Chapter 4

At sea operations, or ‘war games’ were always a happening thing, though Eddie’s participation was peripheral. Aside from his occasional Combat Information Center (CIC) watches, his duties entailed making sure his division of technicians stayed on top of corrective maintenance of any ‘down’ equipment, and if the equipment was not being used for operations, then preventive maintenance, such as cleaning, alignment, etc. could be performed. His technicians were skilled, but they also had Eddie’s accumulated knowledge and experience to draw from. Eddie was aboard a frigate, and in a battle group, a frigate was used for ‘plane guard’. This meant they would travel behind the group aircraft carrier while they launched or recovered planes. If an aircraft was forced to crash in the water (ditch), the plane guard ship would recover the pilot, and any debris they could manage. The downside of this was the aircraft carrier was able to launch and recover aircraft in almost any weather, but they had to travel ‘into the wind’. In heavy seas, a carrier would choose the best course for operations, no matter the direction of the waves. This left the plane guard detail little choice as to their own course, sometimes causing the much smaller ship to rock and roll to an uncomfortable extent.

After leaving Pusan, Eddie’s ship joined their battle group, for operations in the Sea of Japan, which is notorious for bad weather at times. On their second night of air operations, his frigate, acting as plane guard, was rocking and rolling so badly, several sailors were rolled out of their bunks. On the mess decks, the canned drink machine, which was held in place with welded brackets, broke loose and fell over, damaging it beyond use until returning to a port capable of repairing it. At the same time, in one of the equipment spaces, a locker containing twenty gallons of gray paint, in five-gallon buckets, broke open, spilling all twenty gallons of paint onto the deck which resulted in over an inch of paint sloshing around due to the movement of the ship. It took days to clean it up and make the space accessible. Luckily, the space was not one Eddie was responsible for.

As the war games continued, the battle group maintained a southward movement, preparatory to splitting up into smaller entities to enter their next port of call. Eddie’s ship would drop anchor offshore of Hong Kong.It was a tedious two weeks, though it bordered on boredom for Eddie. He often replayed the days he and Lorna had spent just fucking their time away. What a way to spend the time. He contrasted that to life with his wife, Carol. He knew, if it weren’t for his three kids, he’d have left her long ago. It would have been wonderful to have a wife like Lorna, or probably a dozen of the women he’d had a relationship with. They all seemed in need of attention, tenderness, and frequent sex. He kept upbraiding himself for being an adulterous bastard, but he couldn’t imagine his life without occasional extramarital copulation. He would have surely gone mad. In retrospect, he should have walked out on his wedding night, after Carol issued her manifesto. He thought he could sway her by catering to her every wish, and then she announced she was pregnant, and he knew he was trapped. He wanted to be a real father, not the sperm donor that created life in a woman he could never have, and see a son he knew was his, raised by another man. He had taken leave last fall, to travel to his hometown, just to watch his ‘son’ receive his high school diploma. The boy’s mother saw him there but couldn’t come to him and talk, because her husband was present. It had enlarged the void he had always had inside his heart since seeing the boy at about two years old. These thoughts were coursing through his brain as they prepared the ship for entering the channel between Hong Kong and the mainland.

Although this was Eddie’s first visit to Hong Kong, he had ordered a suit and sports jacket while he was in the Med, supposedly from a Hong Kong tailor. The price had been very reasonable, and the workmanship was, to his inexperienced eye, great. He’d worn both for many years. He was told, by the chiefs on his present ship, that getting a suit made in Hong Kong now, was a very expensive proposition, so he’d decided to skip a trip to the stores which abounded along the main thoroughfares of the business district. Settling on picking up a few souvenirs for the family, he promised Al to go to the Merchant Seaman’s club for a steak dinner. He would have duty at least twice while they were in Hong Kong, and he had no agenda after the first night with Al, and souvenir shopping.