Mutinies

By Frederic W. Burr

A young naval officer comes to grips with his feelings about racism, and struggles to resolve the conflict between the needs of his family, and his career. Based upon real events, it is clear that race problems in the US Navy were unresolved in the mid-1970's.

Lieutenant (junior grade) Mitch Payne reports to the USS Scarslund, a Navy destroyer long past its prime, ready to work hard and restart his stalled career. He has to navigate treacherous wardroom politics, even as building racial tensions on the ship deteriorate.

Everything comes to a head when all of the black sailors stage a massed disobedience of orders which hazards the ship. Payne, as the ship's legal officer, is then drawn into the Navy's prosecution of the ringleaders. The Navy's ham-fisted efforts to expunge traces of its discriminatory past, very similar to the discredited critical race theory of today, are also described in acid detail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederic W. Burr
• Release date: Jan 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9798223300434

Frederic W. Burr

A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Fred enlisted in the Navy at the age of seventeen, and retired in the rank of Commander in the surface warfare community. He is a graduate of the University of Louisville and the Albany Law School of Union University. Retiring from the private practice of law in upstate New York, Pennsylvania and Kentucky after thirty-six years, he considers himself a fully recovered attorney. Fred and his wife Donna (who also writes) make their home in Kentucky.

Book preview

We all know the Navy is never wrong,

but in this case, it was a little weak on being right.

Wendell Mayes, screenwriter

for In Harm’s Way

Chapter 1

"T here’s your boat," announced the driver, with a chuckle.

I squinted through the heavily tinted side windows of the base shuttle, anxious to see my new destroyer, new to me at least, for the first time. But the only destroyer in the immediate vicinity was an old, beat destroyer. Really beat.

You’ve got to be shitting me, I blurted out, almost to myself.

"Nope – that’s Scarslund. Not what you expected?" Then, he laughed out loud. With his ripped out, grease-stained tee shirt, he looked like he would fit right in on Scarslund. Thinking about how I stood well out of the way as he muscled my gear into the back of the van, so as to avoid getting my uniform dirty, I knew what he was laughing at. He was laughing at me.

I shook my head. She was tied up port side to the pier, and forward of a large tender, the Grand Canyon. From local scuttlebutt, I knew she was in the middle of a tender availability, or a TAV as it was usually called, with the Canyon. So naturally, she wouldn’t be lying in company with the large cruisers, frigates and other destroyers moored further up along the piers, all of them looking smart and seamanlike in their haze-gray paint, bleached white fancy work and polished brass. But still, she looked pretty bad. Her square pilothouse, all four levels from the main deck to the flying bridge topside, was solidly covered with red lead primer, looking like nothing so much as a giant brick. The large blocks of yellow zinc chromate and red lead on the sides of the pilothouse and DASH hangar bay back aft, once intended to house a Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter developed in the late 1950's but now used for storage, did nothing to help her appearance.

After climbing out of the shuttle, I unloaded my soft-sided Valpaks, dress sword and boxes of personal gear onto the pier, unable to stop looking at this boat. She had been so heavily pounded by the seas over her decades of service her steel hull had been deeply pressed into her framing – decks and uprights inside the ship pushed out precisely ordered rectangles in the hull that marched aft before becoming lighter and fading away amidships. Dark rust stains wept down her sides from old stanchion welds.

Three-quarters of the way aft on the starboard side, two sailors wearing Mickey Mouse ear protectors crouched on a suspended platform hanging over the open water and were knocking rust off the side with pneumatic air hammers. Even at this distance, they made so much noise I could barely hear the shuttle start up and leave. From the look of things, they had a lot of work ahead of them. Standing on the pier in the north Florida sun, hot even for mid-April, I wondered about her last thin-hull inspection. I pulled out my transfer orders to check them against the nameplate to make sure I had the right ship. Unfortunately, I did.

In the sixties, the Navy had taken its older destroyers and put them through a program called Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization, FRAM for short, to squeeze a few more operating cycles out of an aging fleet. Scarslund was a perfect specimen of a FRAM destroyer. I knew from the hull number on my orders she was an older ship, but I never expected something this . . . bad.

For the past two years, I had been assigned to a squadron commodore’s staff, inspecting a clutch of older tankers and oilers. With seven years in the enlisted ranks, plus three more as a commissioned officer, I felt pretty much committed to a twenty-year career. But having to cut my first sea tour short, to deal with my wife’s antipathy to the Navy, and her emotional issues, made a successful career in the surface line a long shot. I had briefly flirted with the idea of the JAG Corps, even to the extent of getting a deferred acceptance to law school, but the Navy shot down my request to take a leave of absence. Those slots were for officers with much less service time than me. I had no choice but to take another sea tour to try to get things back on track.

My detailer assured me I was still a viable commodity in the surface warfare community. Then, displaying that perverse wit appreciated only by naval bureaucrats, he gave me orders to a certified rust bucket. This was not one of the Navy’s newer destroyers, or even a fast frigate, what used to be called destroyer escorts. Most likely, I got this assignment because I was halfway to a twenty-year career and a pension. I had only two choices — take it or leave it. And leaving it wasn’t really an option. This tour, as far as my career was concerned, was make or break.

When I received these orders several months earlier, I casually observed, while riding in the car with Judith — never Judy or Jude, just Judith, thank you — that for the next two years, I would probably be away from home more than I would be there. It was all I had to say to give her the nudge. She conveniently decided, without even a moment’s hesitation, to take our children, Jeremy and Lisa, to her parents’ home in northern Pennsylvania.

As much as I would miss the kids, I could at least concentrate on doing really well over the next two years. I intended to approach this assignment with the dedication of a seminarian. Not having to put up with Judith whining about my having overnight or weekend duty, moaning about the next deployment, criticizing the Navy, disparaging my career, or ridiculing my uniform, — Quit walking around in here like you look like something, was one of her favorites — would be a bonus. And if she needed emotional support, who better to help her than her parents? I was happy to pass that job off on them.

I had enlisted at the age of seventeen, having barely made it out of high school, F being the predominant mark on my final transcript. But during my senior year, I read a biography about a Navy three-star admiral who grew up in circumstances not unlike my own, enlisted in the Navy out of high school and who eventually became Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, which suggested a career in the Navy had lots of upside potential. At least I knew enough to realize I needed some direction when my adoptive father died shortly after my sixteenth birthday. His wife made no secret of her willingness to be shut of me. So, shortly after high school, with nothing else going for me, I signed up. Getting selected, after only three years in the Navy, for the program that led to my commission, and a bachelor’s degree while on active duty no less, was nothing short of a miracle.

Judith and I were just nineteen when we met, and not quite twenty when we married. She was on her own, working as a clerk-typist in the liberal arts department of the Tidewater Community College; I was a baby sailor (as she liked to refer to my days in the enlisted ranks – probably knowing how that drove me crazy) stationed nearby at the Little Creek Naval Station. Both of us, lonely in life for our own reasons, were desperate for somebody, and getting married, like most ideas that turn out to be really bad, seemed like a great idea at the time. And during the first few years, we couldn’t get enough of each other. She acted like she accepted my career goals, and maybe she believed in them as well, at first. But once I became an officer, she decided she would never be a Navy wife, as if that was synonymous with mindless drudge. For these next two years, I felt set free.

While Scarslund seemed worse for the wear, she was a destroyer, my ship of choice. Her classic lines stood out, even through all the red lead and zinc chromate. The profile was low to the water, lean and mean, with twin gun mounts fore and aft, and twin four-inch barrels, not the puny three-inch single-barrel mounts they were putting on the newer frigates. The ASROC launcher between her stacks, twin torpedo tubes port and starboard up front on the O-1 level, along with air and surface search radars aloft completed the picture. She sported two rows of service ribbons painted on the bridge wings, including a Meritorious Unit Citation, Combat Action Ribbon and Vietnam Service with combat star, and other awards. This old girl had acquitted herself well in the service of her country.

As I got closer to the brow, as the Navy called the gangplank for reasons I never understood, my first impressions were sadly reinforced. A first-class petty officer, more or less on watch, leaned against a plywood podium perched on the quarterdeck. A dozen or so black enlisted men were flaked out on the foc’s’le, their eyes shut against the early afternoon sun, boom-boxes all tuned to the same station and thumping at maximum volume. All of them were in working dungarees and open shirts, some with bared chests, others with sparkling white T-shirts, still creased from Navy Exchange packaging.

Such a display on a U.S. Navy man-o’-war would have been inconceivable to me during my years in the enlisted ranks. It had been drilled into me as a seventeen-year-old seaman that one did not skylark, loaf about, or grab-ass in public. Polished brass and a crew’s smart appearance made the ship run better. At least that’s what had been drummed into me in boot camp.

The brow was standard Navy issue — narrow, worn aluminum treads with chain between the uprights to serve as handrails. The pier-side end was perched on a ramshackle stack of wooden pallets, while the shipboard end was casually tied on with some small stuff. I left my luggage and boxes close to the brow and stepped up on it. It shifted under me with each step. I held my breath, expecting to make it on to the ship, but not certain of it. On the ship, equipment was lying out all along the aft weather deck — valves, disassembled machinery, pumps and so on, all headed for the Grand Canyon. Little buff-colored repair tags wired to each piece of gear fluttered and whirled in the hot breeze. Every piece I could see was coated with grease.

I wanted to make a good first impression, so I had splurged, and bought a new service dress khaki uniform to wear for reporting aboard. I took it out of the dry-cleaning plastic barely an hour ago and was giving it up for lost even before reaching the quarterdeck. When I reached the shipboard end of the brow, I saluted the national ensign flying aft, as smartly as my footing allowed, turned to face the quarterdeck, saluted again, and requested permission to come aboard.

The first-class petty officer reluctantly roused himself and looked around for the rest of his watch section while returning my second salute. I informed him I was reporting aboard for duty. He took my packet of orders and records as his messenger sauntered up, slurping an RC Cola. His fingernails were coal black; dirty yellow hair fanned out from under a grimy white sailor’s cap, and his boondockers looked like he had just put out a brush fire with them. I doubt they had ever seen shoe polish or a buffing brush. Uniform standards on Scarslund did not appear to be taken seriously.

Critter, said the first class to his subordinate, take this here jay-gee to the wardroom. Then go bring his gear on board. I suppose jay-gee sounded better than junior grade, but I would have preferred the full "lieutenant jay-gee."

Critter stuck his soda on the shelf inside the podium and motioned for me to follow him. Instead of an easy walk forward on the main deck, he took me through the hatch behind the quarterdeck and darted forward through the centerline passageway at top speed. His nickname made sense as I chased his retreating back, scraping my shin on a hatch combing and grazing my new gabardine cover on overhead cables trying to keep up. I could hear him chuckling under his breath as I followed in the dark. The tiny fluorescent lights overhead were less than useless, squeezed into place amidst all the cable runs, pipes and conduit taking up all the space above my head. I tucked in my arms to avoid hitting my elbows on the damage control fittings, call boxes, racked fire hoses and axes mounted on the bulkheads to either side and managed to mostly keep pace. But I was breaking a real sweat.

Just as we were about to run out of passageway, he drew up short at a dirty gray door hung across the forward corner and sporting a highly polished brass plaque inscribed OFFICERS’ COUNTRY. The door itself was covered with uneven layers of grimy haze-gray paint slapped on over years of disinterested application. Critter slammed his hand twice on the door, flung it open, stepped quickly out to the weather deck and was gone. Whoever was in the wardroom would hear loud banging and see the door flung open, to reveal only a sweaty, over-dressed junior-grade lieutenant standing there. Catching my toe on the door framing, I stumbled into the wardroom in my typical klutz fashion. At least I caught my hat as it tumbled forward off of my head.

A group of five or six junior officers were bunched around a corner of a small table on the port side, hovering over a seated lieutenant commander, which was probably the Executive Officer. They all briefly looked up at me, reminding me somehow of the painting The Mayflower Compact. Stacks of forms were the focus of their interrupted conversation. I got only a fleeting glance before they all turned back to business.

As I looked around the room, I was first struck by the slant of the massive dining table. Since the deck was at a grade from the aft end of the space to the forward end, whoever sat at the lower end of the table must wear a lot of meals in rough seas. At the aft end of the wardroom was a large metal buffet with the standard twenty-five-cup coffee pot in service. I drew a cup and lifted the lid on the sugar bowl, standard heavy Navy sterling of course. A cockroach quickly skittered out from under the bowl and across the fingertips of my other hand. Swallowing hard against a tight feeling high in the back of my throat, I set the lid down. I forgot about the roaches. On a boat this old there must be millions of them. Sailors going ashore from older ships routinely flicked their index fingers at the top of their pants pockets from inside to out, to dislodge any roaches trying to hitch a ride off the boat.

When Scarslund went through her FRAM upgrade, someone had tried to make this a nice-looking space for the officers’ mess, but no one had given it much thought since. Under foot, the glued-down carpet tiles might have been a dark red at one time; now they were mottled burgundy. The sectional sofa on the bulkhead opposite the dining table was upholstered in a black Naugahyde with some red design flecked through it. The laminate paneling, probably intended to make the space look like a gentlemen’s club, was peeling in spots. High in the corner over the seated lieutenant commander, a large television set was bolted into a crude metal frame. The space seemed slightly cooler than the passageway, so there had to be an AC vent somewhere.

Thinking better of the coffee, I turned back around as the other officers slouched out of the wardroom, some of them glancing sideways in my direction. The lieutenant commander came towards me, right hand outstretched. I concentrated on my grip, while thinking this guy, with his dark mustache and well-trimmed goatee setting off his dark brown, almost black, eyes, did not look like a typical mid-grade naval officer. Uniform Regulations specified all facial hair be neatly trimmed; most officers so inclined wore a mustache, like me, and stopped there, except for a few rebels who made it a point to wear full beards. I didn’t know anyone who sported a goatee, even if regulations seemed to permit them. He smiled broadly.

Hi, I’m Mike Planter, Executive Officer. And you are, . . .? Planter knew exactly who I was. I had already written to him on my planned reporting date. Like most officers who were formerly enlisted, I was meticulous in the etiquette of being a naval officer, probably because my commission meant more to me than it meant to NROTC graduates or to trade school officers, the term derisively applied to graduates of the Naval Academy (with palpable envy by their fellow officers, including me). I had even gone so far as to buy the book, Etiquette for the Naval Officer, and practically committed it to memory.

Mitch Payne, sir. Mitchell. Um . . . Mitch. Planter’s grin broadened, deepening already pronounced crow’s feet, while I tried to get my first name right. Reporting from ServRon Two staff.

You’re not excited about being here, are you? Planter asked.

I had asked for an Adams or Spruance class destroyer, I admitted. At that moment, diplomacy seemed impossible. Goddamn detailers, anyway. I wished I had even a chance of getting that job, just once, so I could screw them all . . . with their pants on.

Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Planter responded. FRAMs are a hell of a lot of fun, much more maneuverable than those newer jobs. They don’t make them like this anymore. I bet. You’ll like it here, just give it a chance. He glanced at his watch. The Captain wants to meet you soon as you arrive, so let’s go topside.

Planter talked fast as he jammed his piss-cutter, one of the Navy’s less coarse terms for a barracks, or a fore-and-aft cap, on his head at a rakish angle, then charged out of the wardroom and up the ladder leading to the O-1 level. I puffed slowly up behind him, nearly tripping on the treads that were steeper than they were narrow. Planter was waiting for me on the next deck.

This is the skipper’s inport cabin, he whispered, knocking on the door across from the ladder. This door, unlike its less fortunate twin below, was out-of-the-box brand new; even the brass doorknob was polished to perfection. The passageway outside the door was well lit, and the linoleum tiles on the deck were waxed and buffed to a high gloss. With the door to the weather deck latched open, and a comfortable breeze blowing through, the whole area seemed light and spacious. I could almost forget the large blocks of red and yellow primer covering the outside of the ship, and the sailors working with air hammers back aft on the other side. As XO rapped on the door, I looked down on the pier. My gear, everything I would call my own for the next two years, seemed like a very small pile of trash dumped in amongst all of the crates and stacks of supplies to be loaded, hardly worth hauling aboard. But I could see Critter walking out to the pile to do just that.

The skipper opened the door and asked us in. With his clean haircut, gunmetal grey hair and eyes, and smooth shave, Captain Gregory was the epitome of a senior naval officer, unlike XO who looked like an entertaining rascal pretending to be a naval officer and having a good deal of fun at it. After introducing me, XO seemed to want to bow as he backed out of the stateroom but thought better of it in mid-crouch. I tried to look around without being obvious. The skipper’s inport cabin seemed as big as the wardroom. The overhead light fixtures were real, not the little toy fixtures everywhere else. Brass table lamps even! The bulkheads were freshly painted with a nicely finished coat of soft yellow. The standard-sized couch and armchair were upholstered in dark brown leather. In one corner, I glimpsed what looked like a private head with a stall shower. The pale green carpet had the cushioned feel of a thick pad underneath.

Sir, have a seat, invited the Captain, with an artificial courtesy that made me instantly uncomfortable. I settled cautiously into one of the armchairs, miserably aware of the sweat collecting on my forehead and ringing my shirt collar. The skipper sat in the other chair, leaned over towards me, and said, with no hint of expression whatsoever, I understand you were turned down for the JAG program at your last command. Are you glad to be back at sea, or disappointed?

As he intended, I was caught off-guard. The Commodore at my old staff job must have ratted me out. Maybe the Old Man thought I was less than enthusiastic about sea duty, which was the truth, at least as far as this boat was concerned.

No, Captain, not disappointed, I said, trying not to miss a beat. "I’ve actually missed being at sea, and I look forward to being Navigator on Scarslund very much." Which was true, at least the part about the Navigator’s job. I had requested that billet when I asked for sea duty, and my detailer told me it was a done deal. I had always thought navigation was the only job in the Navy