| IDoes anyone remember the night in the Indian Ocean when the ship seemed to be floating above not sailing in the ocean? We were in the main lounge watching a movie when someone came in told us to go on deck. Three or four of us left the movie to go outside. We opened the hatch stepped out on the deck and all of us quickly stepped back inside. I know the hair on my neck was sticking up and I felt a cold chill go down my spine. To this day I still remember that feeling. We looked at each other feeling a little sheepish and went back outside. We stood beside the hatch for several minutes before any of us could get up enough nerve to go to the rail. The ocean was deak calm and glowing a milky white from horizon to horizon. When we did finally make it to the rail and looked down you really couldn't see the water as water but more like watered down milk. The ship seemed to be floating above the ocean. We started joking about being in the Twilight Zone and would wake up the next day in another time or place. We went aft to the fantail and we could see the ship's wake going to a pin point on the horizon. We talked to some of the civilian crew members and they told us that thay had never seen anything like this before. We found out later that we were in a large mass of glowing plankton and with the ocean so calm it caused the weird affect. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bob Smardon 65-65 Crew I have a host of memories of that first cruise. Many of them include guys like Gary Greer, with whom I worked; Willy Myerson who swears he took a leak on Chief Oakes shoes. Doc Anderson who looked at a wound I had received on liberty, decided he was to juiced to stitch it up and then we went back ashore. Or the time I lost the ship in Lagos because they switched from the fuel pier to anchor out and I had to strip off my clothes and give them to the bumboat guy to take me there. I went onboard in my skivvies. For the first trip not really all that bizarre.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William "Bill" Snyder 61-62 Crew I reported aboard the Valdez around the 20th of October 1966(my orders cite departure from JFK on the 17th. I remember spending all day in London, and the flights were long, so it was probably a two-day trip. I was in a party led by CTM1 Ulric Montcalm and which included CT2 Gerald A Mays, CT2 Donald R. Markam, CT3 Robert L. Schwind and CTSN Greg Swain. Try as I might I cannot remember Schwind being aboard. I know he was on the Liberty, but can't remember him on the Valdez. We went aboard the evening before the ship sailed from Durban. There was another sailor in that crew, Fred "Fast Freddie" Dunbar. Fred and I cut a deal with LTCDR Dyer that we would do all the scribing if we could be excused from ship's work. As a result, our watch began after evening chow and lasted until breakfast. We knocked off for a couple of hours every night to watch the mid-movie(Naked Prey, most of the time as I recall). All in all, a comfortable life, except that we almost never saw the sun except at dawn. I found the liberty to be great, especially since I never expected much and was usually pleasantly surprised. We made port in Walvis Bay(all I can recall is sand in my teeth from the constant wind off the desert and learning to drink grandy and ginger ale). We hit Luanda(and Lourenco Marques, too, for that matter)before the war took its toll. Both were still lovely colonial cities when we got there. Capetown for Christmas was another story. We were in six section liberty, I believe, and made the most of it. I can still remember listening to "Winchester Cathedral" being played for us on the radio from "The girls of Capetown"> Sometime after Christmas, the Roosevelt(I believe) pulled into Capetown and the resultant furor resulted in the cancellation of Capetown as our home port. We therefore steamed north, through the Suez, and back to Bayonne, where I departed the ship in July.-------------------------David Dillard CTI2 66-67.. I did the crossing on March 6th, 1967 while on route to Massawa Ethiopia. That was one day I'll never forget. I still have my certificate hanging proudly in my family room. I remember what a hole Massawa was. No grass, mud everywhere and dozens of little kids begging. We still managed to have a good time there. After we left Massawa we went through the Suez Canal. I really lucked out and pulled a deck watch as we went through the canal and I got to see everything. Our next port was Port Said Egypt. Egypt was a bit hostile towards the United States at that time so our liberty ashore ended at 1600. We needed to stop in Port Said for repairs of some kind. After we left Port Said we were patroling off the coast of Israel and Lebanon. I can remember one day we came upon an Egypt/Russian naval exercise. They made it known that they didn't want us there as their gun boats crossed our bow and released some kind of smoke. All of this was just prior to the 67 war between Israel and Egypt. Shortly after this we were given orders to return to New York for yard repairs to the ship. We were replaced by the USS Liberty and we then sailed through the Med and stopped at Barcelona Spain. Great Liberty!! We were there for several days and had a blast. What a great city! We went through the straight of Gibraltar and had a brief stop at Rota, Spain for supplies before we started across the Atlantic. A few days later we learned that the Liberty had been attacked by Israel. What a Shock!! I remember this like it was yesterday. I remember sailing into New York Harbor and then docking at Bayonne, NJ. They put us on some mothballed transport ship to use as a barracks while the Valdez was being worked on. I really enjoyed my time on the Valdez.. Alan Moore CTR3 66-67 Crew |
