Tuesday, February 05, 2008

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Monday, February 04, 2008

I was watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" last night and had a flashback to Christmas 1962. We, the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, had left port in Cannes,France and were having flight operations in the northern Med as we sailed towards Naples, Italy and the holidays in port. It was very,very cold. Flight Quarters sounded at 0530. The second launch went out around 1130 hours . We had an hour and a half before the aircraft would return. We left the tie down chains, and turnbuckles between the island and catwalk, and headed towards the messdecks, via the passageway in the island. We went by the hangar deck and down another deck by the Marine Barracks to the messdecks on the starboard side. On the bulkhead outside the galley, a messcook had put up a poster of a Christmas Tree with the Charlie Brown characters on the margins. Charlie Brown, with his nervous grin was in the upper right corner. Lucy was on the left in the middle, with her hand pointing to the star on the tree top, just in front of Charlie Brown. It read "Merry Christmas" and a "Happy New Year". It was rather festive, and it broke the monotony of standing in line. After chow we had two more launches. The fourth of the day went out around 1600. Our "Nite Check" would relieve us and bring in the 1600 launch. We headed for the messdecks,and then we would head to our compartment on the three level. As we retraced our earlier steps to the chowhall we could hear laughter coming from the compartment outside the galley. When we got closer, we could see the reason for the chuckling. Some artist, standing in line, had changed the poster slightly. Charlie Brown's nervous grin was made even more pathetic with beads of perspiration added to his forehead. An obviously pregnant Lucy, complete with maternity dress, had her pointing hand changed to a shaking, balled fist. The artist added a speech a balloon over her head which read "Damn you Charlie Brown". It was funny and a great morale booster. It stayed up on the bulkhead for several days for all to enjoy.