Twenty years ago this week my ship, PONCE, received urgent orders from Washington to cut short our inport Thanksgiving visit at Toulon and make all best speed around Italy and into the northern Adriatic. The implication was that our Amphibious Ready Group’s Marines were going to be committed to the fighting in what had once been Yugoslavia. 27 Nov 94 Su Med/Adriatic USS PONCE LPD15 This morning we were steaming into a strong wind from the northeast as we worked up the sole of Italy’s boot. The sun was bright, so that it was warm on the lee side and chilly on the windward. The seas ran past us impatiently, with long whitecaps blowing from their summits. We were pitching a little as we met them bow-on. Strands of white-webbed spume laced into the troughs between the crests. We weathered Otranto at about 1730, about half an hour after sunset. Off to port the lights of Italy blazed; to starboard, the sparsely-populated Albanian coast showed only a few dim, scattered lights. The pale glow in the west remained visible for some time over the lights ashore, making the hard, crystalline brilliance of the stars that much more vivid. I really did very little today beyond read and walk around on deck. The wind coming across the port bow was fierce all day. The radio antenna on the SEALs connex was bent to 90º, and the masts frequently emitted siren howls of such duration and tone that they actually seemed to be mechanical warnings. As the day went on and we turned more to the north, the wind became colder. After sunset I dug out my gloves and watch cap and put on my Norwegian army shirt and my IOWA sweatshirt under my flight jacket, and I was still cold. The other three wars that I’ve lurked around the edges of were in the Middle East and Equatorial Africa. The oddity of going to a fourth, this one in Europe in winter, is disconcerting.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 06:07:35 +0000
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