The Enterprise, sailing at full speed under nuclear power, was the first U.S. carrier to reach waters off Cuba. For about five days, the pilots on the Enterprise believed we were going into action. We had never been in combat before, and despite the global confrontation a strike on Cuba portended, we were prepared and anxious to fly our first mission. The atmosphere aboard ship was fairly tense, but not overly so. Pilots and crewmen alike adopted a cool-headed, business-as-usual attitude toward the mission. Inwardly, of course, we were excited as hell, but we kept our composure and aped the standard image of a laconic, reserved, and fearless American at war.
After five days the tension eased, as it became apparent the crisis would be resolved peacefully. We weren’t disappointed to be denied our first combat experience, but our appetites were whetted and our imaginations fueled. We eagerly anticipated the occasion when we would have the chance to do what we were trained to do, and discover, at last, if we were brave enough for the job.
We remained in the Caribbean for another two or three months. We did a lot of heavy flying, landing at various Caribbean nations, and our accident rates began to increase. Our commanders arranged for the pilots to get some R&R, and I soon found myself boarding a carrier Onboard delivery plane for four days of fun in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Shortly after I got back to the ship from my Jamaican holiday, the Enterprise left the Caribbean and returned to port in Norfolk. A little while later, I embarked on my last Mediterranean cruise, an event that marked the end of my days as a completely carefree, unattached, and less than serious Navy flyer.
My newly formed professional aspirations were not as far-reaching as were my father’s as he diligently pursued flag rank, single-minded in his intention to emulate his famous father. Certainly I would have been proud to achieve the feat myself, but I doubt I ever allowed myself to daydream about someday wearing an admiral’s stars.
I had, by this time, begun to aspire to command. I didn’t possess any particular notion of greatness, but I did hold strong notions of honor. And I worried that my deserved reputation for foolishness would make command of a squadron or a carrier, the pinnacle of a young pilot’s aspiration, too grand an ambition for an obstreperous admiral’s son, and my failure to reach command would dishonor me and my family.
Despite my concerns, I resolved to follow the conventional course to command. With the country at war, that course led to Vietnam. The best way to raise my profile as an aviator, perhaps the only way, was to achieve a creditable combat record. I was eager to begin.
More than professional considerations lay beneath my desire to go to war. Nearly all the men in my family had made their reputations at war. It was my family’s pride. And the Naval Academy, with its celebration of martial valor, had penetrated enough of my defenses to recall me to that honor. I wanted to go Vietnam, and to keep faith with the family creed.
When I was a young boy, I would often sit quietly, unobserved, and listen to my father and his friends, who had gathered in our home for a cocktail or dinner party, reminisce about their wartime experiences. They talked about battles on sea and land, kamikaze attacks, depth-charge attacks, Marine landings on fiercely defended Pacific atolls, submerged battles between submarines, gun battles between ships of the line—all the drama and fury of war that most kids went to the movies to experience.
But the men in my house who spoke about war did so with an unstudied nonchalance, a style reserved for commanders who had long ago proved whatever martial virtues their egos required them to possess. They did not bluster or brag or swap war stories to impress each other. They talked about combat as they talked about other experiences in the service. They talked about the lessons of leadership they learned and how they could apply them to current situations.
They talked about how their commanding officers had performed in battle, who had been the most capable and steady leaders, and who had not measured up to the demands of their offices. It was evident in the way my father’s friends talked about my father, especially those who had served on submarines with him, that they revered him as a fighting commander. They treated him differently, more respectfully, than they did one another. They often regaled a party with descriptions of my father biting down hard on an unlit cigar in the middle of a fight, unafraid and intensely focused on destroying the enemy.
They talked about how the men under my father’s command had been affected by combat, and how my father had inspired their confidence in his leadership. They remembered how my father had quieted his crew’s fear by making clear to them that he cared about them, respected them, and would show them the way to fight the Japanese without getting them all killed. They made military life seem more exciting and attractive to me.
They were proud veterans of an epic war, and they never felt the need to exaggerate their experiences. They took dramatic license only with stories about their days away from combat, when they were sent to distant, sometimes exotic, more often bleak refuges for a few weeks’ respite from war. Midway Island loomed large in their personal folklore of war, and they seemed to take a curious pride in having endured its charmless environs, a pride they displayed more openly than their pride as conquerors of a formidable enemy. My father often sang to us, and sometimes quietly to himself, the ditty he had sung so often in war, “Beautiful Midway,” seeming to recall in its incantation some memorable irony of battle.
He also often recounted, with more humor than embarrassment, an occasion early in the war when he and my grandfather were both briefly on leave and had accepted my invitation to address the students at my grade school in Vallejo, California. Both men liked the idea of appearing before a group of admiring kids as father and son warriors and bringing tales of courage and adventure to impressionable schoolkids. My grandfather spoke first, my father in the front row watching him. He had become accustomed during the war to public speaking and had inspired a number of audiences with stories from the Solomon Islands campaign. He would bring them to their feet with tales about great naval battles; about the gallant Marines who held their ground and beat the Japanese in the enemy’s preferred form of warfare, jungle fighting; and about his intrepid pilots at Henderson Field, who persevered through savage bombing and shelling.
This time, however, was different. The tender youth of his audience seemed to distract him, and rendered his usually robust delivery a little flat. His found it difficult to give his usual rousing call to arms, filled as it was with ridicule and scorn for the enemy, and laced extensively with profanity for punctuation and emphasis. He had always prided himself on his rough ways, as a man for whom salty language had always been a perfectly serviceable means of communication. Now he was knocked off his stride as he searched for ways to commend to a group of children their fathers’ courage in language their mothers would approve.
My father watched his father’s discomfort with obvious amusement, at times laughing out loud as the old sailor struggled to find some way to hold his audience’s attention without resorting to impolite language. Further confounded by his son’s delight in his dilemma, he abruptly ended his remarks without ever having hit his high notes. But his wit had not entirely deserted him. He concluded his speech by gesturing toward my father, who had expected to give the audience a riveting description of his battles beneath the sea. “Now, children, my son will sing ‘Beautiful Midway’ for you,” my grandfather said as he grinned and winked at my father.