It reminds me of the race riot aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in October, 1972.
These guys attacked me at night walking between the enlisted quarters, one guy came up behind me and kicked me hard in the ass, and when I turned around to see him there and asked what that was for, he said “I don’t like your hat”.
I was wearing a squadron hat (VA-46), and it seemed weird to me that someone would take issue with that...hell, who had that much dislike for another unit back in the Seventies?
I took off my glasses and let him know he and I were going to have it out, and three other guys came out and surrounded me, and the beating was on.
It was only recently that it occurred to me why the guy disliked my hat.
We were VA-46, a Scottish themed squadron with plaid on our planes, and the officers actually had ceremonial kilts and Glengarry covers. The tartan on the plane was the MacDougall Clan, and our motto was “Conquer or Die” an arm with a clenched sword. Our officers got royal treatment when we went to Edinburgh, Scotland...:)
The squadron was known as “The Clansmen”.
These racist illiterate dicks probably saw “Clansmen” and read it as “Klansman” and that was enough. Actually, that might have been irrelevant. They were probably just polar bear hunting.
As an aside, once, someone did overpaint the “C” in “Clansmen” with a “K” on our plane to read “Klansmen” which even the black guys in our squadron found hilarous, but the brass saw no humor in it at all.
Funny thing was, I never, ever made that connection until recently, when my Navy Buddy sent me a military hat with “The Clansmen” embroidered on the back of the hat...it never occurred to me that it was that, not the “VA-46”...:)
Light dawns on Marblehead...