USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Barcelona 1960

View of "Montserrat Mountain" outside of Barcelona, Spain
Post marked from USS Mullinnix DD-944 on 5 February, 1960

Many of the crew took a tour to the famous Montserrat Mountain outside of Barcelona. From Montserrat you could see the snow-capped Pyrenes off in the distance. The crew toured the Benedictine monastery on the mountain and heard the famous boys choir sing. Most stuck around and had a great dinner at a modern hotel on the mountain.

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

1960 Mullinnix Barcelona, Spain Vistor's Guide (PDF)

By Saturday, 30 January she was headed to Barcelona, Spain for one week tender availability. Upon arriving the ship moored alongside USS Yellowstone AD-27 with a nest of four destroyers at the North Head of Muella del Contradique in Darsena del Morrat, Barcelona, Spain. While moored, Mullinnix received miscellaneous services from the tender.

This tender availability period afforded the crew the opportunity to see bullfights and senoritas in Spain's largest seaport.

Barcelona, the cosmopolitan capital of Spain's Catalonia region, known for its art and architecture. The fantastical Sagrada Família church and other modernist landmarks designed by Antoni Gaudí dot the city. City history museum MUHBA, includes several Roman archaeological sites.

'Barcelona, Fucking Barcelona', Mansen thought. What the fuck? Yet another bar in a town he may never see again. He was on the mess decks. The breeze coming off the Mediterranean cooled the evening air. The crew wolfed down beef stew and corn bread. A line of destroyers sat at anchor, guarding the harbor entrance. What is there do tonight, he thought. Samo, samo. He was starting to get tired of samo, samo but didn't have a clue on how, or what, to do instead.

Maybe go to the USO show on base. Rumor had it that Al Jolson, Danny Kaye, and Jane Russell were performing. Wonder if they served beer? Fuck. Sometimes he felt he was a bad influence on his buddies, dragging them down to hell without a ladder.

Mansen had screwed around long enough this evening that he'd missed his buddies who had went ashore without him. No worries, he'd find them. They always managed to run into each other eventually in every port they'd been it. This one would be no different.

He walked stone streets shining with the recent rain into what was left of the night. The streets were lined with stalls selling pirated American cigs, cooked-food stalls, junk, sandals, shirts, head bands - you name it, they sold it. And a collection of go-go bars - Bottom P36 and Bangkok 8. Between the stalls and bars there was hardly room to walk, the foot traffic packed tight like mangos for shipment.

Mansen watched the few remaining rain drops fall slowly past the yellow of the street lights. He liked the sudden seconds of sheer excitement of a new port. The neon dreams fit perfectly with the dreams that woke him up at night: about the women he had loved and lost, about the constant temptations in his life, and about the odds that inevitably he'll be in the right place at the right time to look naked human madness in the eye. Welcome to the world of Barcelona, an unconventional and unusually subversive liberty port.

'Fuck this', he thought, I need a drink. He took stock of his surroundings. He'd walked far enough that the buildings had turned to small, rundown, and dirty. People were far and few between, and the street lights were too far apart. It was a place where dreams would die unquestioned, a place for the quick and, more than likely, the dead if he wasn't careful. There were abandoned lots, unwanted and unoccupied except for the usual urban rubbish. A number of the buildings stood empty. He'd remembered the warning they’d received from the XO - the week prior to the Mux's arrival, a sailor had been found dead in a bedroom above a brothel near the docks. He had been stabbed in the heart, and the women was still being searched for by the local police, and the Navy.

Ah ha, one door down, a drinking hole, named El Vino, looked dark and rather gloomy. The smell of stale tobacco drifted loose from ash trays full of cigarette butts. The broken concrete entrance was badly stained by many a pint of thick brown porter. Looking in, the place was filled with fishermen, European tourists on very tight budgets, hustlers, degenerates, hopeless losers, loons and fugitives, dangerous drunks, shoplifters, pimps and human eccentricities of every description. He could see blue-brown cigarette and cigar smoke, swirled by ceiling fans, gathering into clouds above the bar. No different than most he mused and walked inside.

The place was so filthy the cockroaches' car pooled on the back of rats. He walked over to the bar, dark and smelled of spilled booze and stale cigars. A Buddy Holly tune rushed from a radio behind the bar. There was a pile of dog shit in the corner. There was a sign behind the bar, hanging by a single rusty nail from the wall, of a corpse wrapped in seaweed lying on a pub's doorstop on one side and being handed a pint of what appeared to be English bitter, on the other. Just below the sign, a whole rack of bottles. In any of them, paradise hid.

Giving him a couple feet personal space, he slid in next to a man eating a sandwich made of what looked like leftover, premature leftovers. As he ate, the oil added fingerprints to the paper wrapper. He was a small wiry man with a large head and lively gray eyes. Looking like he'd just stepped out of a rum advertisement, his close-cropped hair and the sides of the second and third fingers of his left hand had the same nicotine shade.

Looking for the bartender, Mansen looked to his right and noticed the walls were moving. Cockroaches. They were so thick in the walls they made the paneling flex like it was breathing. 'Fuck me', he thought.

The radio skipped to Patsy Kline's "Walkin' After Midnight". Well, this station didn’t discriminate - Buddy Holly AND Patsy Kline. WTFO? Where the hell was the bartender?

The man finished his grease-sandwich and lit up. Smoke curled up from the cigarette between his fingers holding his glass of whiskey, then flew back in the breeze from the ceiling fan, mixing with loose wisps of smoke from others in the bar. Mansen, placed his own smoke in his mouth, and leaning forward slightly to light it. That first drag. You never forget how good it is. All cigarettes should be put out after the very first drag. But in the Navy, no one ever did unless ordered to.

Finally, the bartender, or who Mansen thought was the bartender, appeared out of the back. Big guy, hard, but moved as if he was floating. Nasty hands with big, coarse knuckles and veins wrapped under his skin like vines. He looked like he could make keys with his teeth.

"Cold beer," said Mansen.

"Settle for almost-cold?" the bartender asked in surprisingly good English. His voice was like that of a man speaking through a rusty tin can.

From a dark corner of the bar came a yell then a couple words in Spanish that just had to be 'fuck you'. His dark eyes swallowed the surroundings like twin drains as he looked towards the voices. Yes, this was his bar and nobody was going to fuck it up.

Setting the beer in front of Mansen, "Thanks. What's your name?"

"Call me 'Chief'," he offered. "I left the Navy as a lieutenant commander, so it's a bump in rank." There was a smile in his voice. The man had known some chief petty officers.

"US Navy?"

"No, Spanish." He responded

"You speak pretty good English," said Mansen.

"Spent time in a joint Spanish-American Navy officer foreign exchange program for about a year," he said.

The 'Chief' and Mansen started shooting the shit as only two sailors can. Before long, someone would have thought they'd known each other for years. The place had no refrigeration, therefore no ice, so they drank hot rum out of dirty glasses. They sat there for several hours, talking, drinking lazily, killing the time while the radio tinkled away. Benny Goodman was followed by Artie Shaw. The notes floated out to the front door, giving the night a hopeless, melancholy tone that was almost pleasant.

They told each other personal information that surprised them both. Mansen talked about Darlene. "Chief" talked about a US Navy Lieutenant Nurse. They were two ships in the same ocean, headed generally in the same direction.

"I'd better be getting back to the ship. One more of these and I'll sit here all night," said Mansen.

"You've already sat here all night," laughed the Chief.

Mansen didn't want to leave. He was from nowhere. He had no hometown to speak of, no memories, no stories of the good old days, as if he had no good old days. These days, thanks to Darlene, he would catch himself staring into space, then minutes lost to the black hole.

He liked the Chief because Mansen and him had no past, or the same past. As in any big city, you could keep to yourself, or you could find company, anytime and anyplace, on any day you wished. Here, in places like this, you were part of a community, whether you liked it or not. Two peas in a pod.

"Chief, you probably won't believe this, but this just may have been the best damn liberty I've had on this cruise."

"You're damn straight I don't believe you," smiling and taking another drink of 90-degree, not 90-proof, rum. He was a man of the sea, ships were his home, and yet he had no desire to embark on a cruise. He felt Mansen was moving in that same direction as they were saying goodbye.

Oh, how Mansen missed Darlene. It was a pure longing. What he felt was desire for her and an unselfish wish for everything good in her. What he thought, instead of felt, stirred up angry notions of how she'd ruined everything. Fuck me.

The Chief turned serious. His was a face that had felt wind, a complicated face, the sort that can frown without trying - a face like yesterday. He yawned so deeply that Mansen thought his jaw was going to dislocate.

Paul, "You know, most of the time, I'm a laugh away from a tear when I think about Jan. That was her name by the way, the Lieutenant. Eats me up from the inside out. You know what I mean?"

"Unfortunately, yes I do," answered Mansen. "Shit happens even when you have a shit-shield with you." Chief gave him a solid belly-laugh that caused him to choke up a spit ball, then jettisoned it towards the dog shit in the corner.

"Let's keep in touch," offered the Chief.

"You bet," Mansen said, his voice as thick as rust in his throat. They exchanged addresses on two scraps of paper.

"One of these fucking days, I'm selling this little fucking dive, and sailing to America and find Jan. I have an idea where I may find here."

"Promise me something Chief. When you do, come find me. You've got the address. And my folks' phone number - they'll know how to reach me," offered Mansen.

Do you know what it's like? When you feel everything slipping away he thought. Mansen held out his hand, as if it were actually happening - like water right through your fingers. The simple pleasure of shaking hands with an old friend. It cannot be overrated.

With rounded shoulders and a downward cast, Mansen headed back to the ship. He felt like an old man, not of things he had done, but of things he failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments of opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of his life. He knew he would never get that time back. But on the bright side, he’d made a friend - and a damn good one. Barcelona. Fucking Barcelona...

To be continued...



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