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USS English (DD-696)
USS Yosemite (AD-19)
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Last BloodA couple of days in the Navy life of B.R. Wade, Jr.
On 13 January 1970, I woke up in the sickbay of the destroyer tender USS Yosemite AD-19 in Mayport FL with my right hand in a bandage and arm in a sling hanging above my chest from wires. Not a good way to start off the day, but at least I was alive. The pain in my hand told me I was very much alive. I had enlisted in the Navy just a few months prior, and having completed boot camp was sent to the reserve training destroyer, USS English DD-696, for a couple of weeks of additional training. The English was a WWII destroyer that was on its last legs in the US Navy. It was used as a training vessel so recruits could figure out port vs starboard and fore vs aft before getting assigned to a fighting ship. When I reported aboard, I was assigned to the weapons section where I spent a lot of time the first week oiling and then wiping down the 5"-38 guns (DD-696 had three turrets which each contained two of these guns), carrying ammo from one turret magazine to another for some unknown reason, and scrubbing the outside of the turrets with a hand brush. I also had the "fun" of standing a boring quarterdeck watch from 2000-2400 hours on 12 January 1970. The quarterdeck is an old Navy term dating back to when the captain commanded his sailing ship from a raised deck behind the masts. From this higher than the main deck position, the captain could see the enemy better. Today, the quarterdeck is the reception area of the ship when in port. Permission to leave or come on board is granted by the officer manning the quarterdeck. We were tied up outbound from the USS Yosemite which was alongside the dock. All I could see for the first three-plus hours of that watch was the side of the gray hull of that big beast. So with nothing much to do that late at night, I struck what I thought was a jaunty nautical pose with my thumbs hooked into the front of the white duty belt I had to wear to tell the world I was part of the watch, and stood silently by the aft 5"-38 turret. With only 15 more minutes to stand watch, I was looking forward to hitting the rack for a few hours of sleep. Sleep had its own challenges since a large pipe ran lengthwise down my rack giving me about 10" of clearance above my nose. One does not sit up quickly in destroyer's sleeping spaces. As I said, it was mostly boring duty popping to attention, saluting those coming on board, etc. But it got a bit more exciting in the last half hour of the watch when a gunshot rang out disturbing the quiet night. The Officer of the Deck (OOD), a lieutenant, agreed with me that it sounded like a gunshot, but the petty officer on duty thought it was a truck backfire. I think he watched too many old movies where this was a common explanation. After a moment or two of discussion, I realized my right hand was hurting. Looked down, I saw blood running off my hand dropping onto the deck. In typical Navy fashion, I yelled, "Oh, shit, I've been shot!" And in proper Navy fashion of accurately documenting all things happening on the quarterdeck, the petty officer noted in the ship's log that "Seaman Recruit Wade, messenger of the watch, shot by sniper fire and he yelled, 'Oh, shit, I've been shot!'" I used my handkerchief to help control the blood flow, the OOD got on the phone to the captain, and the petty office kept nervously looking around waiting for another shot to ring out. It was quickly decided by the executive office (OX) - the captain was ashore for the night - that the OOD should drive me to the base hospital immediately and the XO took charge of the quarterdeck. After removing the makeshift bandage from my hand, the doctor on duty discovered that a bullet had entered my right ring finger below the knuckle and had traveled down through the bone toward the fingertip stopping just before hitting the nail. An x-ray showed a lot of bone bits and a nice little bullet inside a battered finger. Surgery was quick as the doc sliced open my finger from knuckle to the next joint and extracted the bullet. He followed tradition by dropping it into a metal pan with a loud clunk. It looked like a .22 round and my bone had not deformed it. Hate to admit it, but even with several pain-killing shots in my finger, pulling the bullet out was painful! Washing out all the bone bits was not a fun thing either. He bandaged my hand, put me in a sling, and administered some pain pills and antibiotic injections. Then said his job was done. The doc told me he was glad my hand was in front of my gut since pulling a bullet from the intestines was such a nasty job. I suddenly felt very lucky! He and the OOD decided the sickbay on the USS Yosemite would be better for my overnight care. So the lieutenant and I headed back to the docks and checked into the sickbay of the Yosemite. I did not get much sleep that night. Not only was the pain keeping me awake, but so did the visitors. First to make a social call was a nice agent from NIS - Naval Investigative Service. Little did I know then that I would later be assigned to NIS - the old name for the current NCIS - and have lots of great stories to tell from that period in my life. After the "tell me exactly what happened" question, he asked additional standard questions . . . did I have any enemies in Mayport? Do I have any problems with other sailors on the USS English? Or the Yosemite? Know anyone who wanted to kill me? How did I know it was a gunshot? He seemed satisfied with my answers and left about 0200 hrs. So I laid there thinking about all the questions the agent had asked, and realized the shot could have only come from the USS Yosemite. And he had been aiming at the center of my body obviously to do harm. The angle of the wound entry pointed to someone on the main deck shooting down at me. Someone on the same ship were I was now reclining in discomfort in an empty sickbay. Then my mind started churning . . . had I inadvertently made someone mad in the few days I had been in Mayport . . . mad enough to shoot me? Would they try again? Now besides the pain, I had another good reason not to sleep as I kept looking over my shoulder. But before I could ponder too much about all that, another guy in a suit dropped by for a visit. This time, it was an agent from the FBI. These guys do a great job of flipping their credentials open and closed quickly. His interrogation was a rerun of the NIS agent's visit starting with a demand to go over what happened in detail, and then asking very similar questions to the NIS agent. After going over it twice, he finally departed and I let exhaustion and pain killers take me off to sleep. Morning came quickly after only a couple hours of sleep. The doc who needed to release me from sickbay did not do so quickly. He unwrapped my hand, checked the wound, and bandaged it again before letting me go. It was midmorning when I left the USS Yosemite to cross back over to the English. As soon as I got back on board the English, the OOD demanded to know where I had been. The Captain (Commanding Officer, aka the CO, aka the skipper) had been waiting to see me and no one seemed to know where I was. So much for the previous OOD from last night finishing up his report and telling everyone I was on the Yosemite. More than likely, the report was done and the current OOD had not read it. Anyway, expecting to face a copy of Humphry Bogart from his role as the angry Captain Queeg in the movie The Caine Mutiny for being UA - unauthorized absence, I followed the OOD to the wardroom. The wardroom is the place where officers hang out, drink coffee, and have their meals. The OOD told the captain I had been found and the captain ordered me to come in. My only though was I am doomed. The captain and the XO were there. I came to attention and stated my name followed by "reporting as ordered, sir." The captain responded "at ease" and asked if I wanted coffee. Based on the OOD's attitude, I sort of expected a keel-hauling for being late. But the captain was kind, he served the coffee, and we all sat down to talk. I didn't see any angry looks or rattling steel ball bearings, so I hoped I was not too deep in trouble. He started the conversation by saying his last tour before taking charge of the English had been off the coast of Vietnam and he was happy that while they had shelled the coast many times, they had not received any fire back. But now here he was in seemingly safe Mayport, Florida and getting sniper fire! Then he and the OX had a good laugh while I sat there still wondering if I was in trouble. Just as with the NIS and FBI agents, he wanted to hear about the entire situation in great detail. The XO was taking notes for a report to go along with that of the various agents. After listening, they asked some of the same questions as the agents, but unlike the agents, they asked about my hand, surgery, pain level, and prognosis. The CO asked if I had any questions. When I asked if a Purple Heart was coming, he said "no, that is only issued in a combat zone." To which I said, "sir, when they are shooting live ammo that should be considered combat." Through his laughter, he agreed my logic was sound, but said the desk jockeys in D.C. would not. The visit to officer's country ended well as they shook my good hand and wished me well. Reporting back to the chief in charge of my division, I again had to go into detail about what happened. He was not very sympathetic to my pain, and as therapy, allowed me to go back to scrubbing the guns with just my left hand. I finished my last week on the USS English telling my story to many in the crew who had heard rumors and wanted the real story. I did not see them, but heard that there were divers in the water around the ship later that week looking for a weapon. I had no further contact from the NIS or FBI agents and headed back home to await my call to active duty. Why was I waiting, you might wonder? When I enlisted, the recruiter asked if I wanted to make a career of the Navy. Since that was not my plan, he suggested I skip the six-year active duty hitch, and join the Navy Reserve. In the Reserve, I would go to boot camp and spend two weeks on a reserve training ship, then attend weekly drills at the reserve center for about a year until I was called up for two years of active duty. After that, I would have inactive reserve duty until my six-year enlistment was over . . . unless the government needed my services again and called me back to active duty. That is the plan I chose. And it was during the time between training on the English and getting shot, and shipping out for the two-year active portion of my enlistment that the story continued. One day in the late spring a telegram arrived ordering me to Mayport Naval Station on a specified date to appear as witness at a court martial. Ah, ha . . . someone had been caught! Again, my mind went back to the The Caine Mutiny. With court martial scenes from this great movie in mind, I could easily imagine what was going to be happening soon in the court martial. I would testify. Evidence would be admitted. Justice would be done. At least it was nice to believe that. Visiting Mayport was radically different this time. Since I was not on active duty, I was treated as a civilian and not a lowly Seaman Apprentice. Yes, I had sewn on another stripe since January. I was given a room in a motel for visiting civilians and not my old bunk on the USS English . . . she was gone by then anyway having been sold off to Taiwan. And I could wear a civilian suit and not my Navy uniform. The JAG lawyer who was the prosecuting attorney called me into his office to go over all that had happened since January. Divers had found a .22 caliber handgun in the water around the USS Yosemite. The bullet matched that gun. The NIS investigation uncovered a witness who had heard the black suspect bragging about shooting "a whitie in the light." A second witness had seen the suspect with the revolver. And several others had confirmed that the suspect was angry all the time about all the injustice being shown blacks. From all indications, this was simply a racial incident and I just happened to be an available target. Bottom line; I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attorney went on to describe how the proceeding would go, and asked me to go over all the details of the incident again. He then read to me the charges against the accused which included possession of a firearm aboard a Navy ship, discharging that weapon, attempted manslaughter, and a few others. From all indication, there was a dishonorable discharge and a big chunk of prison time in that guy's future. The next morning I was sitting outside the court room waiting to be called in. The prosecutor came by and said that all was ready to go and I would be called later. But less than an hour later, the door opened and an attorney lead a black sailor out. The sailor looked at me and said, "Hey, I didn't shoot you" and kept on walking. The prosecutor came out and asked that I join him in his office. Frustration shown all over his face as he told me what had happened in the court room. Seems the suspect had been in the brig since they caught him in January. And he was not a well-behaved detainee. His worst transgression of many while in the brig was that he had started a riot which resulted in burned mattresses and some minor injuries to others. As punishment for that, he was placed on bread and water for several days by the officer in charge of the brig. The prosecutor explained that the defense JAG lawyer pressed for an immediate dismissal of all charges due to pre-trial punishment. Here in America, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. And only after being proven guilty can a person be punished. The fact that the brig punishment was for a riot and had nothing to do with the shooting was immaterial. He had been punished before the trial and that was that! The judge agreed. The sailor was allowed to walk free and resume his duties. As I drove home to Tampa from Mayport revisiting all that had happened in my mind, I thought back to the song from Arlo Guthrie, "Alice's Restaurant," and the line at said "that it was a typical case of American blind justice." At least my frustration of not seeing justice done in my case was softened by the sad humor of it all where a bad guy can get off scot-free by committing another crime! Over the years, I thought about all this many times. Hard not to since I see the scar and stiff, misshapen finger every time I look at my hand. I did find out the sailor's name and home of record while I was there in Mayport. And while I have been in that area of the country quite a few times in the past, I resisted looking him up. I can only hope that he regretted what he did, and if not, that punishment will be handed out eventually. The USS English was decommissioned on 15 May 1970. It is strange to think that my blood was probably the last spilled in anger on the decks of a ship that had seen action in WWII, Korea, and participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And she helped train thousands of sailors for the fleet. It saddens me that such a fine ship was the scene of a racial incident. But I have a smile as I think that somewhere in a little-used government warehouse, probably stashed between the crates holding the Ark of the Covenant and parts of the Roswell saucer, is a crate filled with log books from the USS English. And in one of those log books, posted on the evening of 12 January 1970, is my quote now filed away. While it is not as impressive as quotes* from John Paul Jones or David Farragut, I can live with that.
* Admiral David Farragut - "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" Seaman Recruit Billy Wade, Jr - "Oh, shit, I've been shot!!"
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