Another in my series of sea stories that are mostly true.
Tradition is important in the Navy, from uniforms to shipboard protocol. The design of the double-breasted dress blue officers’ uniform has not changed significantly in a century or so. When I was commissioned I had to go into hock to buy the required regalia, including a sword that still hangs on my wall. We even carried, but rarely wore, gloves with the service dress blue uniform.
The Navy has a strict rule that hats are never to be worn inside a building. In fact, the bar of every officers’ club had a sign: He who enters covered here will buy the house a round of cheer. Whenever an absentminded fellow wandered in wearing a hat the bartender rang a bell, cheering patrons ordered a drink and the offender reached for his wallet.
Military appearance was a challenge on a tiny minesweeper patrolling the coast of Vietnam. The ship had no air-conditioning, no laundry, no barber, and was at sea in the tropics for two months at a time. Our uniform of the day was a ballcap, t-shirt, cut-off shorts (khaki for officers and dungaree for enlisted) flip-flop sandals and sometimes sidearms. One of the perks of Vietnam was that the Navy allowed men to wear beards, so we looked like a band of pirates with matching outfits.
Our captain had been an admiral’s aide and tried to maintain some sort of wardroom decorum. At first he required officers to dress for dinner by wearing shirts. This lasted about a week.
Swift Boat base at An Thoi
During one cruise the captain and I went ashore for a briefing at An Thoi, a coastal island in the Gulf of Thailand where a newly established base consisted of Quonset huts, sandbags and barbed wire.
After the briefing we were invited to the officers’ club for a drink. The captain thought the guy was kidding. Such a primitive outpost could not possibly have an officers’ club. Our host ushered us into a Quonset hut with a plywood bar, a fridge and little else. Didn’t look like any officers’ club we had ever seen.
The captain did not believe this was a genuine officers’ club and neglected to remove his ballcap. Suddenly, a guy popped up from behind the bar and banged on a shell casing. The captain bought a beer for all three of us. And swore me to secrecy.