I did not get along well with the Captain of the Nantahala. There were probably a few others who also suffered as I did. But I thought that he reserved his worst for me because I was Jewish. This is an example from when we were assigned to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.
The ship was scheduled for a port visit in Piraeus in Greece. We would be there several days and the executive officer let it be known that a few officers would be allowed to take leave while we were there. This was a big deal for some of the junior officers because their wives were following the ship around the Mediterranean. The limitation, of course, was set by the captain. No more than a third of the officers could take leave, and then only for a few days. I asked to take a couple of days in order to visit in Israel, as I had done when en route to report to the Elokomin. I got my request back, disapproved, because US Naval personnel were not allowed to go to Israel. I complained that there was no such regulation. The captain said there was. I took the administrative record books to him and showed him there wasn’t any such entry. He insisted there was and that my books were out of date. In any case, he noted that there were already officers on leave up to the limit he had set. I was to remain on the ship. voluntarily cut short his leave in order to give me a couple of days to go to Israel. It didn’t help. The captain simply said I could not take leave because he had decided I could not.
A few weeks later I contacted the flagship and asked them about the existence of a regulation prohibiting travel to Israel. The answer ws that there was no such regulation. Of course, by then, the opportunity had long passed.
Another incident in a similar vein was when we were just beginning to prepare to sail from Newport to Spain. I prepared an “deployment notebook” for our time with the Sixth Fleet. I had just been there in the Elokomin, so it looked like an easy task. Not with this capatin it wasn’t. He called me to his cabin and we went over the entire notebook. He told me to make numerous changes, and when I mentioned I had just been there he responded that he didn’t care. My approach was all wrong!. I rebuilt the notebook according to his desires. It’s probably unnecessary to mention that during the next few months I was called repeatedly to revise one section or another of that notebook. By the end of our cruise it looked almost exactly the way I had originally prepared it. He was the captain, and everything had to be the way he wanted it to be.
Wetherhorn 