RHIP "rank hath its privilege"

When I was assigned to the Yorktown as G Division Officer. I was made the "driving officer." As a new W1 (Warrant Officer), they figured that would be a good experience. I was responsible for the ships vehicles, and parking places, etc. Also I had to provide my ordies (ordnance personnel) as drivers, where-ever we went into port. One morning about 4 am, I was awakened by a very irate Commander.

He proceeded to yell and scream at me in the worst way. What would you think his problem was? I had trashed his state room or something. Turns out his parking place was one spot down from another Commander. But that other Commander was junior to him. (promoted to the rank of Commander after this one) The "senior" Commander didn't want to walk one extra parking space if it meant that his parking space was one further down from a more "junior" Commander.

I was in 2nd division for a time and when we were in port in Hong Kong or somewhere I was assigned to be a "Sideboy." That meant I had to get all dressed up in my whites, put on my ribbons and stand there with a bunch of other boats. When a dignitary or some other important person came aboard the Yorktown we would line up and salute him as he walked through out two lines and as the Boatswain of the Watch would blow his boatswain whistle.

So a small but fiery Commander is there...he's giving me hell for hair too long.. giving another sailor hell because he was wearing a loose fitting charm bracelet, another was slouching too much and so on and so on with every one of the side boys.

Another Commander came by and saw this and said "Got the duty today Commander?" The surprised reply, "No, I've got liberty, today but I wanted to come up here and square things away on the quarter deck."

Another time, I was OOD (Officer of the Deck) in Singapore. I got a call from the American Ambassador about a problem that some of our sailors had caused. When I tried to call the XO (Executive Officer), his line was busy. So, I told the boatswain mate of the watch to lay below and notify the XO that I was holding a phone line from the American Embassy. A few minutes later, the XO came storming up to the quarterdeck and proceeded to yell at me and cuss me out, and how dare I a lowly warrant officer summon him to the quarterdeck. Before I could say anything (I still was holding the phone in my hand), he stomped back down below.

I turned to the BM of the watch and asked him what he had said to the XO. He just shrugged his shoulders and said the he told the XO that the OOD wanted him on the quarterdeck. I directed the BM of the watch to lay back down to the XO's office and notify him politely that I was still holding a call from the American Embassy. A few minutes later the XO came stomping back up, grabbed the phone out of my hand and had a nice polite conversation with the Ambassador. Then he hung up the phone and went below, without saying another word or apologizing to me. I found out that the very worst officers in the navy for the most part, were Cdrs who had been passed over for Capt.

I can only write about my first, second, and third deployment to Vietnam aboard the Yorktown during 1965-68. Can't say anything about all the other deployments after 1968. During my time I know we had two types of fighter aircraft aboard. George is the man who knows what squadrons they were, all I know is one plane was a prop fighter I think was called a Sky Raider and the other was a jet called an A-4 Sky Hawk. I seem to recall we had 3-4 of those aboard.

The reason I'm writing this is I knew one of the jet fighter pilots. He was a tall guy from Texas named Lt Diaz and I met him in CIC. He was on some sort of secret mission and would prep for it for hours at a time while sitting at one of the long range air search radarscopes located by me. All of us were told he was authorized to be in there and to give him space and don't ask any questions. This was a very unusual arrangement and maybe why I remember it all these years later.

The Lt and I would chat a bit from time to time while at our scopes and sometimes he would ask me questions about the North Vietnamese fighter jets I was tracking. He would fly a mission then show up a day or so later in CIC with a little smile on his face and go right back to his work. That went on for a month or two then I never saw him again nor heard anything about him or his mission. I hope it was mission accomplished and he's alive and well to this day.

We were in the office part of the Photolab after hours and the old salts (who had been in the Navy over two years) were talking about how nice it would be to land in Yokosuka Japan.

One of them said, Ya know, Bernath has never HAD a Japanese girl. Their pussies are sideways, not up and down like white girls.
I said, "Oh Bullshit!!!"
So they all were APPALLED by my ignorance and pulled me into the inner office of the Photo lab and there was PH2 Borovoy.
They had me by the arm as they dragged me across the highly polished hatch and yelled at Borovoy, "Tell Bernath which way the Jap pussy goes!!!"

Borovoy looked up from his work and with a bland expression on his face and saying nothing he put the palm of his hand flat and made a side to side gesture as his hand slide back and forth in the air at about eye level.

All my buddies then yelled, 'SEE...WE TOLD YOU...JAP PUSSY IS SIDEWAYS!!"

I still was skeptical but had no ammo to fight this unanimous pronouncement.