and generous response from the then elderly national hero. He wrote me that my grandfather had been a great man who had contributed significantly to our victory in the Pacific, but he devoted most his letter to a detailed account of the days he and my grandfather had sailed around the Philippines on the Panay as very young men at the beginning of their long and distinguished careers.
I recall the term paper only with embarrassment for its clumsy prose and poor scholarship. But I still feel pride when I remember the kind and generous regard that the old admiral lavished on my grandfather’s memory, and that I faithfully recorded for Professor Potter, who had written extensively about both men and knew more about my grandfather’s career than I did.
Unfortunately, the curriculum at the Academy was weighted preponderantly toward math and the sciences. Indeed, in those days, all midshipmen were obliged to major in electrical engineering. I struggled with it, possessing no special calling to the trade. Nevertheless, as I was adept at cramming for exams, and blessed with friends who did not seem to mind too much my requests for urgent tutorials, I managed to avoid complete disaster. I got by, just barely at times, but I got by.
–– CHAPTER 12 ––
Fifth from the Bottom
I am sure my disdainful contemporaries and disapproving instructors believed I would become a thoroughly disreputable upperclassman were I somehow to escape expulsion during my plebe year. Most of the time, my behavior only confirmed their low regard for me. For a moment, though, I came close to confounding their expectations. That moment began when I boarded the USS Hunt to begin my first-class cruise to Rio de Janeiro in June of 1957.
The Hunt was an old destroyer. It had seen better days. It seemed to me a barely floating rust bucket that should have been scrapped years before, unfit even for mothballing. But I was ignorant, a sailor’s son though I was, and I overlooked the old ship’s grace and seaworthiness. I assumed the Hunt was suitable only for the mean task of giving lowly midshipmen a rustic experience of life at sea. I was wrong.
We lived in cramped quarters in the aft of the ship. We kept the hatch open to cool our quarters with the breeze blowing off the Chesapeake Bay. Once the Hunt left the bay and entered the Atlantic, the seas grew heavier and seawater washed in through the hatch. We lived in the pooled water for several days. The rough seas sent a good number of us running for the lee side to vomit. We had restricted water hours on the cruise, which meant there was only enough water to allow us to drink from the ship’s water fountains during a three-hour period every day. We took saltwater showers.
We spent a third of the cruise in the engineering plant, a grim place that seemed, to the untrained eye, a disgrace. The boilers blew scorching hot air on us while we spent long hours in misery learning the mysteries of the ship’s mechanics. That the ship sailed at all seemed to us a great testament to the mechanic’s mates’ mastery of improvisation. It was a hell of a vessel to go to sea in for the first time.
We spent another third of the cruise learning ship’s navigation, and the last third on the bridge learning how to command a ship at sea.
The skipper was Lieutenant Commander Eugene Ferrell. He seemed to accord the Hunt affection far out of proportion to her virtues. More surprisingly, he seemed to have some affection for me. He expressed it in eccentric ways, but I sensed his respect for me was greater than I had lately been accustomed to receiving from officers. I appreciated it, and I liked him a lot.
I spent much of the cruise on the bridge, where the skipper would order me to take the conn. There is a real mental challenge to running a ship of that size, and I had little practical experience in the job. But I truly enjoyed it. I made more than a few mistakes, and every time I screwed up, the skipper would explode, letting loose an impressive blast of profane derision.