USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Guantanamo City 1958

Pictures courtesy of Jim Young


John Daly and unknown shipmate - Gutantanamo City 1958


"Gitmo" City street - 1958
I'm no expert (...well I used to be back in the '70s), but this just LOOKS like a good liberty town for sailors
(architecture reminds me of Bourbon Street somewhat)



Excerpt from "The Last Gun Ship - History of USS Mullinnix DD-944"
A Historical Novel By Frank A. Wood

The preferred mode of transportation was to catch a ride on a taxi-bus. The Cuban drivers would swing off the base bucking and swaying along the narrow muddy road, carrying rowdy sailors to town. When asked, giving tips for tips - morsels of local insight that sailors would chase through the night.

City life revolved around Parque Marti, a pleasant leafy square shaded by laburnum trees, and with an attractive golden-colored church, the Iglesia Parroquial de Santa Catalina. The city, spotted with attractive old houses on Calles Perez and Calixto Garcia, sported most of its main roads with America's secondhand vehicles.

Most of these beauties were hot, loud, slow and uncomfortable. But they looked good. Most had glass in more windows than not. Not pristine classic cars but classics with more dents than you could count. Original engines powered most, so loud you couldn't hear the crabs being squashed on the road. Gasoline was typically in plastic containers hanging on the passenger side window. They would shake and rattle and leave an overwhelming trail smelling of spent fuel. Some were sky blue, others candy apple red. Sweat poured from under the drivers' baseball hats, arms covered with welts from the sun and heat. Typically, the only seats were the driver and passenger seats. The back open with two planks of wood on either side - hard on the butt bones but cooler as the breeze moved through while maneuvering around horses pulling carts loaded with hay, vegetables and dry goods.

Parque Marti, as well as other sections, had numerous small open-air watering-holes that served moderately-cool beer and somewhat acceptable rum, served by very attractive barmaids dressed as only women of the Caribbean can dress – dripping with sexuality, releasing a subtle odor that gave credence to the pheromone thing. The crew prayed that the dripping stayed in town rather than finding its way back to the urinals on Mullinnix.

The Old Fish Cellar was one such place. Constructed out of Guantanamo timber, crafted by local fishermen, the Cellar welcomed most the crew as their own. The bar was well protected by one mean lady. To say she was ugly was an understatement. She had what appeared to be two, not one, lumps on her back. The crew called her Camel, but not to her face. They were just a little scared of her and she did mix a mean rum and coke.

On the night of 18 May, one Seaman Apprentice A. F. Weckbacher had, what many would agree, one too many of Ms. Camel's concoctions. At 2235, the Shore Patrol party consisting of LTJG John Sears Jr, HMC Harold 'The Hammer' Summers, and RM2 Clifford Jones returned to the ship with "Weck", accused of inciting a riot, drunk and disorderly, fighting on the bus, and breaking apprehension.

Along with BT3 I. J. "John" Turner and Seaman J. C. "Jack" Borchardt, Weck had put up quite the struggle. Chief Summers and "Clifford-B" had the cuts and bruises to prove it.

As the Old Fish Cellar was a favorite stop for most of the crew, soon-to-be shellback 'Jack' Baily quickly became the leader of a small group of mates that took to the hard-packed clay streets of this quant Caribbean port-of-call like ducks to water. Jack was known to frequent the Michigan Club on the main thoroughfare. He could be found most evenings sitting at the bar, holding court with the matriarch of bar flies. She was knock-down gorgeous and had an ass like a nectarine.

Jack, as only his closet friends were allowed to call him, was from the Rocky Mountains. He didn't talk much about himself or home. Not a bully but didn't like being bullied. Not mean but mean-spirited when the situation called for it, he deciding when and why. Most E6's and up he had alternately wanted to impress and kick their ass. Didn't make friends easily, but once you were his, there was none better.

The Michigan Club became a second home to 'Jack's Pack'. Its members alternating between customer, bouncer, and bouncee. The regulars included 'JJ' Youngston, a street-smart kid from Philly. JJ was a ferocious fist fighter in a beer-glass brawl. Radarman 'Web' Webster. Web was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy from Rhode Island, tall, athletic-looking, and brown-eyed, with a bladed face and hair that had turned silver on the tips even though he was barely twenty. Radarman third-class 'Billy' Bedsmouth from the corn country of Indiana. Billy wasn't tall but he was strong as an ox from working the farm with his farther and three brothers, the muscles on his back were deeply tanned and looked as hard as iron when he walked. Art 'The Fart' Foker was a lanky ET-striker from upstate New York along with his side-kick seaman David 'Davey-Jones' Langley. Art-The-Fart and Davey-Jones looked like the Navy's version of Mutt and Jeff.

EM3 'Norm' Bellarose and MM2 'Dick' Giles had the unfortunate luck of being on shore-patrol duty the night the word came back to the ship. Not known to them at the time, but the crew was very very fortunate that 'The Hammer' Summers and GM1 'Grisly' Risley weren't on SP duty. The addressing of this particular situation would have been handled completely different.

A group of loud-mouth, holeyer-than-though, drunken sailors from the USS Boston had infiltrated the turf of Jack's Pack and the Michigan Club to claim it as their own.

Ensign Brown was duty officer on the Quarterdeck and DK1 E.W. Guth was the petty-officer of the watch. Brown and Guth sounded the alarm and Bellarose, along with Giles, loaded up four additional shore-patrol 'volunteers’ in the duty vehicle and hauled-ass straight to the Michigan Club. By the time they hit the front door it was all over except the shoutin'. The Boston bunch was more beer than fight. Jack's Pack had kicked ass and takin' names. The Michigan looked like a scene out of Hollywood's 'The Reef' with Jack playing the part of John Wayne and the 'Bostonites' a collective Lee Marvin.

Sailors, tables, chairs, and broken bottles littered the floor. Cigarette smoke curling through ceiling fans set on life-support speed. A stray white hat hung precariously from the neck of a bottle of rum behind the bar. There were three Boston sailors piled in the corner like a group-hug gone horribly wrong. One Boston mate was moaning, leaning over the bar, with a lizard flicking across the back of his head. Bedsmouth, blinking back the pain, had a nasty looking gash across his forehead. Two of the Boston crew sagged in chairs across from each other at one of the last standing tables - eyes glazed with an alcoholic shine. Jack's knuckles were swollen like a big dog. Most of the club's staff was hiding behind the dark timbered, unpolished bar.

The shore-patrol party hit the front door running, batons at the ready. Bellarose screaming, "“All-right, knock it off - NOW!"

"Who started this shit?", Giles adding with a snarl.

As if on cue, fifteen sailors pointed fingers at each other yelling, "He did!"

Silence...dead silence. One second, two seconds - you could have heard a pin drop. Five seconds. Then ten. Then...then...then the entire Michigan Club erupted into boisterous laughter. Muxmen and Bostonmen slapping each other on the back, shaking hands, laughing, cussing, wiping blood.

"Beer anyone?" Ms. Matriarch bellowed.

Through the thunderous "Hell yes's" and "No shits", every sailor in the place line up to the bar like long lost buddies. You see, sailors have a habit of finding short cuts - time on shore is limited.

To be continued...



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