Friday, February 27, 2015

ME AND MIKE

I might have written about him before but, you can take it. We had a great meal out with scientists and engineers so I am reminded again of Mike. He was going to work for me. He was going to be late reporting, on account of surgery. He wrote a letter to the Captain and said that due to testicular cancer he would be late and one ball short.

When he finally showed up, he was enormous. Huge. Youngest of 14 in his family. Nice young man.

As it happens, shortly later, we went to the Tanker War for a bit and looked for mines. Mike was my DCA on both ships. As it happens, we were both sipping coffee in the wardroom as the ship prepared to get underway from BASREC, Bahrain when the Captain's voice came over all the speakers on the ship and demanded to know, who peed in his coffee cup. The voice assured us that there would never ever be any liberty again and life would surely dry up and blow away if the man who peed in his coffee cup did not immediately reveal himself.

Srsly, it was a timeless moment. I kind of nodded and said, "you" and he kind of nodded and said, yep.

4 comments:

OldAFSarge said...

Heh, I like Mike. That's a classic.

Ex Bootneck said...

A real man would have drunk it, and asked for a refill (or at least quietly ditched it, and hoisted in the reason behind it.) Was it a deserved act?

HMS Defiant said...

He was one of those guys I knew would go far.

HMS Defiant said...

Well he evidently did it on the bridge shortly after we pulled in for a week long availability and the cup was never the same after that. This skipper was one of the three worst I had and I worked for a lot of COs over the decades.