Lincoln – The final training cruise for our class in the NROTC program at the University of Nebraska came in the summer between our junior and senior years, in 1964. It was the last chance for us to learn what we needed to know at sea before we became Navy or Marine officers.
A few in the class ahead of us had come back in the fall of 1963 with stories of their cruise in the Mediterranean, preceded by a month's touring in Europe on their own. They claimed to have witnessed President Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in Berlin before reporting to their ships.
So I wanted the fabled Med Cruise as well. Luckily for me, in 1964 we had opportunities to go to the Med, the Far East, or stateside. Who got what was determined by the final grade in the course on celestial navigation – calculating all those sidereal hour angles and the like (which I could not do today, for sure). When I saw the final exam, I knew I was headed for my first choice cruise, as it was exactly the same example exam I had used to prepare the night before.
I got a Eurailpass, flew to Frankfurt, shipped my seabag to Cannes, and checked in periodically at U.S. naval attaché offices to keep track of where I was to report for training. Slowly, I made my way to Naples, to the USS Enterprise (CVAN-65). After a week aboard Enterprise, steaming enroute with USS Long Beach and USS Bainbridge (all nuclear-powered, see top photo below) I was in Pollensa Bay, Mallorca, to embark in USS Waller (DD-466), a destroyer that would be my home for the next five weeks.
Waller left soon for Cypress, to stand by to evacuate Americans if necessary because of hostilities on the contested island between Turkey and Greece. Every day, Turkish and Greek warplanes flew over us to check out our nationality. We rigged a huge canvas amidships, between the stacks, with the American flag showing on both sides.
Waller conducted exercises with other U.S. Navy ships in the area and replenished from the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42). The middle photo below shows Waller alongside "Rusty Rosie" with captain R.D. Sante and operations officer Mr. Christian on the bridge, along with the captain's sound-powered telephone talker and the messenger of the watch.
Eventually we were relieved off Cypress by another destroyer and sent to San Remo, Italy, for rest and resupply. Enroute, I once stood a 4-to-8 early morning watch on the bridge with Mr. Christian, who informed me (I remember clearly because I had never heard of the place), "We are now entering the Ligurian Sea." I used the conversation to ask if by chance he was related to Fletcher Christian, of the HMS Bounty. Indeed, he acknowledged, he was.
San Remo was then a sleepy town on the Italian Riveria. Townspeople came out to see USS Waller at anchor. See lower photo.
My NU classmate Dave Wetherell chose the Far East for his 1964 cruise and served in the Tonkin Gulf. It was right after the destroyers USS C. Turner Joy and USS Maddox were attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats, for which President Johnson asked Congress for authority to strike back through the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The trouble, my classmate told us all after returning to college for our senior year, was that the attacks never happened. The ships' crews were adamant that the stories were mostly concoctions, but that was not to be known more widely for many, many years.
