Vietnam Rose

When I left school and joined the Navy, I was not a man of the world. I was just 16, and my experience of women was mostly of being patted on the head by rotund farming matrons in the village where I grew up. I was, in a word, naive.

The officers on my first ship were obviously aware of this. They reckoned that fresh-faced new crew members like myself were at high risk of being infected by horrid diseases unless we were warned of the potential dangers. So they arranged a Health and Hygiene lecture.

This lecture was held in the Mess, surrounded by bread rolls, swabbing mops and brass portholes. The ship’s appointed medical expert told us what we could expect on the first night we docked in outrageously foreign and wanton places like Amsterdam, Curaçao and worst of all — New Zealand.

“There will be women there,” he warned ponderously. “And not all of them are clean!” We tittered. But then he rolled the anti casual-shagging movie.

A procession of bent, swollen, pus-raddled and raw-skinned knobs filled the screen, luckily for us only in black and white. The crackling soundtrack was backed up by contorted and goitred necks, weeping cankers, hideously enlarged pubic lice, swollen testicles and cratered abscesses. We were spared the sight of similarly afflicted female genitals, but even so you could almost hear the blood draining from pale young faces around the room.

The fleshy anticipation of ‘a girl in every port’ antics we had been assured of by older, more worldly crew members was nothing but a cruel joke. How would we be able to go back home after our first voyage with something like that in our trousers? We swore we would never go near any of those risky foreign sheilas and their corrupting organisms — never never ever.

Not that long after, our ship was docked in Wellington, New Zealand, just down the quay from where a US Navy aircraft carrier had been moored a week or so previously. It had sailed down from Vietnam, and had poured a couple of thousand war-weary young sailors and marines into bars and discos across the city. If they had been shown the same Health and Hygiene movie we had seen, it was apparently not top of their minds. Everybody we spoke to told tales of raucous behaviour, outrageous drinking — and lots of shagging.

But we remembered that crackling black and white horror show, and swore again we would take care. We would only talk to and maybe get friendly with nice girls. Girls, for example, who worked at the local telephone exchange.

“Hello, is that the operator?”

“Yes, what number do you want?”

“We don’t want a number. We want to invite you to a party on our ship.” Slight pause, muffled conversation.

“How many girls do you want to come down? Which ship? And what time?”

Goodness, it seemed like even though they were nice girls, they had been invited to this kind of thing before. Astonishing. Never mind, we had the music, the grog, anaesthetic-grade aftershave and a foreign accent. So we spruced up, scraped the dirt from under our fingernails, donned outrageous shirts and arranged ourselves artfully around the bar to wait for our nice visitors.

Pleasingly soon after, half a dozen young Kiwi telephonists were walking up our gangplank. They plonked themselves familiarly in the ship’s bar and ordered Black Russians all round. To us, still recovering from several weeks at sea, they seemed so open and friendly and lovely and exotic-sounding that everybody was keen to chat to them, laugh, get them more drinks and even touch their lovely soft hands. Everybody, that is, apart from Jock the new Third Engineer.

Jock was a Presbyterian Scot and was being very strict with himself: just one soft drink, no chatting with girls (his fiancée was waiting back home in Scotland) and definitely no touching. Whatever happened that night in the bar, he was keeping well out of it.

However, a seafarer pal of Jock’s called The Bishop with extensive experience of the world had other plans.

Jock had unwisely confided to The Bishop that although he was in his mid-twenties, and a time served engineer who confidently knew one end of a bastard file from the other, he was still a virgin. This offended The Bishop’s core values to a significant degree and he secretly vowed to help correct this distressing situation. Unaware of the background plotting, Jock continued to sip slowly on his soft drink.

The Bishop put a two-pronged plan into effect. He spiced up Jock’s drink regime with a splash or two of taste-free vodka. Then he called on the services of a very friendly non-telephonist who he knew intimately from previous visits. She happened to be in the area, and agreed she would drop by and help sort Jock’s problem, as a favour. She was in fact, already on her way!

Blissfully unaware, Jock continued to down his now powerfully intoxicating drink. He became merry, loose limbed, talkative and deeply engaged in conversation with The Bishop‘s ladyfriend almost as soon as she walked on board. He talked to her, laughed with her, then not that long after— went to his cabin with her.

I won’t go into too many details, but will say that not just Jock but many others on board forgot completely those stern warnings from the Health and Hygiene lecture. They dallied extensively with cuddly and willing Kiwis. They also went back to cabins. Next morning a straggly queue of telephonists wavered down the gangplank, followed by The Bishop’s ladyfriend with an accomplished grin on her face. Jock woke with a hangover, but without his innocence. He also woke with an unwanted gift, which upcoming research would attribute indirectly to that US Navy aircraft carrier.

A few days later, he started to feel itchy in the downstairs department. And his eyes were really sore too. He took all this to be a side effect of that vodka-laced coke and not enough sleep, took some aspirin and carried on working. Next morning he couldn’t get out of bed. His arms and legs had swollen up, he could barely open his eyes they were so puffy and his old chap was red and sore.

He had, agreed the rest of the crew that filed through his cabin to inspect him and his extremities, caught a severe dose of Vietnam Rose courtesy of the US Marine Corps, via Ms Ladyfriend.

The doctor was called, venereal disease was confirmed and strong antibiotics advised. But Jock just got worse and worse. He was almost unable to see now, virtually unable to move and sweating like a pig. The doctor agreed that more aggressive interventions were needed: it was time to cart him off to the local hospital. There, the experts in ‘social diseases’ agreed that he was such an unusual and interesting case that they needed to call in a photographer to document the more prominent and astonishing parts of his problem. Indeed, there was a high possibility that his knob would feature as part of the gruesome tally in the next Health and Hygiene movie. He was a star.

Sadly, despite the best efforts of the Wellington General Hospital, Jock’s star continued to shine longer than was good for his work-life balance. He was still not fit for duty by the time our ship had finished loading and was due to sail. Left behind on the dock, as it were, he ended up being flown back home on sick leave, presumably spending long hours on the plane wondering exactly what to say in explanation to his family.

All this was a long time ago, and passing time makes it difficult to work out the moral of the story. Should it be that young sailors should avoid strong drink? Should it be that young sailors should avoid New Zealand women? More brutally, should it be that young sailors should avoid intimate favours from casual acquaintances?

I think there could be another moral: young sailors should avoid making close friends with anybody nicknamed The Bishop.

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