The CHARLES BERRY was my first permanent active duty assignment. I was commissioned as an ensign out of the Yale NROTC in 1970, and sent to communications and RPS school in San Diego. By the time I got to Pearl in November 1970, the ship was out on a SPECOPS mission, so my Thanksgiving dinner was a cheeseburger out of a primitive microwave in the Pearl BOQ. I started out as the Electronics Maintenance Officer, and moved up to Communications Officer.
I was blessed with a great group of RMs, each of whom understood more about our communications needs than I ever did. That was just as well, because I spent a lot of my time page-checking code publications in my RPS safe the size of a walk-in closet, in support of the CT groups that regularly sailed with us on NAVSECGRU missions.
Our CO was then a mustang named Ron Johnson. He was relieved by Dave Woodbury, who went on to serve as an aide to Elmo Zumwalt, the CNO.
We were sent to Viet Nam in 1971, where we spent most of our time patrolling the coast in the Vung Tao area, looking for Viet Cong arms shipments. I don't recall ever intercepting any. I don't know whether our "Market Time" patrols kept the arms shipments away, or whether they slipped by us, or whether there was no coastal arms traffic in the area to begin with. We also did some gunfire support, working with Marine air spotters who would direct our fire.
We never received a Viet Nam unit service ribbon. Rumor had it that ADM Holloway, COMSEVENTHFLT, ordered it withheld because of a drunken melee among several officers from our wardroom in the Black Ship Lounge at the Yokusuka Officer's Club during a port call on our deployment.
As reported elsewhere on this site by one of my shipmates, we did have an auxiliary boiler explode on the deployment. Because we were a diesel engine DE, this was a lot less serious than a boiler explosion on a typical steam plant vessel might have been. I don't recall that anyone died. We put into a shipyard at Singapore for repairs to the boiler, where one of the officers fell in love with an attractive young English woman. She was waiting at the landing when we put into Hong Kong for some liberty. Our lovestruck colleague asked her to marry him, she agreed, and a great engagement party resulted. Next thing, I was delivering blistering messages to the CO from the officer's father, who was a judge in Ohio. He was pretty unhappy that his son had gotten engaged in this fashion on the CO's watch. End of engagement.
Another memorable incident involved giving aid to a disabled small freighter, which had lost power or steering, and was drifting in the South China Sea. We drew in as close as we could, assembled off-duty crew on the focs'le, brought up some cases of canned goods, and started hurling cans over to the stranded ship. As the crew members on the receiving end dodged the incoming, some cans split open on the deck, and other cans splashed into the water, but when we pulled away, there appeared to be enough canned Spam, beans and cabbage on the freighter to keep things going for a while.
We did not have as much excitement on board as some other Navy ships in the 1970's. Due to the nature of our missions, the CO had broad authority to get personnel off the ship that he didn't want on it. The most serious personnel incident during my time on board involved one of our wardroom stewards, a Filipino who shot and killed another Filipino in the course of a Tagalog-Bisayan dispute in a Honolulu bar.
I left the CHARLES BERRY in the summer of 1972. I haven't had much contact with those shipmates since, but one of them changed my life. When I graduated from law school in 1978 and moved to Washington DC, I got in touch with Tom Wurtzel, who had been the ship's supply officer. He invited me to his Christmas party. That was where I met my future wife.
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