Thanksgiving 1969

Best wishes to my OCS classmates, shipmates, and all Biddlemen for a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving in 1969 was on November 27. Holiday routine, of course, and a special dinner. My journal noted, most specially, however, that I slept until 0930, and then 1100 to 1430, 1730 to 1930, and 2330 to 0330.

Movie poster

Sometime in there, according to my journal, I watched “The World of Suzie Wong,” the 1960 film starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. My October 30 post mentioned my visit to an establishment of the same name in Kowloon and included a picture of me and “Bunny.”

Watching the movie, according to my journal, I “felt homesick. I’d like to go back there, as a civilian.” Guess it had made an impression on me. 🙂

It was the second of what was to be three Thanksgivings in a row I would miss at home, i.e., my home in the States, not Kowloon.

Biddle was west of Hawaii, heading north of the islands. On the previous Sunday, I had been standing midwatch in CIC.  Noted in my journal that we had had an “interesting” event during the watch.

“We were on collision course with this freighter . . . for an hour.” We had been trying to reach it frequently via radio, but had received no response. “At two minutes before collision, we turned . . . toward him. That woke him up and he turned hard to starboard, going astern of us by about 1700 yards.”

Many middle-digit signals were hoisted.

Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the ship held commendatory mast. CAPT Olsen handed out 200 citations to crew members.

On the day before Thanksgiving, according to my journal, “Picked up a small contact 4 miles ahead of us. Turned out to be a quart bottle.”

Excitement reigned on the cruise east.