Submitted by Former Crew Members

Craig, John - Return to Rota

After 26 years since leaving ROTA Spain , I returned. It was a beautiful two weeks. Me and my family spent four days in ROTA , this was someplace I thought I would never see again. Upon arrival it appeared to be the same as when we were last there , but there has been change , to those that remember Red Square , and our first apartment by the beach.

The square is still there but the bars are gone , (California bar) where our apartment was is now a big modern building. The gift shop is still on the corner though and is still called the Toledo House. Walking around town brought back so many memories of great people,fun times , and great parties.(My bachelor party was some night , a little fuzzy to remember) Bringing my daughter back to see where she was born was a dream come true , We all enjoyed it .

The food was great , and the wine was even better , nothing like sitting outside and having a glass of wine in the afternoon sun! The sunsets on the beach in ROTA are still the most beautiful sights to see . We stayed at the same hotel we stayed at before we came home , and it still looks the same as then . If anyone who was there would ever have a chance to return , make the trip .

HT-2 John Craig R-1 Div X-17
USS SIMON LAKE AS-33

Liberating France

The following letter was received from Eric Streit, a former crew member of the USS Simon Lake (AS33). It's not only well written, but interesting and amusing. The title "Liberating France" was added by the Webmaster.

Dear Mr. Sanders:

My father told me that you had written an article, or placed an ad seeking past crew members of the Simon Lake.

I was on the Simon Lake from December 7, 1987 to December 8, 1989. We were homeported in Holy Loch Scotland.

It was my first permanent duty station, and quite a culture shock to an eighteen year old who had grown up in Paducah, Kentucky and never traveled far from there.

Although the ship rarely deployed, we had one port call to Brest, France in the Spring of 1988. I believe that we were the first U.S. Navy ship to visit there in a long, long time - and the whole town turned out to welcome us.

Everybody hit the beach, and we truly enjoyed the sunshine - and being homeported in a small Scottish village; Brest had the first McDonald's most of us had seen in quite some time. It was odd to many of the French that a U.S. Ship would pull into France, and the first thing everybody wanted to do was go to McDonald's.

Two of my shipmates and I decided to be adventurous. We walked from morning until well after dark, and ended up in a remote farm village far from where our fellow crew members were. We wandered into a small bar, which seemed to be one of three public buildings in the town. It was very dark, lit only by one naked bulb hanging precariously in the middle of the room. As our eyes adjusted to the smoke and darkness, it was very much like stepping into another time - almost as if we'd been dropped into the middle of a 1930's Warner Brothers film starring Humphrey Bogart and George Raft. Wood floors, wood walls, an old mirror behind the bar - and the clothing everybody wore bore no insignias and seemed to be from another era. The small bar was populated by four drinkers and a bartender.

We ordered (or attempted to order) beers in completely garbled French. It was late and the frenchmen struggled to understand us. Finally - one them asked, "Ah-Mer-ee-Cahns?" We reluctantly responded, because we'd heard so many stories about the French hating Americans - and when we confirmed their suspicions, the whole place erupted into cheers.

The largest lagers I had ever seen materialized before us - we were given a table of honor beneath the one dim bulb. As we drank our beers, one by one, and two by two, the folks came over to "talk" with us.

Of course, we couldn't understand a word they were saying and vice-versa, but we laughed and kidded and were having a great time. After several large lagers, an ancient Frenchman arrived, who must've been at least 80 years old. Through much hand-motioning and loud noisemaking, much like chimps you might see on the Discovery Channel, we finally ascertained that the old man was the owner of the bar. He had been at home, but when we arrived, somebody was dispatched to wake him and bring him back.

With much fanfare, he took us behind the bar. After a great deal of rearranging, he uncovered a timeworn wooden box.

What came next was very strange. The old man tried to lift the box, and couldn't. Several others rushed around to help, and in an almost ceremonial fashion, they carried the box over to where we had been sitting. He then motioned for me and my friends to join him at the table. He produced a rusty key, and his shaky hands worked to undo the lock, spurning the attempts from others to help him. Finally, he managed to make the connection and the box creaked open. He dug into the box pulled out several pictures, produced three bottles of wine which were coated with dust and placed them deliberately in the center of the table.

An eerie silence had drawn over the room. I looked around for the first time in quite a while and noticed that the room, which had previously had only four patrons, had now probably tripled in size. The old man pointed at pictures and struggled to communicate. He kept pointing at a tall young man standing in front of a building with several American soldiers. As the man broadly motioned, grew louder and struggled to communicate, another man stepped from the group to act as interpreter. Our "interpreter" spoke perhaps three words of English, but through the haze of our lagers and the thrill of the moment, it finally dawned on us that the tall young man standing in the picture was the same old man sitting at the table before us.

After more "talking" he conveyed that he and the American servicemen in the picture were there celebrating the liberation of France at the end of World War II.

On closer examination, we saw that several of the soldiers were holding bottles of wine and one man had his foot on a wooden box...the same box that the old man had pulled the aging photographs from.

Those servicemen had liberated France and celebrated freedom with a young man at his bar...and we were the first Americans to come through the door in the forty-four years that followed - the bottles on the table before us were the last remaining from the liberation celebration nearly half a century before. The peace had lasted, and the old man made it very clear that it was our duty as good Americans to finish the celebration that had begun forty-three years prior by men who could now be our grandfathers.

His shaky hands delicately popped the cork on the first bottle of wine. He passed the corkscrew to me, and I opened another, I passed the corkscrew to my friend, Dave, who opened the last. For the rest of the night, we drank the wine with him. Although he couldn't understand our words, nor we his - we laughed, and whooped and hollered and cried. At eight a.m. the following morning we stumbled outside with our arms around each other and somebody took a picture. We turned around and for the first time realized that we were standing in the very place that the original photo had been taken - and nothing had changed - not the building, not the color, not a single detail. The village remained untouched by the march to times. We were the first American visitors to pass through in nearly half a century, and they were happy to see us.

I hadn't written this letter with the intention of turning it into a novel, but this is the first time I've written about the experience. I look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Sanders.

Sincerely,

Eric Streit