USS MULLINNIX DD-944

13 September
Leaving Gunline for Last Time

Her Job Complete, Mullinnix Heads Home...

13 September, 1972 Dear Mom, Dad, Sue
We finally got our mail day before yesterday – 1,300 lbs. worth. I got your letters dated August 10, 17, 21, 26, 30 and September 2nd and 5th. That was a good picture at the party. I wish I could have been there. The package (my August 18th Birthday Package) finally came – only 24 days late. The candy was spoiled and stunk something terrible. The only thing I salvaged was the book, the windbreaker and the potato chips. I had to throw everything else away. Thank you very much. The windbreaker is great. But what a day to get it, that morning I found out Nebraska lost their 1st game (???). What happened? It about broke my heart. And of course, everybody is kidding me like crazy.

We left the gun-line this morning (FOR THE LAST TIME) and are heading for Hong Kong. It’ll take 2 days. We’ll be there for 5 days then going to Subic 2 or 3 days then maybe Yokosuku, Japan then home. I have a list a mile long for Hong Kong. It’s supposed to be the greatest shopping in the world. Well, free mail closes out in about an hour, so I’d better close. I’ll call you when we get to Norfolk. I heard from Shirley and Linda Mallon also. Write Soon! Love, Frank







Typhoon Flossie
"Riders on the Storm"
Typhoon Flossie formed as a disturbance west of Guam late on the 5th of September. The system intensified into a tropical storm just before landfall on Luzon. The cyclone then traveled slowly across the South China Sea, becoming a low-level typhoon before making landfall in Vietnam on the 16th. It weakened to a tropical depression as it crossed Vietnam, but it reintensified after entering the Bay of Bengal as Tropical Cyclone 25-72.

__________

The sea was clear and blue as sapphire. It appeared harmless and welcoming. Sometimes, it was hard to remember the placid surface hid a thousand fathoms of darkness, an unquenchable craving for the bones of ships and the lives of men.

The sky was battleship gray, the coastline shrouded in mist, the surface of the water became chained with rain rings. A faint, hissing sound, like a nest of dozing snakes disturbed in some dark hole, or the first rush of a rain squall on the flat, oily surface of a dead calm sea an instant before the breaking of the storm. There was a brilliant flash high overhead, the retina-burning splash of a parachute flare igniting. Far in the distance, the few coastal batteries still in place began to snort and bang, and then the rain sound was all around us.

Ghost green phosphorescence flickered as the bow wave crashed endlessly out from Mullinnix. The sea buried the bow in 15 foot swells. I was leaning against the aft-most bulkhead, just forward of MT53, smoking and ducking the rain. One of our hard-sea-bitten first class walked by (I've forgotten his name), and I said, "Sure is raining isn't it?"

He could stare a whole right through you. “Raining? It isn’t raining.” His voiced boom out. “It is lashing and pissing, spitting, pelting, pouring, and bucketing. We are stinking, dirty, soaked, drenched, saturated with seawater, cloud water, and flying-fish guts. But it isn’t raining. Rain is that nice stuff what comes down straight and keeps your grandmother’s vegetables watered."

The man didn't even crack a smile as he kept on walking towards the hatch. I thought, “What a stupid ass-hole! His parents must’ve wanted a girl, would’ve settled for a boy, they got a mineral.”

__________










Vietnam Sunset 1972

On a ship, the days of the week roll by without consequence. Odd, I thought, the choices that war presents. The slow passage of time, or the thrill of dancing with death. Everyone wanted to live, but when the minutes and seconds crawled into the small hours of the morning, the speed and decisiveness of combat had an allure that it lacked in the daylight.

Close to dusk, you could just make out the horizon, but as far as the eye could see there wasn’t a single shell exploding or a single jet in the sky. As the Animals would sing their unofficial Vietnam Vet theme song, "We gotta get out of this place! If it's the last thing we ever do…"

The silence was total. Praise God, we'd made it out of that place.




Talk About a Longgggg Trip...



I’m going to make it home. And when I drive by any VA cemetery, I’m going to make damn sure I wasn’t responsible for one of their tombstones, not one...


Go to "Hong Kong Liberty Call"
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