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Willy Yang’s

The third liberty I had during Christmas was spent on the “Photo tour”, that traveled up the French Alps to a resort not far from le Trinité. Most of the guys who went on this tour had 35mm camera’s, but I took along an 8mm movie camera. We all boarded the bus at Fleet Landing and again, just like the train ride, we went into another tunnel. When we broke out of that first tunnel we were stunned by the beauty of it all. We could see off in the distance the line of mountains we were going to climb and a couple of the villages along the way. The road followed a river that soon emptied into the Mediterranean Sea and we could see how the water got it’s color. The river started up in a glacier high up in those mountains, and it must have picked up the color from the rock it was flowing through. When people talk of “Mediterranean Blue” it’s pretty much the color of the entire Sea, but it’s more pronounced along the French Rivera.

We passed through a couple villages along the way and most of them were one road towns. The buildings were very similar to the ones I’d seen in Izmir, Turkey, though the wood work on the facet’s of these were more ornately carved than those. The material was the same, they were all stone. Some of the pieces were cut, some were native, and some were Roman. It must have been, that there once was a Roman Ville or maybe a temple in the area, because you could see odd blocks with Latin written in them. There is a house that Site Planning Development built in Charlevoix, Mi. that looks exactly like (except for the Roman blocks) one of those towns. I’d be willing to bet that Mr. Shuiling had spent some of his Military years in France. There isn’t any space between these buildings, and many of them are made from the parts of buildings that were destroyed in one of their past conflicts. They have a very interesting look to them and you can see 2,000 years worth of civilizations in each one. No donkey’s, but we were stopped twice from herds of sheep on their way to better grass. The way the locals drove on that road, and what they used to do it with, I’m surprised there are any sheep at all. Around here if you see a Mazaratti, or a Porche, or maybe even a Lamborghini, you stop and watch it go by. There, the pedestrians jump into doorways and the other drivers try to push you off the mountain. I’m glad I was on a bus.

After two or three intersections that we’d come to, going up the mountain, I noticed that there were poured concrete, machine gun emplacements, these too were riddled with impact craters, just like Main Street in town. Talk about getting the willies! I started watching closer as we continued on and coming around a corner, having one of those pointed at you can be a little discerning.

We eventually got to where we were going, and there waiting for us were all those cars. There wasn’t a single American car in the lot, and we were looking for ‘em. The chalet looked very similar to a Monastery, but I never got close enough to see if it was an original or a replica. The clientele there were the same group I saw at the casino two days before, so we never went into the bar to check out the women. What we did instead was a heck-of-a-lot more fun. Some of the guys I was with had never seen snow and now they were on a mountain of it. One of the guys asked a nine year old if we could play with his toboggan for a little while, and he went and asked their parents. The parents came out and said we could use it as long as the kids could too. Those kids got a LOT of rides. I turned around from watching these guys and I looked at another mountain. That’s when I remembered what I was there for. It was so open, so clear, and so far to the other side, that I had to sit down and look. I got my movie camera out and took a long pan from as far as I could see to the right, to as far the other way. The tops formed a very sharp, precise, and white image in contrast with the blue of the sky. Half way down this mountain side,

there was a scratch mark running the length of it, and I asked a tour guide what caused it. I got that “Stupid fudgie” look again and he said “Romans”. (So, if you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve seen a scratch, and it turns out to be a road, and you know how far that is, I’d like to know.) Eventually, I turned my back to that panorama and started taking pictures of the guys coming down the mountain. By now, these guys were having a ball! The little kids had left, so to keep sledding, they used their Willy Yang’s. Every sailor worth his salt, has a set of Dress Blues from Willy Yang, (HONG KONG and BARCELONA) He was, and still may be, one of the best tailors for dress blue uniforms on the planet. I’m sure there are better, but not at the price Willy’s was. In any case, they still cost us a fortune and to slide down a mountain side, with minimum shock absorption, was a little much for me, but I live in the North, and have my own toboggan.

Every once in a while now, I get out that movie to watch those boys slide down that mountain, just laughing their ass’s off, and the panorama shot I took came out well technically, but film just can’t do that memory justice.

While I was writing the last entry, I began to remember two other liberty’s I had there. On one of the days, I went on a “Photographic Tour” to a ski resort up in the French Alps, and on the other, I took a train to Monaco to see the casino’s.

From Fleet Landing, we walked down the Promande des Mariniers to the train station, which was only 1/4 mile down the road. The station isn’t very big by any means, but it was covered the entire area with three or four tracks leading in and out. After paying our fare, we walked up to the loading ramp and took a look around before the train showed up. I noticed that in many places between the tracks, were small piles of kitty litter, but it wasn’t until later that I found out what they were. When the train pulled in, it looked just like the ones you see in old movies. The hallway ran down the length of the car, and there were individual cabins lining the other. Each cabin had two seats, one facing the other, and the seats were surrounded by the most beautifully carved Black Walnut. All of the wood was hand carved and polished to glass, and with the lighting, the little room seemed to glow. I’d just made myself comfortable when I had a most serious urge to take a dump. It was one of them situations where “crowning” and “delivering” come to mind, and I headed for the head. It wasn’t a far walk, we had one right there in the cabin with us. But, on this ornately carved Black Walnut door, was a sign that said “Do Not Use in Station”. I opened the door and when I looked into the hole, I saw railroad ties. “Boy, are you screwed” is what quickly ran through my mind, but was soon followed by “Bullshit”, and I added to the many piles of kitty litter in the railroad station.

Immediately after leaving the station you go into a tunnel, so for the first 20 minutes we sat and looked into the big mirror that used to be a window. When it became a window again, we were in Nice. The mountain we rode under was Mount Boron and it belonged to the castle of Fort du Mont Alban, and from the looks of it, the fort was already there when Pope Urban II got the boys from the West side to take on the ‘Rabs in Palestine. About half way down the mountain lies a town that lived under the protection and in the service of the family who lived in the castle. A little farther below that is where the peasants live. There are homes spotted here and there on the forested mountain side, and from the looks of it, peasants live a lot better than they did back when Urbie was running the show.

I got off the train and immediately asked an attendant where the casino’s where. He asked for my ticket and then gave me the same look we give the ‘fudgies’ when they ask stupid questions. “You got on the wrong train sailor, Monaco is the other way” he said and pointed us in the direction of another train. On the way across the tracks, I could see that not everyone obey’s their sign either, but we got across without making any mistakes.

When we finally arrived at the train station of Saint Antoni in Cannes, we walked down the Avenue du Prince Héréchtaire Albert and from there on to the Avenue des Castelans. That road circles around most of the establishments and we got a real eye-full. When you get there, you enter into a whole different world. Rich people in America are pikers in comparison to the people we were watching, and they didn’t seem to mind us watching them. I doubt if they even saw us. When you think you get to the point where you think your rich, go to Monaco and see if you can stand up next to them. Those people come from family’s that have been rich since Auggie Caesar was minting coins with his picture on it, and they can show you the papers to prove it. It’s no surprise that Europeans look down on Americans as they do, we haven’t been around long enough to justify our attitudes. We never did go into any of those gambling houses, we would have had to sell the ship to gain access to one of the tables. We really enjoyed the sightseeing but we all felt better when we returned back to the real world.

Christmas in Villefranche-sur-Mer

The one thing that kept moral up during that Z-20-CC exercise was where we were going after it was over. We’d heard that there was going to be a “Photo Tour” while we were there, and that the food and wine was about as good as it got. We also heard about the women, but I don’t think I’ll bring that part up.( I’m still catching hell for the Barcelona story)

The bay that Villefranche sits in is part of the French Alps so it’s a deep harbor and a tall town. Each street is at least 40′ higher than the one below it and after going up 5 streets, your climbing the rest of the mountain. The water color is almost turquoise, and with the green of the pines, the ochre of the roofs, and the white’s of the building’s, it was breathtaking. Every time I came on deck, I’d stop up on the ASROC deck and admire it. The bay isn’t very far across, and the mountains are pretty tall so it gave us a cozy feeling, to be sitting there in that bay. Even if hostilities did start, the Soviets couldn’t get at us easily, which dropped the stress factor even more. On top of that, some of the guys were having their wives meet them there.

On Christmas eve I had the watch in Maincomm working the Fleet Broadcast, but with everybody getting along, and all the CINC’s on leave somewhere, the message traffic was very light. That gave me the opportunity to get up to the signal bridge and have some “Big-eye’s liberty”. Those huge binoculars are used for more than looking for periscopes! They were strong enough you could spot a periscope ten miles out, so looking in hotel windows at 1/4 mile was a snap. Some people would see that as perverted, but we saw it as Behavioral Observation. After all, we were out there defending their Constitutional Rights, and we wanted to see how they carried them out. (I could have used the “Lookin’ for terrorists” excuse but that didn’t start until recently) In any case, there was a line behind each pair of binoculars so I never had to worry about growing hair on my palms.

Christmas day, I hit the beach with three other guys, and that’s when we realized how steep that town was. We had talked the night before about climbing to the top of the mountain the town sat on, but after going up two blocks, we thought better of it. Instead we walked along the stores looking in the windows and watching the people who lived there. I’d heard that the French were a surly lot, but everybody seemed to be happy we were there. It really showed itself when we walked up to a small restaurant that sat right on the “Quai de l’Amiral Courbet”. We had walked all over that town looking for something to eat, and we ended up 50′ from fleet landing.

The buildings were all shorter than we have here and a little older too. Some of them could have been built when Auggie Caesar was the boss and I’ll bet a few were there when Napoleon Bonaparte did. I can say for a fact though, they were all there when A. Hitler ruled. It was easy to tell, because there were still bullet holes in all of them.

The four of us were reading the menu posted out front, when the owner came out and invited us in. She was about 40, nice looking, but she reminded us all of our mom’s, and we treated her as such. She seemed to think she was too because as we’d walk into the restaurant, she gave us all a big smile followed by a hug. Her English was vastly superior to our French and she was more than happy to talk to us. She led us into this building that looked normal enough on the face of it, but when we went into the dining room, we were in a cave. At first I couldn’t figure out why any of the walls were square or why the roof was so uneven, and I was admiring the stone work when I realized what it was. It was all painted up nice and there were shelves with candles on them so it still looked like a nice room. She led us to our table and immediately went into the back and brought out 5 bottles of wine. As she was opening our bottles, she asked if we’d mind if she had dinner with us and when we all heartedly agreed, she opened the fifth. “We were the only five people in the restaurant, and she wanted to spend the time with us, and thank us for saving France” she said. When the Allied Generals spoke of invading France in the “Soft Underbelly”, this is the place they were talking about. She told us of waking up on the side of the mountain, and seeing that bay, entirely filled with assault boats. I made note of seeing the bullet holes in the buildings along there, and she told us of watching those bullets spark off the stones as the fight continued. “After that” she said, “I was in the basement until the Americans said we could come out” She said we were very polite, courteous and good natured from the stories she told us in the events that happened there. She said living life under the French Vichy and then the Germans, was a very harrowing experience for a teenage girl, and the feeling of freedom afterwards was very powerful. She had tears in her eyes when she got up and fetched the cheesecake for dessert, and five more bottles of wine. She went on about her evening’s work, and we sat there and spoke in a civilized manner for the rest of that day. When we asked for our bills she almost looked hurt, but then she smiled and said “Merry Christmas.”