It was Fall,1962. My ship, the carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, was in Naples, Italy. We would be in port for about a week. Enough time for all hands to have liberty at least twice. The weather was somewhat mild. The heavy winter storms would hit Naples later in the month.
All sailors, officers and enlisted, are in "Duty Sections". That means you have extra duties, beyond your normal job, usually every fourth day. The duty sections are broken down into a Port Section (sections 1 & 3 ,odd) and a Starboard Section (sections 2 & 4 ,even). The extra duties range from Shore Patrol, to Officer, or Petty Officer, of the Watch, to standing fire watches throughout the ship. You get it every fourth day. All hands, officer, enlisted, stand duty, whether they want to or not.
Let me tell you something about the ship's laundry. All clothing, whites and dungarees, scivvies,and dress white uniforms are washed and dried in the ship's laundry. Our enlisted berthing area, A-304-L, quartered 85 guys, petty officer 3rd class and below. The compartment would be comfortable for half that number. The racks in our compartment, in some places, ran seven racks high. The seventh tier almost touched the overhead.
On the bulkhead, next to the storage space for our seabags, were six nylon bags about six feet tall and and about to feet across. Three were for whites ,and three were for darks and dungarees. One of the jobs for "Duty Sections", was to take the laundry bags from our compartment to the laundry. That meant hauling the six bags, which weighed about eighty to a hundred pounds up the ladder to the second deck, over to the starboard side , then down two more ladders to the fifth level. That's four decks below the Hangar Deck. Another duty section would haul them back to our compartment . Often whites, especially our white hats would come back with rust spots on them from the ship's dryers. Two of my four navy issued white hats had these spots on them. Usually, you can't see them.
On this particular day, I had Liberty. I planned on going ashore at 1300 hours when "Liberty Call" was piped over the ship's 1 MC. Unfortunately the "Air Boss" planned to move my plane, Crusader 201, to the hangar deck for scheduled maintenance. So , as plane captain on 201, I had to "ride the brakes", as it was moved from the flight deck to the hangar bay three. I was done with this chore around 1545 hours. That accomplished, I returned to my berthing area to get ready to go ashore. I told the guys, I'd meet them at the "Kit Kat Club". Every liberty port has a "Kit Kat Club", usually within a block or two of the "Fleet Landing" pier.
I put on my dress blues. They were clean and pressed. I had just made petty officer third class, which meant I could stay ashore until 0100 hours, and all my non rated buddies had to return to "Fleet Landing" at 2400 hours.
However the clean laundry had not come back yet, and the only white hat I had, had a rust spot on the top of my hat. Who would look? I stood in line in hangar bay three, waiting to go down the ladder to the quarter deck and step into the liberty launch, when I noticed the "Officer of the Deck" was our Air Wing commander. Commander R.C. Fowler was six foot five, unusally tall for a pilot. He didn't look particularly happy at having to stand "Officer of the Deck" duty. Would he notice?
My turn. I stepped up, ID and Liberty card in hand, saluted him and snappily requested."Sir, permission to go ashore?" He gave me the once over , "Change your hat, it has spot on it". Damn! Of all the officers to stand duty, I had to get a tall one.
I went back to our berthing area, hoping to borrow a white. No one was in the compartment. Everyone, who could, was ashore. The rest were nowhere to be found. Hmmmmmmmmm, what to do? No chance of a different white hat, however my shoes had a high gloss spit shine on them. It was several days before payday, and someone needed money to go ashore, so he shined shoes for $2. I had mine done. I returned to the quarterdeck with my ID and Liberty Card, saluted Commander Fowler, put my left foot forward for him inspect, and asked "Sir, permission to go ashore?" He looked at the spit shined shoes, returned the salute and said, "Much better, permission granted".
So I went ashore in Napoli, met my buddies, who had a head start on me. I had several beers, a nice meal, and many laughs with my buddies. And stayed out until 0100 hours, because I was a third class petty officer, and I could.