[John Rogers]

When I get old(er) I find that I think about things in the past and some are good and some are no so good. One of the ones that started out badly turned out pretty good in the end and the post made earlier about the Vietnam vets made me remember it.

Seems back in 1972 or there abouts the governments of India and Pakistan were fighting pretty hard and the US Government decided to evacuate all the Americans so they needed a cover ship. Well, the CVA(N) 65 (Big E) was tooling around launching air strikes and got the word a week or two before Christmas to make max knots to a place off the coast of India to cover the helo ships pulling out the civilians. So away we went, through the Straights of Malaccca at over 30 knots and in about a day and a half we were on station.

One small problem through, we were due to have a vert rep the next day and so we had no fresh veggies or milk or eggs and so on! So around in circles we steamed and food got scarce, down to only 3 meals a day from the normal 22 hours of chow line with the main food being instant mash potatoes, frozen steaks (frozen in 1952), instant eggs and Kool Aide! But we did have plenty of bullets for the F-4 gun pods and bombs for the A-6 bomb racks. Down in the engineering spaces we were actually breaking out our hidden stashes of old C-Rats which were corned beef or chili mac and a couple of other unidentifiable food groups.

For those that remember, this was waaaaaay before we built up Diego Garcia and even the CO, Tug Boat Ernie, was getting worried and finally on Christmas day out steamed a supply ship. I can't for the life of me remember which one it was but the CO was C.C. Smith who would shortly take over the Big E and he was on the wing of the bridge wearing a bright red Santa suit! We could see all the top side decks were covered with mail bags, hundreds of them for sure! Well the helos started flying and 12 hours later were still at it as the hanger bay was covered with mail bags that took several days to get all sorted and handed out. We also too ALL their food stores except for what they needed to get back to Subic Bay and finally had "real" food once again!

Yep, it turned out to be a pretty good Christmas after all and who would have though Santa could drive a ship???? Oh yeah, we got the Presidential Unit Citation for that, which surprised me since all we did was nearly starve!