Jim Johnson wasn’t a giant of a man, 5’10”, medium build short brown hair, brown eyes, and a light beard all on a canvas of sun-browned skin. A chick-magnet. Like I said, he wasn’t a giant of a man physically, but he was to me. He was my best Navy friend.
I met Jim in the fall of 1964. He was the team leader of the Radioman section in which I was luckily placed. I was a rookie, fresh out of the Great Lakes Navy boot camp, a ball of clay, ripe for being bent, twisted, kneaded, and molded to my new job.
I was sent to an Air Force base on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There was a separate area for Naval Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) operations based in Lajes, The Azores, about 800 miles off the western coast of Portugal, a hotspot for tracking Russian submarines positions.
In the beginning, I was such a raw rookie that I didn’t remember what ASW stood for, though it was printed on my travel orders which I had jammed somewhere into my seabag. It was my first duty assignment, and I was nervous, and a little worried about the unknown experiences that I would have.
When I was first introduced to Jim, my boss in the section, he flashed a sunbeam smile with glowing white teeth and deep dimples imbedded at the corners of his lips. He was seldom without it, and I often wondered if a plastic surgeon hadn’t done it, so that it was a permanent feature of his face, though he could be intimidatingly serious if called for. I saw that only once and was glad it wasn’t aimed towards me. Nothing physical, just a fantastic blender full of similes and metaphors, mixed with witty.
sarcasm and hyperbole, a vocal concoction that shamed one particular, lazy asshole in his section. I was in his section for two years and remember that smile vividly, though I seldom mention him to others who were not in the military. Every Veterans Day, he and two others occupy my mind. Secret fires burn within me, and they get to live another day. It’s private memories that often bring tears pouring from my eyes to blur the visions of closed caskets.
Some of the guys called him ‘Smiley,’ but many of us referred to him as JJ (Jay-Jay). I called him Jim. He didn’t mind any of those names, though there were out-of-earshot jokes about his ‘johnson,’ and whether or not it saluted officers. Jim knew about it but wasn’t offended, saying to me, in a private whisper, “Just the women officers.” He told me to let the guys have their fun. It was harmless unless it interfered with their jobs.
In the beginning he was my instructor. But I found out later, section leaders tend to assign instruction to someone they can trust, but Jim said he instructed every new guy about what and how he wanted things done. So, I had the best instructor. I got ragged on about it, “Jim’s boyfriend,” and shit comparable to that. The envious guys might have been jealous that they weren’t chick-magnets, too. It was something that Jim could have used to retaliate with the wise guys but, again, he was low-key about it, said he didn’t need to show off or brag. The joking didn’t bother him, cool as your favorite ice cream. That stuff might have bothered me, but I thought, If Jim could ignore such stuff, so could I. Then I thought, I never felt how it might be to be a chick-magnet, so, for me, it was a moot point.
I had so much to learn in a brief time that I had to study ASW manuals on my own time in my barracks room. But, to my surprise, I found it all remarkably interesting, and I liked it, except, after a while, the manuals got thicker and more detailed. There was some tedious study involved, but certainly nothing to make me even think, “Fuck this!” Sometimes
Jim would come to my room to check on me. If I didn’t understand something, he’d explain. If he had beer on his breath I’d stop studying and chat with him. I’d listen to his funny stories, especially about when he was a rookie. There were tons of laughter at those sessions, and he didn’t mind laughing at himself. Remarkable guy who saw eventual success after having failures, instead of being defeated and giving up. I took that idea with me to college and to my teaching jobs, not only for me, but for my students who were often angry at themselves for any kind of mistake. I told them that I failed my first driving test to show them that failure is not defeat. But some of them pointed at me teasingly, but all of them laughed or smiled. I found that telling stories of things that I failed, and then succeeded at made them less angry with mistakes.
American, British, and Canadian aircraft had to be monitored. Reports taken of the Russian sub’s positions. These positions needed to be double, sometimes triple-checked for accuracy by comparing them with other recent reports. Then those reports were sent to a dozen or more Command Centers all over the world, especially Washington, D.C. military departments, to Virginia and, of course, the Pentagon. A rumor had it that the CIA had access to these reports, though their routing address was never listed on the list of those who received the report messages.
The FBI was never involved except with deep security clearances. My sister had already informed me that an FBI agent had visited them with what they said were routine questions (My sister and brother-in-law were scared and nervous until they learned what was going on.) They had asked a few routine questions but started asking about my whole history: grandparents, parents, towns lived in, schools attended, any teenage incidents, what organizations I belonged to, my close friends, etc. Those certainly were not routine. Then again it’s not local cops we’re talking about; it’s Federal agents.
Voice commands had to be learned about how to communicate with
different country’s airplanes conducting aerial surveillance. I had to learn an alphabet soup list of three- and four-letter acronyms. Morse Code was necessary because when all else failed, The Morse Code was relied on. Harsh weather didn’t affect its transmission or reception. I needed to learn to operate the tall transmitters and receivers, I needed to learn the codes for sending diverse types of teletype messages, I needed to double check all teletype messages for addressee errors, where a certain place was supposed to get messages of that type, but didn’t, then I would have a copy sent to them. A record was kept of who was sent the message, why, what day, what time, and the name of the section leader. It was not at all uncommon to have twenty to thirty addressees on a single message.
The civilian planes and ships were monitored for Morse Code emergency messages, but that involved commercial ships that were sinking or had a fire. There were a few of those, but I never experienced having a civilian airplane emergency. [I still perk up and become alert when, on radio, TV, military-oriented movies, documentaries, etc. the SOS (Save Our Ship. S = … O = --- S =…) is indelibly etched into my brain.] So are the words of Jim Johnson.
Sometimes I’d hear Jim giggling, sometimes loudly as he looked at me and what I was doing. I was running back and forth doing the jobs of the teletypewriter person, The Morse Code person, and the audio military aircraft messages person. The other guys laughed, too, until months later when I could do the job as well as, or better than they. It was all a hazing process where the new guy to the team was made to look awful. And, yet, when I did make a mistake Jim was at my side with advice. One time a Russian sub was coming so close to our land military base that I got a half-panicked aircraft message and was stammering into the mike. The mike was pulled from my hands and Jim took over. Procedure was followed and all went well but, again, Jim teased me in a friendly way, often with a slap on the back and that famous smile. I’ve got Jim’s face pictured in my mind right now.
Jim handled aloof officers expertly. I’d get nervous, at first. I was a good boy and remained silent. I studied Jim’s approach to overinflated officers’ egos and plagiarized the process for later use. Jim would inform them politely, find out what they wanted, and how quickly his section could do it for them. Only once was an officer offended, and the base commander reprimanded the officer for being rude, acting overly superior when uncalled for, and requesting something to be done for him so quickly that more than one man was kept busy, by his order, and had to step away from his job. The job he wanted done, Jim tried to tell him, should be brought to the 8:00 a.m. morning shift where a phone call will quickly provide the extra men to perform the job.
I nearly shit my pants when I found out that Jim had relayed the officer's behavior to the Lieutenant in charge of the radio shack, who then relayed it to the base commander with an emphasis on harassing his radiomen. That was almost unheard of back then, but we were a close-knit group that worked in an isolated section of the base so the Officers were a little (just a little) like a “Father knows best” character, compared to the strict, officious behaviors on board a ship.
When we heard about it, Jim did an Elvis pelvic twist dance as he tried to sing the song All Shook Up. It was gross, plus he sang like a moose with laryngitis. But it was so funny that we were all in stitches. The pleasant thing about the radio shack security is that you can’t get in unless someone lets you in. There was a thick door with a tennis ball-sized and hardened Plexiglas window that had a sliding cover for us to see who wanted to enter. So, there was little chance of anyone finding out about us letting loose and being silly for a brief time. Often we received a phone call that ‘so and so’ was coming and was allowed entry. Some new officers didn’t like that. Their self-importance got nicked and their attitude got pissy until another officer straightened out the new guy or the “it’s an order” rogue flouting his self-importance, like a bully harassing little kids at the school playground.
Last of all I had to learn how to decode secret and top-secret messages. At first, I didn’t understand why I was there. None of the other guys had that training. They’d never been in the crypto vault. I asked and Jim threw me a knuckleball saying, “When I leave here in a few months, you’ll be the new section leader.”
“Fuck that, Jim,” I stated. “Those other guys have seniority over me. One of them has the same rank. It should be one of those guys. I’m not sure I’m ready for that, and the responsibilities that go along with it. I’m the newest guy here.”
“The lieutenant, I, and the other section leaders chose you. You learn fast, your test scores are higher than any of the other guys and you’re not a fuck-up like some of the guys. Plus, you can do everyone’s job. The other guys are specialists, trained for one specific job, though they can assist with other jobs, and your promotion came through. You’ll be a higher rank than any of the guys in your section.
When I objected, Jim said, “Don’t argue, Bill. This isn’t an arguable decision. You’re going to be the section leader of this group. Like it or not.” That night Jim came to my room as I was listening to Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, but just staring out the window, lost in thought.
“Decoding in the crypto vault is the only thing you have left to learn. Don’t worry, in two years I’ve never had to use it, except at every sixth-month refresher and update class. Listen to me now. Don’t let yourself forget the procedures. The lieutenant can verbally quiz you at any time or he can take you into the vault and say decode this sample message. On a quiet night like the midnight shift, tell one of your guys where you’re going and if he needs you he should bang on the thick door. Don’t just knock, bang on it. Knocks are often unheard from inside the vault. Stay away from that big, red-button thingy. You touch that and within minutes some tough fuckin’ Marines will be here, along with a complement of officers and the base commander.”
So, I learned to decode messages. An aggravating and tedious job of taking the coded message, matching that code with another manual, and then doing it in triplicate. There were other procedures too.
I had studied for my promotion test for a few months, so when I took the test, it seemed easy. I had just about forgotten about it. After my
promotion I became Jim’s official assistant and could take command of the radio shack with my section if, for some reason, Jim couldn’t be there.
We palled around during off-duty times. I went to the gym with him to work-out, but the most fun was going to one of the two base bars. We’d sit at the bar, he’d drink beer, and I’d drink gin and tonic mostly because I didn’t, and still don’t, like the taste of beer. I’d often buy a bottle of ginger ale, ask for a bigger glass, and then water-down the gin. Getting drunk and causing trouble had too many repercussions. Once in a while, though, Jim would get a little drunk and I’d get him back to his barracks. He did the same for me. We got to the point where we even ate together, not alone, but with other friends, mostly guys we worked with. It became a tight group.
Jim always looked forward to the midnight shift due to it being quiet time with much less stress. During those times some of the guys talked about their embellished sexual conquests with the Portuguese women. Some of them had outrageous stories that were too comical to be completely true, but they were full of bullshit entertainment.
The military-related jokes and sarcasm are where Jim and I happily got involved. It was a frequently used pastime for most sailors, land, and sea. It amounted to a radio shack laugh-athon. Often someone would walk away from the group because their laughter was so intense that their stomach muscles cramped so tightly that it hurt. It happened to Jim and me a few times.
I’d been in the Azores for about a year now and grew comfortable with the men and the busy routine. One midnight shift Jim told me that he had volunteered for duty in Vietnam. The Navy was there, but not in a grand way like the Army and Marines. However, the Army needed communication specialists and were enticing the Navy’s radiomen to volunteer at their next tour of duty. It was relatively safe duty, a small base that was heavily fortified and had never been attacked, Jim said. He
showed me some brief articles and pictures that seemed like hype as if volunteering would be a picnic in paradise. Most guys in the military didn’t volunteer for anything. If you were chosen or ordered to do something, then you did it. But Jim felt it was his patriotic duty to help his country in its time of need. Then he could have peace of mind to marry his fiancée and start college.
I stood up shockingly fast, knocking my chair backward, then losing control, I screamed at him. “God dammit, Jim! What the fuck are you doing? Are you that God damned crazy? If you’re ordered to Vietnam, then go, but for Christ’s sake don’t volunteer for one more of your country’s fake, altruistic fuckups!” My teeth were clenched, and my fists were pounding my thighs as I shouted, my voice distorted by clenched teeth but clearly understood. His shocked face, with slightly gaping mouth and shocked eyes stared at me.
Jim looked at me as if he had never met me before, had never seen me like this before, and then nearly fell out of his chair while trying to stand. Off balance. He stared at me, “Jesus, Bill! What the fuck! When you first came here, you were for the Vietnam War. Seems like now this is one of the few things on which we had disagreed. It’s a safe base and I’ll be in a fortified communications center. Fuck, man. It’ll be like watching a war movie safely from your couch.” I went into another room to let off steam. My head felt as if it were placed inside a pressure cooker, and I felt a grand headache being born.
Jim’s request was turned down, so we were free to relax and talk about
his marriage and college plans. He wanted me to be the best man at his wedding. His hometown friends were married and with families, or had moved away, or the friendship he had with them had withered. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ dissolves old friendships easily. When he asked me I readily said yes, no pause at all, just a resounding ‘yes.’ He was from the Scranton, PA area and I was from the Binghamton, NY area, an easy two-or three-hour drive. We were like close brothers who liked each other, not the brothers that are always set against each other. We talked about having families and visiting each other so the kids could be friends, after we were discharged from the Navy. We might even have a family vacation together and rent a cabin on one of New York’s lakes, or a Pennsylvania lake. It seemed like a fantasy to have found a friend that was important to me and to him. He was a brother to me.
When his transfer orders were only days away he informed me that he had, again, volunteered to go to Vietnam. When he said it, I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, my vision blurred, I was so mad. My eyes were inundated with tears, and I wasn’t ashamed of the teardrops pouring down the curve of my cheeks. The feeling of heat in my head made it worse. I sweated profusely. I called him stupid. I apologized a few minutes later. Some of the section guys noticed and passed the word around that I had shocking news, maybe a relative had died. I could see someone peeking around a corner wondering what happened.
“Do your mom and dad, your fiancée and relatives know what you’ve done? Do they know where your next duty will be, after your two weeks at home? This will crush your fiancée. Hell! Did you tell any of them yet?”
“Yeah. I did. They all think I’m stupid, too. I thought, this time, you’d understand. Patriotism is a weak word unless you act on it. I acted on it the way I thought I should. I’m sorry if it affects our friendship.”
“Friends get angry with each other once in a while. I’m thoroughly pissed off at you, you damned jackass. You are way overqualified for that dangerous job. I learned it from you, so I know. Let them teach their guys. Be patriotic at home. Join the American Legion, join and contribute to charities for disabled veterans. Talk to people who want to know what a real patriot is like. Explain it to them. Answer their questions. Support military-related issues, and write articles for magazines. You don’t need to go there to be patriotic. Hell, I’d go if I was ordered, but I won’t volunteer. Shit, Jim. You’ve stepped into the maelstrom of your life.”
“Perhaps. But you may get orders to go there. My skills are your skills, and they need guys like us. Do you know that Marine platoons always have a Navy hospital Corpsman with them to patch them up when injured? Do you know how the Marines treat the Navy Corpsmen? They treat him like a special brother. Well, I’m a Navy radioman and I, too, want to help the troops.”
“Have you ever looked at the spelling of Corpsman? Isn’t it fantastically ironic when you place an ‘e’ before ‘man’? That little coincidence seems ominous to me. It scares me. Do you know who gets killed the most in Vietnam? Not officers, not machine gunners, and not Army medics. It’s the Army’s and Marine’s version of a Navy’s radiomen. The first thing the enemy wants to do in a firefight is to kill the communications operator. How easy is that? Just look for a guy with a square or rectangular backpack and a radio antenna sticking up in the air. It’s like saying to the enemy, “Hey guys. Look over here. Can you see me now? Good. Please shoot me.”
We stopped arguing and remained close friends. In the next couple of days, we never talked about it again. Before Jim departed I wished him the absolute best. He reminded me of my being his best man. I smiled and said, “I’ll be there, buddy. Can’t wait to see the lady who corralled the chick-magnet. I’ll bet she leads you around by your johnson.” An outbreak of hilarious laughter enclosed us like a cloud. Then he was gone.
Jim sent me a letter while he was on his two-week vacation at home. He sent me a picture of his fiancée, plus a ‘hello’ from his lady, and his parents saying they wanted to meet me because Jim was always bragging about what a good friend I was.
A month later I got another letter. Jim was settled in at some base in Vietnam, was in a nice barracks with ping pong and a pool table, plus darts, movies, and a bar. He was having fun beating the guys who thought they were good at ping pong. His letter was light, calm, and happy. I relaxed a bit. In a year he’d be home enjoying married life and attending college. He ended the letter with, “Take care, best buddy.”
Jim Johnson died in Vietnam due to multiple mortar strikes on the communications building at a time when he was on duty. It was November, the day before Veterans’ Day, 1966. He was the first soldier to ever get killed at that particular base. Before that, many had been injured in one way or another, but no deaths had occurred. They had had an exemplary record of ‘No Deaths.’ One that was bragged about. The Viet Cong didn’t seem to be interested in this base of operations. Perhaps they found out that its communications network was more important than they had previously thought.
I attended Jim’s funeral, with his family, fiancée, relatives, and remaining friends. It was a closed-casket ordeal that shocked most of us into a painful silence. I touched the casket. It was cold, yet hot. It sent shivers up my arm, chills up my neck, and a major depression that I’m still dealing with today, more than fifty years after the fact. I don’t like to talk about Jim. It just starts me crying. I tell the VA that I’m depressed about all the deaths I witnessed during my year in a TB hospital, which is true, so I can get my depression medication.
*******
Dear Jim,
I’ve thought about you for over fifty years; what you could have been and done during those fifty years. You certainly would have been a wonderful husband and family man, a great son-in-law, and a superb veterans’ representative.
Thanks for the best military friendship I’ve ever had. I often wish to ask you for advice or simply to have a bullshit session. I’ve gotten fairly good in the bullshit department and jokes (they’re still terrible, just more of them).
I remember your famous smile. Sometimes I see you looking back at me from the bathroom mirror while I’m shaving. Sometimes I whisper to you. Silly, I know, but somewhat comforting.
I used to marvel (and be jealous, in a friendly way) because of the flock of pretty female swans that would always swim up to you at the bar. Chick-magnet. You were a great friend. The best.
Thanks for all those diamond, ruby, sapphire, and emerald memories.
You’re still my HERO,
Wild Bill
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