The story below is yet another chapter from my novel Olongapo, which I hope to soon publish.
The story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.
John Bland’s Scam
The plan was for high school dropouts, convicted offenders offered the military or prison, low IQ people, and other less than desirable military recruits to join the military. The project was the brainchild of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1966 and was designed to bolster the ranks during the Vietnam War.
I was scheduled to leave the Navy on February 9, 1972, but sailors stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk were separated early in December of 1971 before Christmas. This had less to do with a Holiday spirit than the idea that the Navy wanted the “short timer” sailors off the ship and out of the Navy before the aircraft carrier sailed back to Southeast Asia for the new WESTPAC (Western Pacific) Vietnam combat cruise.
There were six of us in the Communications Radio Division who fell into this category. I was one and John Bland was another.
On the Friday before our separation date on the following Monday morning, Chief Helm told us that we had weekend liberty, but we had to be back on the ship by 0700 on Monday morning so we could be given our final papers and pay.
I made plans to visit Los Angeles with Mike Hunt, who was from the City of Angels. Hunt, a 3rd Class Radioman who signed up for the standard 4-year enlistment, was pissed off as he had joined the Navy before me and now, he saw me leaving before he did. He said he was not pissed at me, but he was not looking forward to a third WESTPAC cruise, with long periods at sea on “Yankee Station” in the South China Sea in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam.
I took a shower in the division's compartment and as I was getting dressed in my civies, John Bland, a stocky seaman two years older than I with light brown hair, a flat face and shifty brown eyes, whom I disliked, approached me. He asked if he could borrow $20 from me.
No, I snapped, before he could launch into his spiel. I disliked Bland. He was a scheming, conniving low rent con artist. Despite my blunt negative answer, Bland went into his act. He said that he had sent all of his last pay to his family due to an emergency, and now he had no money for the weekend.
I was not moved, as I had heard this bullshit before. Bland was always trying to scam people over small things. One division wit stated that Bland mourned four grandmothers in the course of a year.
“We get out final pay together on Monday morning and I’ll pay you back then,” Bland said.
Perhaps because I was so happy to going home to South Philadelphia, or perhaps there was no way he could duck me, as we were all due to collect our final pay in cash before we left the ship, I pulled out my thin black leather wallet that held my Navy ID card and my cash and I handed him a $20 bill.
Hunt and I had a great weekend in LA, and we returned to the USS Kitty Hawk at 0600 on Monday morning. I showered and changed into my Navy Blue dress uniform and shook hands and said goodbye to Hunt, Dino Ingemi and the other good friends I made during my time on the carrier.
The sailors being separated from the Navy that day met in the division’s supply office where Chief Helm gave us our separation orders and final pay. Bland was not there.
I was not the only one asking about him. Chief Helm explained that Bland had seen the division’s commander and pleaded to be allowed to go home early. He told the commander that his girlfriend had written him a “Dear John” letter, stating that the wedding was off and she was going away with another man.
Chief Helm told us the commander agreed to let him go early, because he believed the sob story and, frankly, the chief said with a smile, because the commander did not like Bland and wanted to be rid of him.
The five of us being separated that day were angry. I discovered that Bland had approached all of us and told the same sob story and each of us had loaned him $20.
“I’m sure that son-of-bitch left on Friday thinking he got over on the Navy and over on all of us,” a sailor named Duggin said.
“Well, he has to live with his miserable own self for the rest of his life,” another sailor named Bucknell said. “I would not trade places with him. It was worth 20 bucks not to see his ugly face and miserable attitude on this very joyful day.”
“I hope his plane crashed on the way home,” Duggin said.
"That’s not right,” I replied. “We should not wish for a plane to crash that would have also killed innocent passengers. But I can wish that Bland had been sucked down into the airliner’s toilet and dropped out of the plane from 35,000 feet.”
That got a big laugh.
Like Salvatore Lorino, a South Philly corner boy I knew slightly from our neighborhood before we entered the Navy at the same time, Bland was linked coincidently to me for my entire two-year enlistment.
Lorino, Bland and a dozen other young men raised their hand along with me and swore allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and the United States at 401 North Broad Street, the old induction center in Philadelphia.
We were then taken by bus to the North Philadelphia train station, and we boarded a train bound for Chicago. I didn’t know Bland, who was from Darby, Pennsylvania, so I didn’t talk to him on the train. I sat with Lorino, who was five years older than I, and we spoke of friends we knew in common.
We boarded a Navy bus at the Chicago train station, and we were taken to the U.S. Navy Recruit Training Center at Great Lakes, Illinois, more commonly known as “Boot Camp.” I recall that it was a very cold day.
After a week at a temporary barracks, the company was split up in two and Lorino went to one company and I and Bland went to another.
In that first week, when we were yelled at, cursed and insulted by a half-crazed drill instructor and forced to do physical things we would have thought impossible only a week before. I grew very quickly to dislike Bland. I was not alone in that assessment. Lorino hated him.
“He thinks he’s slick,” Lorino said to me.
Lorino,
who was six feet tall, lean with black hair, rugged features and a long
face with a perpetual lopsided grin that served to either charm or menace, was a genuine hoodlum
who was in fact quite slick.
Lorino
was not angered by Bland’s hustling. Lorino was offended that Bland was such a
rank criminal amateur. It offended his sense of professionalism.
Lorino heard Bland tell people that he was from Philadelphia. Lorino did not like the idea that he was in any way associated with such a whiny loser, so he confronted Bland in front of other recruits and upbraided him for falsely claiming to be from Philadelphia.
"I’m from the Philadelphia area,” Bland said in his defense.
“Then say you are from the Philadelphia area,” Lorino replied. “Asshole,” Lorino added for good measure.
We all laughed.
I didn’t have much to do with Bland during Boot Camp, although I often heard other recruits complain about his borrowing money and not paying anyone back, or his minor swindles, but after graduation, I discovered that he, like me and Lorino, received orders to report to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, which was then undergoing an overhaul in Bremerton, Washington.
Recruits who enlisted for a full four years received orders to an “A” occupational training school. McNamara Misfits like Lorino, Bland and me were sent straight to the fleet.
The three of us were taken by bus to the Chicago airport where we all caught a flight to Philadelphia. Lorino and I shared a cab home. Bland later told me he hitchhiked and caught a ride home.
After a week’s leave, the three of us flew from Philadelphia to Seattle, Washington. There we were scheduled to board another plane to Bremerton, Washington. I thought we were to board another large aircraft, but we were directed to a field where there sat a small, four-seated propeller plane.
“I used to own a plane like that when I was a kid,” I told Lorino. “I operated it from remote control.”
The
small plane took off with me in the front seat next to the pilot and Lorino and
Bland in the back. The plane seemed to hit every air pocket and would drop down
violently while our stomachs appeared to remain at the higher attitude. It was
rough flight.
About halfway to Bremerton, Bland threw up into an airsickness bag. The smell in the small plane was overwhelming and nearly made me sick. Lorino threatened to throw Bland out of the plane.
Thankfully, we landed soon afterwards in what looked like a pumpkin patch. From there, we took a cab to the Bremerton naval base next to the Puget Sound.
My father, a WWII Navy veteran, took me to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for the commissioning ceremony of the USS Kitty Hawk when I was 11 years old.
With fond memories of the new carrier that I saw at the commissioning in my head, I was somewhat disappointed as I looked up at the ship and walked along the port side of the ship tied to the pier.
The
aircraft carrier looked like it was hit with a bomb. The carrier, sans aircraft
or an air wing group at this point, was in major disarray. The Kitty Hawk was
undergoing a major overhaul in Bremerton, Washington and it appeared that the ship
was being taken apart and put back together.
Bland,
Lorino and I walked up the enlisted brow and reported aboard at the ship’s
Quarterdeck. As we waited for an escort to take us to the ship’s personnel
office, Bland quipped, “Hey, look at us! We’re the three Musketeers.”
Lorino
walked away in disgust.
Our
escort, a young seaman, showed up at the quarterdeck and walked us through the
maze of hallways (called passageways in the Navy) and upstairs (called ladders
in the Navy) to the personnel office.
A
2nd Class petty officer looked at our orders and said that he too was from Philadelphia. He looked at his co-worker and said, “No Philly “home boy” is
going to be "mess cooking" while I’m in charge.”
He
explained that all seamen and seamen apprentices spent their first 90 days on
the carrier working as mess cooks before they were assigned to a permanent division.
Mess cooking was a dirty job with long hours, cleaning up after the ship’s cooks
after every meal.
Instead,
we were assigned to the Special Services Office, where they needed manpower to
run TV/Radio cable through the ship. We were the first warship to have cable TV
and radio.
It
was not a bad job, and we only worked eight hours a day while mess cooks worked
about 16 hours a day.
As
the overhaul was coming to an end, we were told that the Kitty Hawk would be
sailing from Bremerton to San Deigo, where the carrier would go to sea five
days a week with the aircraft doing flight operations, and the crew performing fire,
damage control and other drills in preparation of our upcoming Vietnam combat
cruise.
I
was looking forward to sailing to San Deigo. One day during our afternoon chow
hour, I walked off the carrier and took a walk around the navy base.
About
an hour later, I walked back to the pier. To my shock, the Kitty Hawk was no
longer at the pier.
Shit,
I thought. I wondered if the Carrier had set sail for San Deigo and no one had
told me.
I
sat down on a shipping crate, looked at the vacant pier and pondered my fate. I
heard much talk about the carrier sailing to San Deigo once the overhaul was
completed, but I didn’t recall anyone saying that this day was the day.
I
thought of what the penalty was for missing ship’s movement, which I knew was a
serious offense. I was worried. I was a seaman apprentice, “lower than whale
shit,” as the saying goes. Could I be busted in rank? Tossed in the brig?
Kicked out the Navy?
But
mostly I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to be ridiculed and thought of as a
stupid “Boot.”
I
was only 17, but I thought of myself as a street-smart South Philly kid, and
although I had only been in the Navy a few months, I thought I knew a lot about
the Navy. I learned a good bit about the Navy from my Navy veteran father, my
many conversations with former and active-duty sailors, and from my voracious
reading about the Navy.
Yet
here I was sitting on the dock of the bay like the Otis Reading song, wondering
where my ship had gone. At that time John Bland showed up.
“Where’s
the ship?”
“I
don’t know. I wonder if it took off for San Deigo.”
“And
left us here? Fuck, we’re fucked!”
Bland
began to pace and whimper and cry softly.
I
was about to turn myself in to the first Navy chief I saw, when I saw the Kitty
Hawk coming back.
I
was elated.
The
tugboats helped the carrier return to the pier and backed the aircraft carrier
in, stern first. Apparently, the carrier had pulled out to go to wider water so
the ship could maneuver and then return to the pier and be tied up on the
starboard side.
As
my terror subsided, a joke ran though my head - the ship's captain realized I
was not aboard, and he turned the carrier around to come back and get his
missing seaman apprentice. I also then thought of
the expression, “missing the boat.”
For
a brief awful time, I thought I did in fact miss the boat.
For the next year and a half, I had a great adventure. In between long periods on Yankee Station off the coast of North Vietnam, we made port of calls to Honolulu, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Sasebo, Japan and Subic Bay/Olongapo in the Philippines.
In December of 1971, I said goodbye to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and flew home.
And I never saw John Bland again.
Note: You can read the first chapter of Olongapo, called Butterfly, via the link below, and at the end of Butterfly are links to other posted chapters from the as yet unpublished crime novel:
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