The Gundeckers

About the Book

In Vietnam, while the air and land war grinds bloodily on, a few miles off shore in the South China Sea the fleet oiler USS Michigamme, AO 108, steams up and down the coast in operation Market Time. From Yankee Station in the north, deep in the Gulf of Tonkin, to Dixie Station in the Gulf of Siam far to the south, the men of Michigamme fight boredom, a corrupt system, and each other as they refuel (or in naval parlance, unrep) what ever ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet they encounter that require it, from tiny wood-hulled MSO minesweepers doing solitary interdiction duty off the Mekong Delta to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise, CVA 65, and her taskforce engaged in bombing Haiphong harbor. When her own bunkers run dry, Michigamme returns to the POL pier in Subic Bay, P.I. to put a “Tiger” in her tank and let the men have a little R & R in the fleshpots of Olongapo.

On one such occasion she picks up a new man, a brigrat just out of incarceration on Guam for going AWOL. His name is Gus Rounds. We follow Rounds as he is introduced to his new ship and his new shipmates. He quickly earns the wrath of his future nemesis, Ted Holiday, BM1. But he is be-friended by Tick Peterson, PN2 in the Ship’s Office and cut some slack by Master Chief Gunnersmate Tom MacBriar.

Captain Childress is aboard Michigamme, deep in the belly of ServPac, the wretched Service Fleet Pacific, and the bottom of the barrel as far as command status goes, for one reason only. Her draft. Fully laden she draws 48 feet of water, about the same as an aircraft carrier. Childress is a WWII flyboy hero who knows nothing about ships and is bucking for a carrier command, but to get it he needs some deep draft experience on his resume.Fortunately for Childress, his second in command, Executive Officer Jim Barden, is a competent seaman and navigator and he sees to all the actual details of the ship´s day to day performance. While Rounds is part of Deck Force we meet his fellow deckapes Red Dog, Tony Land, John Basham, and Denny Van Horn BM2, Holiday´s right hand man. We also meet Tim Case, ET3, Gary Middleshore, PN striker and many other members of Michigamme 212-man crew.With a little encouragement and Peterson greasing the wheels, Rounds gets out from under Holiday´s thumb on deck force and is allowed to;strike for gunner. After Tom MacBriar´s suicide, the Gunnery Department of Michigamme consists of Deke Buckles, GM2, Joe Cruz, GM3, and Rounds, seaman striker. Until BuPers in Washington can send a replacement for Chief MacBriar, Buckles is in charge of the gundecks. He and Holiday are at war. Holiday is also at war with Peterson over money Holiday owes to the illegal slush fund Peterson operates with Corpsman Jerry Steinberg. Then the an unknown officer steals Deke Buckles Filipina girlfriend, Trudy, and Buckles goes berserk, starting a riot in Olongapo and a war between Michigamme and Oklahoma City, flagship of Com7thFleet. Later he finds out that the officer is Captain Childress of the Michigamme, and the seeds to a mutiny are sown. First the Okie City, as she is known, is doused with black oil from stem to stern when Buckles and the rest of the gundeckers conspire with some snipes in Engineering to send the flagship a charged hose thus torpedoing Captain Childress´ career. But Buckles is killed in a helicopter accident and it falls on Gus Rounds to plot the Michigamme Mutiny. When push finally comes to shove it´s in a raging typhoon off the coast of Japan. Joe Cruz and Gus Rounds make their move and the gundeckers seize command of the ship by force. But by then the real question is whose ship is it anyway?

About the Author

Richard Winston was born in 1944 at Minneapolis. He was educated at the Northup School and Folwell Junior High School. California became the family’s home in 1959 and in 1962 he graduated from Glendale High. Later he attended San Jose State University and San Francisco State University, which awarded him a bachelor’s degree in Semiotics in 1976. Between San Jose State and San Francisco State, he went to sea with the U.S. Seventh Fleet during the Vietnam conflict, serving as a deck-seaman and quartermaster for about 26 months. The story idea for death is the downbeat, originally conceived as a screenplay for a student film, continued to grow in scale and complexity until only the form of the novel could contain it.