  | Pacific Stars & StripesThis Ship’s Business Is DestroyingWednesday, 24 May 1972By Jal DrakeS&S Staff Correspondent |
| ABOARD THE DESTROYER MULLINNX, Vietnam - "That guy’s got guts," the red-bearded Navy chief said as he focused his binoculars on a lumbering speck. "I’d be out of the SOB and running."
The speck, a North Vietnamese truck or armored vehicle, skittered down the tortured strip of beach like an insect touched by match flame. Explosions crept after it - grayish puffs tinged with reddish sand, blossoms of smoke like lethal shrubbery with a spray of iron thorns. The five-inch guns on the Mullinnix hurled away more packets of explosive - first the sharp, deafening slam, then the cloud of pungent fume and the small blizzard of seared cork and pulverized cardboard wadding that showered spectators along the rail. Three-and-a-half miles offshore, 12 miles from a ruined town called Quang Tri, they were coldly moved by the magnified spectacle of impersonally dealt death. Sixty enemy soldiers had been moving down the beach in preposterously exposed fashion; 10 were seized up by the blasts, hideously mangled, flung aside. One olive-colored vehicle was a flickering pyre and another swayed away frantically as the explosions grasped for it, finally vanishing behind a sand dune. A fleet of flimsy sampans was blown away. A coastal fishing village was erased. A laconic voice from the hovering Air Force spotter told it all: "Best shooting I’ve seen in six weeks. Terrific job. These guys really know how to pound it out." But there were no cheers, handshakes or satisfied smiles among the youngsters on the Mullinnix, a 3,850-ton destroyer recently called from Norfolk and softer Atlantic Fleet duty to join a procession of warships called The Gunline. Their morale was good, but silent and cohesive - the kind of purposeful spirit common on a smaller ship with small town closeness. The gunfire mission was little more than trained response. Many had other things to think about. For Ensign Alan Nibbs, who wore khaki cutoffs and a picturesque beard that made him look like Donald Sutherland in M*A*S*H, there was a hasty marriage and a two-day honeymoon - a necessity dictated by sudden orders that took him from the azure Virginia coastline to a bench that has a scrubby frowse of trees and was clotted by the worst kind of pollution. Others had trouble erasing images of a leisurely cruise to Vera Cruz, Panama and Curacao - and of sudden and painful good-byes that were made just a few weeks before they passed their second day on a long line of gray vessels that pounded the shore and targets inland. Some spoke their mind on sharper issues. "I’m against this war," said Radioman S. C. Neil E. Tapman of Baltimore. "I don’t think we’re fighting for American freedom here. But if Nixon says this will get us out, fine. If not, well, we’ve wasted a few more people. We’re all part of this ship and that’s what keeps us going. We all trained for this job. Now we’re doing it." He had a beard too. Well-trimmed ones are tolerated, along with spirited opinions of dissent - providing they don’t lead to demonstrations or sit-ins on the quarterdeck. The hysteria of gunfire had shaken the exotic nude on the wardroom wall - the one that replaces a more pallid painting of two sailboats, posted for the benefit of wives and sweethearts when the destroyer is back in Norfolk. Cmdr. James R. Cannon, the captain, poured coffee for visitors and explained this paradoxical Age of Aquarius and Zumwalt. "Well, they’re not enthusiastic about being here but they are enthusiastic about going to a new part of the world and being part of this ship. There are no hawks, as such, on board. But if you sit down and ask a man about the war, he might not sound too different from Dr. Spock." Seaman Apprentice Roger Thornton, who is 19 and comes from Hartford, explained he was proud of the efficient way he and the others in the ship’s magazine passed ammunition to gunners, who carried on a war he did not believe in. "I just want to get out", he said, "I wish it would stop, I think we’re wrong by being here. I don’t think we should be. If they can’t fight their own war xxxxx xxxx it’s a nice ship. I don’t mind being on it. I just don’t like being here." There it is. |
NOTE: The above article was sent home by FTG3 Frank Wood to his parents in Lincoln, Nebraska (GO BIG RED!). Thanks to Mom and Dad, we have this bit of Mullinnix history to share today.
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