MAD "MAX"

Chapter 7 (VietNam)

One thing was made clear right from the start. No crewmember below the rank of E-5, was allowed to have any alcoholic beverage before we were off loaded, and moored for the night, (except for rare occasions that I will mention later), but the higher ranking Petty Officers, could drink anytime they wanted. We lower ranking men also stood all of the watches.
There was a rule that, whoever took the last ice cube in the tray, had to refill the tray.
One evening at our first stop upriver, we had just finished offloading the cargo, and I was hot and tired, so I went to the refrigerator for ice, to make a drink. There were about ten ice trays in there, and every tray had one ice cube in it, and of course I had to refill all the ice trays, and no one else had any ice for the next couple hours or so. From then on I drank my “Jack Daniels” with plain water.

Every trip upriver, as soon as we crossed the “South China Sea” and sailed into the mouth of what I believe to be the largest tributary of the “Mekong”, the Craft Master would go back to his stateroom, bring back his fifth of “Old Crow”, and his .38 revolver, he would place both on the radio, just in front of where he sat. I never knew when he brought it into the pilot house, but he also kept an M-79 grenade launcher standing in the corner behind him. Then he would begin drinking straight from the bottle.
Once in awhile when I was on the “Helm” (Steering), he would hand me the bottle saying, “Here, have some driving medicine”. In those days I was not bashful about taking a drink, so I would take a shot, hand the bottle back, and all was “cool”, but one day as I was on lookout, and the Store Keeper was on Helm, I heard, “Here have some driving medicine”. As I looked in, I saw the Craft Master holding the bottle out to him, and the Store Keeper said “No thanks, if anything happens, I want to be sober”. This made the Craft Master very angry, he grabbed the .38, pointed it at the Store Keeper’s head, extended the bottle saying, “I said, have some driving medicine”. The Store Keeper took the bottle, turned it up, and took a big swallow, and handed it back, as a cold chill ran up my spine. As we chugged on up the river, everything returned to normal, (Almost).
It seems this was not the first time he had pointed the gun at the Store Keeper.
One night as we were tied up at the pier in Saigon, one of the other crew members coming back from liberty at about midnight, saw the Craft Master outside on the main deck, holding the gun on the Store Keeper, making him do pushups. When the crew member started down the gangway, he shoved the gun under his jacket and said, “get up and go hit your rack, (go to bed), what are you doing out here this time of night anyway”. The crew member said that he asked the Store Keeper what that was all about, but he would not say anything, he just went to bed without saying a word.
To this day, I have no idea what he had against the Store Keeper. We did talk about blowing the whistle on the Craft Master, but we figured no one would believe us, and we were sure that the Store Keeper was afraid to say anything.
I was beginning to think the Craft Master had gone mad. The very next trip I was sure of it.

(TO BE CONTINUED)