"...sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you..."
"I finessed an assignment to Europe by requesting duty in Japan..."
"The Navy had a few bookings on a cruise ship set aside for senior officers..."
NEXT WEEK:
Ah, Deutchland, We Barely
Knew Ye
Te Modo
Ursus Edit
by Jean d'Isle
' 
nce I set
foot in the strange world of clandestine operations I no
longer felt part of the "real" Navy. My
official orders from that time on were no longer
published in 
"The
Navy Times", the weekly newspaper we used to keep
track of our contemporaries; and my temporary orders to
various units were also unusual -- they all had me
serving aboard the "USS CLASSIFIED."
Our small group had 
adopted a Latin motto
which pretty well captured the essence of our work:
"Tu Modo Ursom Edis, Te Modo Ursus Edit"
(sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear
eats you).
And sometimes, in fact, the bear did eat us. A year
after I left the assignment, an officer I took on his
training 
mission ended up in a foreign
prison for a couple of years; and one of the most
talented members of my first deployment was killed, along
with his entire team.
After three years of periodic but extended family separation and many tense moments in the field (and, yes, extra money), I was ready for a normal assignment. Wise to the vagaries of the Navy detailing process by now, I finessed an assignment to Europe by requesting duty in Japan; and in the summer of 1966 we were on our way to Germany.
A little known benefit of that era for a few military
families headed for Europe was the option to cross the 
Atlantic by ship rather than by air. The
military's fleet of transports, under the Military Sea
Transportation Service (MSTS) plied the Pacific and
Atlantic hauling troops, cargo and a limited number of
cabin passengers; but space availability and timing had
to be right to take advantage of this means of travel.
Fortunately, both were right for us, so we were looking
forward to a leisurely August cruise. As our sailing date
approached, things started to unravel. The troop build up
in Vietnam had begun to intensify and Atlantic Fleet MSTS
ships were being reassigned to the Pacific to meet this
requirement. We were assigned no less than three
different sailing dates aboard three different ships, as
each unit was preempted for Pacific duty.
We had resigned ourselves to flying to Germany when we
got a call from Transportation. The Navy had a few
bookings on a cruise ship set aside for senior officers,
but a last minute 
cancellation allowed
them to offer one to a lowly Lieutenant. So, the Jean
d'Isle family was booked on the SS United States for a
five-day crossing from New York to La Havre, France, all
expenses paid. Ah yes, your tax dollars at work.
__________________________________________________
Jean
d'Isle is a retired naval officer living
in Hawaii.
During his
military career he served in a number of overseas
assignments, including Germany, England, Spain, Viet Nam
and Puerto Rico. Following his retirement, he was an
adjunct faculty member of Hawaii Pacific University and
is currently under contract with the U.S. Navy at the
submarine base in Pearl Harbor.
Jean's column, View From d'Isle, is a regular feature of VegSource On-Line Magazine.