A few days ago (I started writing this on May 22, 2020) I decided to watch “Thirteen Days” for the 2^nd time. Each time I think about this event and my experience of it, the context changes. My own aging and learning, the changing context of a changing world, and of course the “what ifs” occurring and recurring in different forms as our world scenario and international relations change. Realizing that Memorial Day was coming up, and having told this story in bits and pieces and returning to it again and again, now seemed the time to attempt a comprehensive tale.

Watching “Thirteen Days” I realized how different my view was from what was happening with those in charge. I also realized that I’d really never asked my friends or family or anyone not militarily involved how they felt and reacted as the news broke. I remember how I felt in high school when my history teacher talked about an aircraft carrier having accomplished its mission if it was able to launch its aircraft before being obliterated. That was back when we thought in terms of nuclear annihilation – of hiding under desks and bomb shelters – the true role of carriers had not yet emerged.

Nevertheless, I enlisted in the Navy. What led up to that is another story but it turned out to be a good choice. I wanted to be a photographer and I got my wish.

Fresh out of boot camp and photo school, I was 19 when my first inkling of something being up appeared. All I remember is being assigned to shepherd several crates of 9 1/2” and 70mm rolls of aerial film to NAS Cecil Field in Florida. I don’t know why we referred to the big stuff in inches back then – later it was 241 mm.

When I arrived at Cecil I noticed a lot of activity but not having been there before, I didn’t know that it was unusual. Still, the intensity my superiors expressed and the tension I felt was a pretty good clue. I vaguely recall helping load some magazines and other activities but more than anything the roar of RF-8 Crusaders all around.

I’d seen my first RF-8 on my arrival at NAS Pensacola, where the photographic school was located. The image of it is embedded in my mind as it roared overhead in a continuous aileron roll. Talk about “boring holes in the clouds” - the pilot was showing off and rubbing it in that I could never do that. 20/200 vision was the official reason but even then I knew my general lack of the “right stuff” was the real reason. The end of my connection with the Crusader didn’t come until 1987. That too might be another story.

Back then the photo Crusaders were known as F8U-2P. The “F” being “Fighter, the “U” was the manufacturer’s code for Chance Vought, and the 2P was the 2^nd photo version. As it happened, aircraft naming conventions were in transition when I showed up, so we had to learn both systems. Fortunately, being an aviation enthusiast for a long time, a lot of it was already familiar to me.

The blurred memory of that trip fades into what I think may have been my chance meeting with Senator Margaret Chase Smith. So much of this “movie” is vignettes, almost like childhood dream-memories. A picture of the ramp and RF-8s (or F8U-2Ps), some building and I think loading magazines. No memories of talking with or meeting anyone. No memory connecting that scene with my return to NAS Norfolk.

Yet somehow I did return. This may or may not connect with another memory which is quite vivid in places. I recall somebody signing me up for a “hop” - often orders stated “fastest means possible” or something like that, so we’d try for a hop on a military aircraft but were authorized for commercial if all else failed. Why I have that particular picture I don’t know – a high counter with a status board somewhere.

Narrowing it down a bit, I often flew out of NAS Jacksonville. Sometimes Charleston AFB. Most of those trips though I was not alone. This one I was, which makes me link to this hop to the Cecil Field mission. Whether I took off from Cecil or had gone to Jacksonville, I don’t know.

When I boarded the plane, a Navy R4D though, I was surprised to encounter not only forward-facing seats, but wood paneling. I knew right away it was a VIP aircraft. The R4D was the Navy version of the C-47 or Civilian DC-3. A pretty common form of transportation. Most had seats facing the rear, as a safety feature. I guess the idea didn’t catch on with the airlines. Besides not wanting to suggest to passengers that crashing was not unheard of, they probably wouldn’t have liked traveling backwards. I didn’t know it then, but flying in the Mid Atlantic Air Museum’s R4D, restored as a Vice Admiral’s aircraft, I noticed that it was plush, with forward facing seats, but no wood paneling.

The other clue was the smell of steak. That upset me a bit. I knew a box lunch was the best I could hope for. So I did what I, and most like me did. I went to sleep.

I was awakened by a touch on my shoulder. I looked up and a white-haired lady held out her hand. Dazed as I was, I remember taking it and her saying “I’m Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. Aren’t we having a wonderful flight?” I was stuck for an answer but over the years have decided that it was indeed. She was the first senator I’d met but what’s more was that she was from Maine and I was already enamored of that State from my one visit a couple of years before with my parents. I also was politically aware enough to know of McCarthy and the battle she fought, though only understood it years later.

It seems as though this is the most likely place to fit this anecdote. “The more I learn, the less I know,” as the saying goes. The more I read accounts of that era, the more confused I get with timelines and incidents. I do know that at some point, it happened. I know that Senator Smith was on the Armed Services Committee and likely to have been involved somehow with the goings on of which I was still blissfully unaware.

But not for long. The scary part occurred when I was issued combat fatigues, a Combat Graphic – what we called the “Texas Leica.” The reason for that was it resembled closely the 35mm Leica M-3, only it was 70mm and of course, olive drab. It also resembled the Leica in that it had bayonet mounted lenses and a rangefinder, but also had a spring-wound motor drive and a sports finder. But all this was leading up to something unpleasant. I was instructed that I was on fifteen minute standby. I was to go nowhere without notifying (whomever it was I was supposed to notify). And the clincher – something about Cuba and invasion and if we did I was going with the Marines.

So – after letting this sink in, I dutifully notified whomever and went to a movie. That’s how I remember it, seriously. I don’t remember what the movie might have been.

Thinking about all this, and thinking about the “panic” and diverse reactions of people today to crisis such as covid made me realize that a big difference was that we military had a structure around us and a well-defined role to play. Plus, of course, we were young and indestructible and quite used to doing what we were told from parents, from teachers, and then (ludicrous that some of us joined to get away from the discipline) the military structure, whose sole objective was to make us “fear our Chief (or Sargent) more than the enemy.” I think that’s from “the Face of Battle” by John Keegan.

But it still hasn’t, and never will, “sink in.” In photo school, or instructors took delight in telling us that the casualty rate for photographers was second only to medical corpsmen in previous wars. They even showed us the somewhat famous clip of a cameraman who photographed his own death. It shows him going down as the camera spun around on the tripod. Many of our instructors and senior enlisted men were WWII veterans and were quite good at getting our attention this way. But again, we had a structure. Follow orders. Civilians didn’t and couldn’t know. They tried to go about their routines with an unknown and unknowable fear. Air raid sirens were still a thing back then, along with those other admonitions to not look at the windows and other stuff. It gave people hope, I guess, that they could somehow control some aspect of this mysterious threat. Odd that the “mysterious threat” we now face is more controllable than the more obvious one in 1962. The one that definitely could lead to our non-existence. But if I cease to exist, doesn’t everyone?

It seems I was almost nonchalant about what I was pretty sure would be certain death if we invaded. I had no combat training. A little over a year in the military – boot camp and then photo school. I think I may have been at sea once, on the USS English. I knew nothing, was gullible (sometimes I wonder if the whole thing had been a joke, but no – it was too elaborate), and generally scared of everything. The Bay of Pigs debacle was still fresh. Fortunately I did not know how much nasty stuff was waiting for us in Cuba. Unfortunately it appears those in charge didn’t either. Among the many reasons I chose the Navy was the somewhat lower risk of personal combat. I didn’t account for the close relationship between the Navy and the Marines, nor that fact that even though we were training more and more Marines as photographers, there was still a grand shortage throughout both services. My bad.

The next vivid memory is of gathering in the dorm next to ours – out our door and an immediate left from the passageway. There is a scene in “Thirteen Days” showing a bunch of guys in dungarees and chambray shirts that could have been us. Kennedy made his famous speech and announced the blockade. I don’t remember cheers or anything but could very likely have been. For me, it was probably a huge sigh of relief and maybe a nearly visible departure of fear. I did notice JFKs mispronunciation of “clandestine” but loved him anyway. Technically it was “quarantine.” Not long ago I came upon an 1963 article in my “Naval Institute Proceedings” explaining the implications of the Law of the Sea and why that distinction was important. “Thirteen Days” mentions this several times and yet “blockade” is used by nearly everyone in the commentary. Whatever. I was given a reprieve.

More haze and the weeks go by. The 15-minute thing was lifted and I suppose the news was full of items about Cuba, and according to “Thirteen Days” had been for quite some time. I was oblivious or just have forgotten. The next item was one of our guys, or maybe more, being assigned to a ship on the “blockade.” Being “photographers at large” we went wherever needed. The poor guy or guys was told they’d only be out for a few days and packed accordingly. They returned weeks later. Fortunately the ship’s crews took good care of him/them. This was an example of one of the first things I was taught on that first gunnery exercise on the English. Our badges described us as “...direct representatives of the Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet. Ships and commanding officers are to extend their utmost cooperation...” and so on. Some allowed this phrasing to affect their attitudes. “Prima Donnas” were not well received in the fleet. Stuff would happen to laundry, food… badges were little help in such matters.

The movie fades to gray for a while here. A complete blank, but at some point – my record shows March 5, 1963, so the quarantine part was over. I received orders to the USS Bache, DD 470. This does not jibe with my memories or anything I can find in the ship’s history. I’m still digging, trying to figure out what the mission was at this point. I was equipped with a Pentax 35mm single lens reflex camera. SLRs were new technology at the time. I’m not sure I’d used one before, but as it happens, I’d just read an article in Popular Photography about how they worked. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Usually I’d go aboard a ship in port – at the Destroyer & Submarine piers at the Naval Station (NAS and the naval station were adjoining commands), or at Little Creek amphib base. I’m pretty sure, again since I was alone, that I met the Bache out in the Chesapeake. If so I remember it being “a dark and stormy night” but that may have been partly due to my riding in an landing craft to the rendezvous point where the destroyer was anchored. Transferring from the bobbing landing craft to the somewhat less bobbing tin can was interesting. The feeling was not one of fear – I had confidence that they weren’t going to let me fall in the water and be crushed between the two craft or simply drown from the cold. No – the feeling was more like “extraordinary alert” to a new experience. Our brains retain stuff like that.

The screen goes blank again. I do remember rough water and being on the 01 deck at night. From at least the one trip on the English, and perhaps more, I had learned that I didn’t get seasick outside, but below decks all bets were off. Most of my seagoing activities were limited to a few days – just as I’d get acclimated we’d be back in port and then back out again. This time I’d have a chance to seriously get my “sea legs” but at the moment, I needed the air and visual references. Apparently it wasn’t horribly cold or I’d remember that. I was kind of enjoying watching the phosphorescent white caps when I suddenly went horizontal on the deck and the lovely waves were coming closer, along with the white guard rail. On my back, sliding and flailing. I was suddenly very unhappy.

To be continued…