Our last night on station we got the word that we were going home, and we were not wasting any time getting there either. Now, we had one particular Ranger that was a very talented artist. He had done wall murals, tattoos, etc. The guy was good. That night, this guy sneaks down to the hanger deck, where lots of gear is stored in cardboard boxes eight to ten feet high, and on the sides of this row of boxes draws his own mural depiction of our sentiments.
The mural had the America, broken in half and sinking in the background (like the Titanic). Over on one side laid a battered seal with a bloodied baseball bat lying next to it. And in the center it showed a Ranger, black beret and all, with a large bulldog wearing a USMC sweatshirt in a headlock, and the Ranger was slowly slitting its throat with a large combat knife. Above all this very fine artistic work, you could read the mural's title - "NO MORE F#$%^&g LICKING, NO MORE F%#$^&G SCRATCHING!"
Needles to say, our little mural went over like a fart in Sunday School with the ship's captain. But, our chain of command thought it was cool. It was all in fun, and we were all glad to be headed home.
Yea, But I wish she {AMERICA CV-66 / CVA-66} still had a Captain to say that for her. A year after your visit she went into mothballs. What you heard was a tradition usually just at sea. Better to hear the Old Man than the Scuttle Butt that was going round. I did hear our captain get a tad but upset though. I think it was in 1977 we were anchored just off Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia on liberty and an imfamous Adradic storm blew up. We were anchored about a mile off shore and dragging anchor as the winds hit us. The Captain started screaming Set the special sea and anchor detail NOW get this ****** ship underway. I never saw a carrier start moving a quick. It was a close one indeed and in the very same area Ron Brown was killed in.