When USS Little Rock (CLG-4), the Sixth Fleet flagship, pulled into Tangiers, Morocco at the end of January, I had a more important mission than building US-Moroccan relations (which I helped do anyway). This was one of the few ports where my wife Carol (a singer with the Sixth Fleet Music Show) would not be with me. She had issued clear-cut orders to come home with a handmade, wool Moroccan rug. Not some little runner for the hall, but a full-sized beauty to lie beneath the entire living room ensemble. Continue reading
Sea story: the rug merchant meets his match (1974)
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Gaeta, Italy. Most mornings when the US Sixth Fleet flagship was in home port, I would coast down the steep hill from our apartment building on the very top of the Monte Elena. Stopping my bicycle at the kiosk in the town square, I would buy the daily papers from Naples, Milan, Paris and Rome, then ride to the ship. 
Dear readers and friends,
Granted, it’s a hackneyed line, “it was a dark and stormy night.” But it was. For almost a week, USS Lawrence (DDG-4) had been making her way across the northern part of the Atlantic on a great circle route from Europe. Although not a small ship, she was taking green water over the bow regularly, as she crashed into each massive roller before rising up and over the crest. Visibility was a philosophical concept, and daylight was something vague in the mist and wind. 
