THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 21, 1996 TAG: 9608200402
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY HANS D. DEFOR
LENGTH: 68 lines
Every year the Navy sends its midshipmen to the far corners of the earth to train with and observe the fleet in action.
It makes for an exciting, exhausting few months for these students, all of whom are seeking careers in the officer corps of the seagoing service.
This year, I'm one of them.
On July 23 I joined 23 other students from across the country at the Philadelphia International Airport, orders in hand that read: ``Report to the USS Austin (LPD-4). Destination: Naples.
We'd been warned that midshipmen summer cruise orders were notorious for last-minute changes. And the Austin was rarely idle: A Norfolk-based amphibious transport dock, it is one of three ships in the Saipan Amphibious Ready Group that deployed to the Mediterranean in late June with the Enterprise Battle Group.
So it was no great shock to see our orders rewritten. Italy was out. Constanta, Romania, was in.
After a late-night stop in Rota, Spain, the plane hopped to Naples, then to Constanta. A short bus trip later, all of us checked into a ``resort'' hotel that overlooked the Black Sea.
The next morning we took a bus to within sight of our goal, the Austin, anchored off the coast. Most of us didn't get there just yet, instead staying ashore to role-play as ``refugees'' in a NATO Partnership for Peace exercise.
Meanwhile, the rest of our journey was laid out for us: two more days in Constanta, followed by a few days in Odessa, Ukraine, a quick transit through the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and five days' rest and relaxation on the Greek island of Rhodes.
Constanta proved to be a friendly city. Almost all the Romanians we met were eager to hear about America, and some wanted to buy the belts and jeans we wore. Tip: The movie ``Spy Hard'' is just as bad with Romanian subtitles as it is in English.
In Odessa we felt like celebrities, so overwhelming was the interest in us. We didn't meet many residents who spoke English, but that gave us a chance to practice our Russian.
It was interesting to see how Odessa was adjusting to its new-found independence: While we were there some of the streets were being renamed to reflect the new world order, but Soviet World War II memorials remained in place.
A highlight was our transit through the Bosporus and Dardanelles, the narrow straits separating the Black Sea from the Med.
Istanbul lies on both sides of the narrow Bosporus, the minarets of its ancient mosques nestled amid modern office towers. Farther along, in the Dardanelles, a Turkish memorial marks Anzac Bay, where Australian and New Zealand troops died by the tens of thousands in World War I.
Rhodes, too, was full of history. All of us scoured the port for signs of the long-vanished Colossus, a gargantuan statue and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We wandered the old city, shopped and sunned on white beaches. We returned to the Austin tanned and broke.
Our time on the Austin was not all liberty ports, of course. We all fired many of the ship's weapons and spent plenty of time on the bridge, in the Combat Direction Center, and down in the hole. A few of the Marine-option midshipmen experienced helicopter operations.
But I think most of us will most remember the roundabout way we got here and the ports we visited. I will never forget Mount Etna in Sicily; tacos and enchiladas at a restaurant in the Ukraine; and donkey rides to the Acropolis in Greece.
No doubt none of our classmates will have done anything as remotely interesting all summer as we have. MEMO: Hans D. Defor is a midshipman 1st class at the Naval Academy, and
is assigned to the Austin for his summer training. by CNB