USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Malta 1961

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

In the afternoon of 12 April, the HMS Camperidown D-32 entered the harbor and moored in berth 7 followed by HMS M-1180 and HMS Solebay D-70. The big question the crew was asking: Will the Brits and Americans get along on liberty? A bowling tournament and exchange dinner with HMS Solebay highlighted the visit.

However, the British had never met the likes of Branson and Tramel. Most didn't like going on liberty with them. Many didn't. BT1 James "Nig" Branson. His mother was from Nigeria, hence the nickname. His dad was a coal miner from Wyoming. His best friend was a large man and a MM1, Tom "Two-Ton" Tramel, or T-cubed. Nig simply called him TC for short.

Both men were older. As they both knew, age was a great destroyer of more than the rock-hard erections they once counted on. Age killed imagination, innovation, and initiative. They were in the Navy for good. The question was could they make the best of it?

TC was a dark man with a wide brow and heavy features that enjoyed kicking ass. He was enormous, his fists like mallets, his face a blend of brutality and madness. He’d gulp hot coffee down as if his throat were asbestos.

Branson was of indeterminate age, the skin of his hands and even his face covered in a sheen of grease and oil. He was rail thin, but his forearms were muscular, and he had a certain mean streak. He seldom spoke and appeared to resent it if others did to him. Behind his back, his men called him Owl. Months before, during one of many emergency repairs on the boiler he was assigned to, he’d been covered in grease and oil including circles of grime around his eyes that made him look like an owl.

Sailors are liars by profession. "You lost how much?" asked TC.

"The dealer had a pair of ta-ta's that would make your tongue hard. How can you think in a situation like that?"

"Where the hell are we?"

"In God's country," answered Branson.

"Good, I have a few questions to ask him."

"By the way," said Branson, "I notice your bruises after we left Istanbul. What the hell happened?"

"Her old man caught me and he beat me until a begged him to kill me!"

Laughing, "What, him and his four brothers? One guy couldn't take you."

"He was a professional fighter - so was his mother," said TC.

"You’re a crazy son of a bitch."

The pair walked by a juggler that kept a circle of brightly colored balls whirling and a snake charmer squatted before the basket in which his creatures were confined. The soil's current richness owed itself to the three Ds: death, decay, and dung.



Rounding a curve, they entered a bright grid of streets loaded with bars, clubs, joints, those sex palaces of hand jobs and blow jobs - a lot of loose lips, in more ways than one. Basement restaurants, specializing in fried codfish, barrel wine, and grilled cuttlefish. Prostitutes plied their trade in flimsy wooden sheds in the back areas behind the glitz.

The door swung open, disgorging smoke and noise and one sailor, who stumbled once over the curb, following flat into the dirt. The George was a narrow, half-timbered building in the shadow of the larger complex located just off Marrakesh Street, only a block or so away from Kasbah of the Udayas. The faint smell of sewage wafted up to them on the night air from the sewer, a sluggishly flowing ditch that wound snakelike through the old city, which the various manufacturing operations used to dump effluent. The interior of The George was crowded with British sailors. The long, L-shaped bar was jammed two deep, and the tables and booth around the perimeter of the main room were all filled. Through an open doorway at the far end of the bar, you could see another group playing darts in s small game room beyond. The pub was noisy, alive with sounds of laughter and the clink and clatter of bottles and glasses. A haze of cigarette smoke hung like a fog from the dark rafters overhead. A man wearing an apron and a middle-aged, blowsy woman with peroxide-blonde hair were working hard behind the bar, while at least four waitresses carried huge trays loaded with drinks through the chattering throng, yelling new orders back to the bar every few seconds. The room reeked of tobacco, beer, and human sweat.

Branson said, "Could you ask him to turn down the music? I think I saw a bird fall out of a tree."

He ignored Branson. "You Yanks?"

"We look like Yanks?" Tramel said.

"He does," the closet Brit said, pointing his finger at Branson.

"He's from Wyoming," Tramel said. "All guys for Wyoming look like Yanks."

"I resent that," Branson said.

"You guys buying?" asked one of the other British sailors.

"Nope. We just came in to watch you dickheads drink tea," mouthed Branson.

"You guys are all mouth and no trousers. There’s only but two of you, and there's four of us and a corker of a bartender that's British."

"If you had two bartenders," Tramel said, "now that would be different."

The Brit in the doorway shifted his nuts to the other side of his pants and looked exasperated. "He isn't going to turn down the music."

"What if he wants to? Any maybe even if he doesn't want to. We're kind of up in the air on that part," replied Tramel.

"Ah," the fourth Brit said, "I get it. You are from one of those Yank destroyers, are you not?"

"Yep. Heard you guys got your ass whipped by an old Master Chief with a cane from another tin can last night?" Tramel said. "That was some lively old chief, wouldn't you say? Your arms and face look like a fuckin' zebra with them bruises."

"He caught me off guard."

"What we heard, he hit you with that stick like he was dustin' a rug, Limey," said Branson.

"Shut your laughing gear, and the name is Reginald", the Limey said.

Tramel laughed a little. "Reginald? That's your name? Your mama made that name up, didn't she?"

"It's my father's family name."

"Naw it ain't," Tramel said. "If that don't scream ignorant backwoods' Limey, I don't know what does. That was my name, I'd stick a sharp stick up my ass and impale myself."

"You're getting on my goat," the first Limey said, and reached back behind the bar with his right hand. For a slight moment he was distracted, which of course was what Branson and Tramel were waiting for.

Tramel moved quickly, caught the Limey by the feet, jerked them up and out. The Limey's head smacked on the bar and then Tramel dragged him up the stairs so that his head bounced on each and every one of them. A bit of blood flew from the limey's skull, then he went limp and tumbled off the stairs.

Branson and Tramel turned and headed towards the door. The Brit with the shaved head was the first one at the door. Branson hit him between the eyes with a swinging elbow so hard that a distant relative in bad health in the old country crossed his eyes and died. The blow made him spin around and away from them. He went down on one knee and held his head, just to make sure it was still attached. While he was on his knees, his legs slightly spread, Branson kicked him in the balls like he was a soccer goal.



Tramel was right behind Branson. The bartender jumped at Tramel from the shadows. He was big, dark, and growling and was part of the stench of the place. He went for Tramel's throat. Tramel moved to the side slightly and caught the bartender by the collar with one hand as his head snapped in the air, and saliva from the snap landed across Tramel's forehead. With the other hand, Tramel caught his leg and picked it up high as he could manage. He saw a window out of the corner of his eye, just at the end of the bar. He shoved the bartender at it, hard as he could. The window cracked and the bartender went through it in a shower of shredded clothes and a tinkling of glass, his body doing a kind of horseshoe maneuver from the impact. The bartender let out a yelp and a yip and then Tramel heard nothing but the sound of his body striking the earth outside. There was blood and skin on the jagged class. Tramel suspected body lice had pulled parachute cords.

Branson was holding a big bushy-headed guy by the back of the neck, slamming his head into the wall so hard a mirror fell off and shattered.

As Tramel turned, a thin Brit came at him in a rush, clubbed him in the ribs with a right hook that nearly caused him to piss himself. Tramel tried to kick him, but there wasn't any room. In a reflex action, he shoved out with both hands, hitting Tramel in the chest and knocked him down on top of the guy Branson had kicked in the balls. The ball-kicked dude was resting politely on the floor whimpering like a little girl who had lost her dolly, hands between his legs.

Tramel rolled up and the Brit kicked at him as Tramel's hand came under his leg and grabbed his face with his other hand and used his closet leg to sweep his standing leg out from under him. He hit his head on the bar, his teeth snapped together on his tongue, and they went down, blood foaming out of his mouth. Tramel smelled something that made him think he'd bent a biscuit in his skivvies.

Branson heard a yell from the back, looked at the back of the bar. A young, long-legged Brit was running at him. He was somewhat dark skinned with a lot of hair. He jumped on Branson with his legs spread and straddled Branson, his ankles locked around his back; he had hold of Branson's hair with one hand and was clawing his face with the other, still yelling.

Branson hit him with a right cross between the eyes and the Brit let go, though his legs stayed hooked. He fell back on his head, then his legs came undone and they sort of melted toward the floor with the rest of him.

Tramel was still working on the big hairy guy, had him by the mane and was smashing his head into the wall, cracking the paneling. All Branson could tell for sure was the guy now had a very flat nose and his lips was embedded in the paneling and there was blood on the wall. One more slam and a big crucifix fell and bounced off the bar and then bounced on top of the ball-kicked guy and then onto the floor.

The ball-kicked guy had gotten some juice back. Maybe the crucifix revived him. He tried to get up, made it to his hands and knees. Tramel, without letting go of the guy whose head he was bouncing, kneed the other dude in the face, knocking him back down. He winced, did a kind of push-up, tried to come up. Tramel got him from behind, right in the snickerdoodles again. He farted and went down and didn't get up, either knocked out, dead, or hoping the Muxmen thought he was.

Tramel picked up the record player of the shelf over the bar and slammed it against the wall. The LP flew off of it and Tramel stepped on it. It felt good to have the air filled with emptiness.

As the bartender wasn't serving, the pair poured themselves a double shot. Then another. Then a third. Turned, and once again, walked towards, and out the door. Typical liberty call for Nig and TC.

To be continued...

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