Jack Hayes
It was a cold, sunny afternoon in November of 1952. In my room at the (BOQ) Bachelor Officer’s Quarters at the Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia I was poring over the papers I needed to know “cold” for a contractors’ meeting in the morning. A Reserve Lieutenant JG called to active duty from my first civilian job. I had been trained as a marine engineer and commissioned by The New York State Maritime Academy so I knew my job. The call-up to active duty had been expected, and I was not as rankled as some were at the Navy.
My concentration was broken by a knock on the door of my room. The messenger had come from Captain Seim, my skipper, directing me to report to his room.
“What now?” I thought. This had been a tough week with the ship in drydock undergoing massive overhaul from battle damage. We had received topside damage in a three hour gun duel with shore batteries in Wonsan Harbor, and hull damage from a mine in the South China Sea while out with Task Force 77. The Japanese had fixed us up in a yard in Sasebo with a skin over the sealed forward fireroom, where three of my guys were still part of the machinery from the mine blast. We came around the world with the other three destroyers of Destroyer Division 2 in that condition.
It was winter and the dry-docked ship was not habitable. So the crew had been housed in barracks and the officers in Bachelor Officers Quarters at the yard. It was not bad living, but I had already managed to find trouble. One four striper, probably newly promoted, had taken umbrage when I did not salute his car as he went by me as I was walking one day (chicken shit). And then one afternoon I had inadvertently let the sink in my room overflow while washing my socks; I thought I had freed the drain to allow them to continue to rinse, but when I went next door to continue working with my staff on upgrading engine room orders, the sink filled and ran over. The water ran down the walls of the captain’s room below mine; that one required a dress-blues appearance for the reaming out about destroying government property.
As Head of the Engineering Department on USS Barton (DD722) I already had my hands full with contractor meetings and with supervising the overhaul. I didn’t need a “chewing out” from the skipper to boot, I thought. But I washed my face and changed into clean khakis in preparation for his telling me how I should have been more attentive to the two captains.
But that was not what he had in mind. Instead, without a by-your-leave he informed me that I would be defense attorney for a sailor who he had referred to a Summary Court Martial.
It was a complete surprise to me. Despite my heavy workload in the yard I couldn’t refuse the Captain’s assignment, of course. But what did I know about being a lawyer? I didn’t even know the man whose future had been thrust into my hands. What a travesty of justice this would be, I thought.
This deck division sailor “…threw a fit in the crew’s head in barracks”, they said. As the crew prepared to muster for liberty one Saturday morning, he had slashed his wrists. It was considered a sham by his department chief, the cut being superficial and the man known to be missing some of his old pals who had recently received Bad Conduct Discharges (BCDs) and been mustered out. The First Lieutenant put the man on report for malingering, and later for going absent without leave (AWOL). At mast the captain awarded the summary court.
But whatever my problems, the court was to be held in a few days and I had to bone up on the Uniform Code of Military Justice rules so I could properly take on this new, unexpected assignment to defend the man, no matter what he had done.
I had never met
the sailor, so I arranged to interview him at the brig. As I returned the
Marine sentry’s salute at the brig gate, I saw sailors marching in dungarees ~
believe me, there’s nothing like a prison run by the Marines for “squids” (the
Marines’ name for sailors): shaved heads; tight dungarees and properly worn
white cup hats; marching in lock-step where each man is close enough to the one
in front and behind in ranks to breathe down one-another’s neck; and lots of
loudly-barked orders by the Marine guards.
The kid’s name was
Schwartz. He had been serving in one of the deck divisions aboard ship and
didn’t know me. He was scared to death when we met, sitting rigidly across the
table from me and hardly speaking, beyond “Yes sir” and “No sir” when I
questioned him. I persisted quietly, though, explaining that I had been
assigned to help him by representing him in the court. I stressed that I needed
to know all the facts to be able to represent him properly.
Finally, after three interview sessions, my client opened up a little. He told me he had complained of headaches and nervousness to his division chief, but had been refused permission to report to the hospital and he had been restricted to the ship and barracks. As a result, frustrated, he “went over the hill”.
I thought he had jumped the base somehow and gone home.
“Where did you go?” I asked. He said he went to the hospital on the base to
see a doctor.
“Whom did you see?” I got doctor’s names.
I went to the hospital and interviewed the doctors. At first they were non-committal, probably seeing me as an extra problem punched into their already-busy schedules. But eventually they said they remembered having seen him and had diagnosed his problem. They had given him some medicine to calm him down.
Aha! The refusal to allow a visit to the doctor and retaliation for going anyway was evidence of his bosses having a pre-conceived notion about this guy. We had a defense! This legal stuff was not going to be so bad after all.
There was also an additional problem with the court being convened at this time. The ‘Legal Officer’ (prosecutor) aboard BARTON was a Lieutenant Forsythe. He was committed to making the Navy a career, and had applied for and been accepted to submarine school in Groton, Connecticut. He was to leave in a few days and had been given five days delay in reporting ~ time off when he could visit his Yankee relatives before reporting to the school. But I took my job seriously, not considering the inconvenience a long trial would impose on my friend, the Legal Officer.
The court was convened as scheduled in a cleared compartment aboard the dry-docked BARTON. The Executive Officer, Commander Denniston, a lawyer in civilian life from Mobile, Alabama, was President of the Court, the judge, so I expected it to be conducted in a professional way. When we began I became concerned. Although I had done my best to prepare a defense for my client I was apprehensive. I guess I expected there would be “practice sessions,” but what I saw when the proceedings began was amateurish.
The
Commander, the prosecutor and I sat each with a thick Uniform Code of
Military Justice book - while the accused
listened - and the proceedings moved forward following the description of a
trial as it was laid out as a script, page by page, line by line and word by
word from the books. It seemed a sham of a trial to me. But I soon realized
that the assigned court was not high enough to rate transfer to the JAG office
on the base for adjudication by professionals, and we had to do our best.
I had not seen any requirement in my readings that the defense needed to inform the prosecutor in advance of what was to be presented, and we proceeded as though there would be no defense – the prosecutor calling his witnesses to lay out his case for the court. I cross-examined each witness and established that his accusers had not believed that there was anything the accused needed at the hospital and had pre-judged him.
When I visited them at the hospital I had informed the doctors that I wished them to testify and had scheduled their appearance. They knew what I wanted and were prepared to testify truthfully about my client’s attendance at the hospital and need for treatment. The testimony of the doctors and my client’s division officers on the stand took three whole days. My days investigating and the time to set up the court took four more.
The Legal Officer’s five days delay in reporting to Sub School had elapsed and he was pissed.
At the conclusion of the trial it was also apparent that my client was unhappy as well. He had wanted a BCD and release from the Navy like his buddies; instead, the verdict approved by the JAG was 3 months confinement back in the brig at hard labor.
The Marines would straighten him out, I figured. And although my client wasn’t happy, I had saved his reputation ~ a BCD is no recommendation when he would later apply for a civilian job after getting out. I felt I had done my duty even though no one was happy.
Save me from lawyering!