USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Molo Garibaldi, La Spezia, Italy 1960

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

1959 Mullinnix La Specia, Itlay Vistor's Informaion (PDF)

The port city of La Spezia is surrounded by spectacular Tuscan scenery. It is near Florence - the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. Tuscany is one of the best regions in the whole of Italy for food and wine and home to some of the best restaurants in the world, many of them surprisingly affordable for a sailor’s budget.

Mansen's fire-induced funk had diminished some. He was looking forward to hitting the beach with his buddies. A watery sun peeked out from ominous clouds. It was already late-afternoon, but the sky overhead was darkening to tarnished silver. The breeze carried the scent of rain.

BM3 Benson had 'the duty'. Mansen, "Bull" Frasier, and Stretch McDonald told him they'd 'drink one for him'. Benson, the good friend he was, told them to fuck off. The arrival of liberty had little to do with clocks. Some of the best liberty had had destinations so vague that they trip itself became the destination.

There were six ships strung out along 2 short docks. A huge acacia tree shaded much of the equipment on the pier. Pre-war street lamps flickered on as the sun disappeared. The street leading away from the pier was overgrown with palm trees, hibiscus, and sleek birds-of-paradise.

Stretch still had a hangover from losing a battle with a bottle he'd won in a poker game the night before. Slight headache, stomach felt like crap. Anytime someone would walk by him he'd gag because their after shave reminded him of the flavored vodka.

"Your eyes look like shit," said Bull.

"Man, you should see'm from my side,” answered Stretch. Life would be better if he were in his rack thinking of Athens. He’d had four cups of coffee, a gallon of water, three glasses of bug juice - yet he hadn't pissed once.

"Are we on an island?" asked Stretch.

"Why?"

Talking to no one in particular, Stretch answered, "Do you know the sailor's definition of an island?" Not wanting an answer, "An island is a navigational hazard inhabited by drunks, whores, pickpockets, thieves, and other sons of bitches who were dumb enough to get off the fucking boat!"

"If you two are done verbally copulating..." complained Mansen.

As they walked apartment buildings rose from muddy streets like mushrooms, kissing the muggy sky. There were great mountains of bougainvillea and crimson hibiscus nodding in the late afternoon breeze. On the corner, a tattooist applied his trade on the street corner with two very long needles and a limited palette of black, red, blue. It was a lusty clawing city, the girls were selling "boom-boom" outside the bars, streets were flooded with white and black sailors and brown girls. The sailors had come to buy and the women to sell.

The crowd hurtled by them, all were on schedule, no one lagged, all had destinations. It was D-day, everybody hitting the beach at once. They stopped occasionally just to keep their whistles wetted and to keep Stretch's stomach in check.

Unpleasant hours begin around 3 a.m. They set off down the almost deserted dimly lit street. Off the beaten trail. The bricks were strewn with garbage and other strange remnants of the night. A man coughed violently in a doorway before passing out on some stairs. A black dog with his nose to the ground paced east and west, sniffing out leftovers to finish off.

"Tell me again why we are here?" asked Bull.

"The snipes told me this place is the best to drink cheap and get laid even cheaper. It’s down here someplace", explained Stretch.

Mansen added, "If we can't find the place in the next five-fucking minutes, we'll be going from 'office of supreme genius' to 'office of too fucking bad.'"

"Any cabbie, for a sawbuck, could tell you where all the whorehouses in town are," Bull said.

"Yea, but they said this place was hard to find and not well known, that's what makes it the best place," explained Stretch.

"That makes me feel better Stretch," said Mansen, taking a swig of his bottled beer.

The thin alley opened into a thinner street. It was a dirty fissure between two rows of broken buildings. Most of the buildings were abandoned. Doors on the front, back, and sides chained. Mansen was about to ask if anyone knew the way back to the ship when he saw her.

The woman was lying face-up in an uncomfortable position near an old broken cart. The beer bottles felt glued to their hands. Mansen took some deep breaths, trying to start his thinking again. Bull kept on clutching his bottle and staring down at what he could see of the woman's face. Somewhat young. Maybe one of the local whores. She was wearing a shirt with a wide blood stain across the front of it. Stretch bent down to get a better look.

"Shit, don't touch anything man," warned Mansen.

They were certain she was dead; it looked altogether different than a coma or passed-out. They'd seen plenty of pass-outs in the Navy. Dead was a look of departure, or left, of the last good-bye, of gone. Still they should check for a pulse Mansen thought.

"What are you doing?"

Mansen put his fingers on the spot where the neck met the shoulders.

"Nothing."

She was dead, no question. Bull heard his own heart hammering away. Stretch looked around for signs of anything in the soft dirt.

She was lying on her back, shot in the chest, blood pooled at her side.

"Well, Fuck me. What are we going to do?" ask Stretch.

"Let’s shit and get," suggested Bull.

"Hell man, we can't just leave her," said Mansen.

Bull jogged to the corner of the long, narrow two-story building that seemed to be the only intact structure around. The stucco was worn off and the exposed brickwork was crumbling. Weather-beaten wooden doors and shutters hung loose on their hinges. He looked both directions down the narrow street.

Running back, "Hey guys, couple blocks done on the left. Looks like the place we were looking for." He could smell the bar smoke and other human smells as they leaked out with sailors, working girls, and locals as they went in and out of the doorway.

"You deuce bag, we've got a dead woman here."

"Yea, but if we get involved, there will be a shit-storm," worried Stretch.

A ghastly feeling came over Mansen. First the fire, now this. The impressions of being outside time, outside his own life. He tried to pull himself together. He was ashamed for having betrayed the innocent child he'd once been. His eyes glittered with un-shed tears. He glanced up at Bull. He looked as interested as a mud wall. He realized at that moment that they could not learn what they have learned and remain unchanged. He thought of Norfolk, and Darlene.

Bull drained the last of the bottled beer. There was a slump in his shoulders, like a great weight hung from his neck.

"I'm not sticking my neck out," Stretch said.

"Meaning you always wait to see if the shit is really going to hit the fan?" said Mansen. Adding, "well boys, the shit's hit it and we're in the middle of it."

Mansen stood. He lit a cigarette in the wind and flipped the dead match into the dirt, smoke leaking out of his mouth. Bull thought for a minute, then lit a smoke of his own, the blue smoke helping to cover up the coppery smell of dried blood and the fouler odors of shit and piss. Stretch reached for a cigarette and held it between his fingers, rolling it back and forth. You could hear white paper crinkle against the tobacco. Nobody said a word.

Mansen shook his head. "Here's the deal. Bull, you and Stretch go around the corner to the bar you saw and see if anyone knows where we can find the cops. I'll wait here." He watched Stretch's jaw drop in shock. "Close your mouth Stretch. You look like a catfish."

"Come on," said Bull.

Stretch gave Mansen a departing glance that was the retinal equivalent of manslaughter.

Rounding the corner, "I still don't get it," said Stretch. He sounds like I used to in algebra class thought Bull. Like many uneducated southerners, Stretch sometimes mispronounced many words. Specifically, putting the accent on the wrong syllable. "Fuck me Bull. These eye-talians are a carload of trouble, aren't they?"

As the two neared the bar, it appeared that the shore patrol was just breaking up a fight between a couple sailors from competing destroyers. "That's who we'll tell," suggested Stretch.

"Agreed," answered Bull.

Approaching, Bull realized the first class petty officer was from the Mux. Gunners mate Flinn. Pretty good guy - for a first class. Bull was about ready to put it to the test. "Hey Flinn, you got a minute?"

Flinn was a tall, rangy man in his mid-thirties, always smoking a cigarette. Curly bronze hair, well-groomed, framing a lean brown face. An intelligent face with grey eyes narrow against the smoke as he took another draw on his cigarette as he faced Bull. Narrow lips but well-shaped. A mouth whose strength was outlined by deep lines running down on either side. Lines that could indicate humor and a readiness to laugh, but rarely did aboard ship.

Flinn could tell something was wrong. "Sure. What's up Frasier?"

Bull, with color commentary provided by McDonald, described the best he could what had happened. Pointing in the direction they'd come, explaining that Mansen has stayed with the body. Flinn immediately call it into share patrol headquarters, requesting a shore patrol officers, another shore patrol unit and the local authorities.

Flinn told Bull and Stretch to wait here at the bar while the four shore patrol sailors headed for Manson and the dead woman.

"Fuck, do I need a drink or what?" said Stretch.

'Here' was the home of gamblers, prostitutes, burglars, con men, drunks, thieves, derelicts, cutthroats, and maybe murderers. It was all there, debauchery and degradation, poverty and wealth, misery and death. In short, a good liberty town. "You com'n Bull?"

They walked in to the sour smells of unwashed bodies. The room was vaulted, with a rather low ceiling, lit by oil lamps that gave off a persistent, fatty odor, mixed with the more terrible stench of meat - a pungent aroma, mingling the smell of rotting ham and the mustiness of different foodstuffs that had spoiled. No wonder the snipes loved this place, it smelled better than the hole. The nausea crept up in McDoland's throat again.

As Stretch ordered beer, Bull noticed the small room contained thread bare furniture that smelled of sour flesh and pickles. An ancient console radio sat under a window, but it probably hadn't worked in years. They drank their beers with their backs against a cool stone wall, waiting for Mansen. The place was a zoo. They felt as if they'd stepped in a psychiatric hospital, and that they'd arrived ten minutes after the patients took control. The sailors were outnumbered by boobs and buttocks. A ceiling fan moved lazily above. The smell of sweat and stale cigarette butts was pushed around with the heat but never made it out the windows. Nothing but dead flies on the floor. Even they couldn't live in this stench. A photograph of FDR still hung above the bar.

Along with the smell, music surged through the room. Faces were white and green and violet in the glow from the ceiling lights. Stretch yelled at Bull over the din, "The piss-smell could hold-up a P-coat!"

"Hell, it could wear it." Pointing to the wall behind and between their heads, Bull added, "Tell me that's mayonnaise on the wall?"

Stretch about upchucked and headed back to the bar for two more. The bar had initials, fuck-you messages, and ship's names carved into it. Boogers were smeared on the wall. Some of them were big enough to use as bricks in a destroyer's boiler. Fuck'n snipes, I'll get them for this, thought Stretch.

"Order me one." Said Mansen. Stretch turned to see his buddy walking up. Mansen took a long pull. On the end of the bar was an empty cracker box and a near-empty jar of peanut butter with the lid off. What remained of the peanut butter had turned dark as dried dog shit.

"So?"

"We're good. Where's Bull? Go get him. I don't feel like telling this twice."

Once the three were at the bar, over the music and noise, Mansen explained that the shore patrol took care of everything with the locals. Everyone was confident the Navy wasn't involved. Turned out the dead girl was the girlfriend of a local pimp and drug dealer - a real nasty piece of work. They finished their beers and order again.

"You guys better make your play fast if you want laid," said Mansen, adding, "I think the shore patrol is going to make this place big-time off limits until the locals catch the killer. Personally I've had about enough for one night." Staring straight into his bottle, his thoughts jetting east across the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour.

"I'm with you. I'm ready to chalk this night up to a bad fuck'n nightmare," Said Bull.

"McDonald, what about you?"

Jugging the last of his beer, "Count me in, my stomach could use the night off."

As they headed back towards the pier and their ship, they could see the wind riffling the leaves on the trees along the narrow street. The reflection of the lights on the leaves and the electric glitter they created made Mansen think of thousands of green butterflies fluttering inside a dark bowl.

To be continued...

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