If there are any old sewer-pipe Radiomen (capitol "R") among you (if you have to
ask, then you ain't one), here's something I had to share with you. Tribute to
an old shipmate by Bob 'Dex' Armstrong

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Vic Casciola, Radioman, Shipmate.

Late one evening, before our last reunion, I got a phone call. When I heard the
voice, years melted away.

"Dex... Vic Casciola... You remember me?"

Did I remember Vic? Does a hobby horse have a hickory dick? You bet I remember
Vic!!

Vic had a medical condition that erased a lot of his memory and was phoning to
see if I thought the lads would recall who he was. He didn't want to show up at
the reunion if nobody would remember him. He also wanted his son to know that
long ago, his dad rode the boats.

So, this is for his son. It's not much... Others could do better. I'm not
articulate enough to capture on paper the unique, one-of-a-kind shipmate that
was Vic. All I want to do is validate Vic's credentials.

Vic arrived on Requin wearing paratrooper wings over his ribbons. Paratrooper
wings and Silver Dolphins... Talk about double-dipping lunatics.

Vic was a radioman... Make that triple-dipping lunacy. He was the absolute
master of the "speed key." A contraption radio guys used to tap out flips and
blips that to fellow practitioners of flip and blip transmission, could be
translated into communication understood by normal members of the human race.
Vic could pound out stuff at a rate that constantly frustrated his recipients.
Many nights, radiomen receiving Vic's "heat" would have to tell him to hold up
until they could hunt up some poor devil who could read at his rate... Like
going to find a catcher for Nolan Ryan's fast ball. Vic could bang out code
faster than Gypsy Rose could pop a garter snap.

He was amazing. He was also a master at sneaking stuff into official traffic. In
the old days, boat sailors didn't get fifty word 'poopy-grams'... We got 'Little
Orphan Annie drops' and anything you could con a radioman to sneak into a
message after he caught up on ALLNAV transmissions.

A 'Little Orphan Annie drop' came from naval aviators. The good ones, God bless
'em, would go to the tender, collect your mail, put it into a cleaned up paint
can along with a couple of recent newspapers, a dog-eared Playboy, and two or
three sports magazines. They would tape the contraption up and drop it to you
when you were surfaced.

They would fly over and yell stuff over the radio,

"Mark center... Mark ringer..."

And out of the bottom of a P2V would come a tumbling can. Lookouts would cheer
and the can would slam into the swells.

If you were lucky, someone on deck would fish out the can with a boathook, mail
would be distributed in the control room and we would spike the morale-meter.

If you were unlucky, the sunovabitch would sink... And set up housekeeping with
crabs and a lot of German U-Boat crews. One Christmas, we lost a can on a three
contraption drop. I later learned that a port wine soaked, pecan loaded
fruitcake my aunt sent me, had been misdirected to the deck force of the
Titanic.

That brings us back to method two of clandestine shore communication... Vic
Casciola and his magical speed key. The poor *******s in the Orion radio shack
would get stuff like this...

"REQUIN ETA 1600Z... REQUIRE WELDER FOR DECK DAMAGE ON STAND BY... PHONE
319-6247 FOR RESULTS OF LITTLE LEAGUE SERIES... REQUIN TO DEPART NORFOLK 0800Z
031561... WILL REQUIRE STORES, TWO WEEKS... FUEL... CHARTS ACCORDING TO OP
ORDERS... PHONE 319-4670 TELL MARY DAD WILL FUND PROM DRESS... WILL LOAD 2 MK37
TORPEDOES... HAVE INJURED MAN TO TRANSFER NORFOLK NAVAL HOSPITAL REQUIRE
TRANSPORT... PATIENT AMBULATORY... PHONE 319-4026 OBTAIN RESULTS PREGNANCY
TEST... WILL NEED NEST ASSIGNMENT AND LINE HANDLERS... (pause)... WILL EXPECT
ANSWERS NEXT TRANSMISSION"

Magic Man could get everything from clothing measurements to racing results and
the wardroom never knew.

Vic could fall asleep in the middle of a bar brawl. We didn't know that it was
probably an early indication of his later medical problem.

Once, the diving officer was told that Vic was asleep on watch in the radio
shack. Major no-no. When the diving officer went to the shack, there was
Cassiola wearing headphones with his eyes closed.

"Casciola... You asleep?"

"No sir."

Never opened his eyes.

"Well, what in the hell are you doing with your eyes closed?"

"Checking my eyelids for holes."

The worst duty on Requin was having the below deck watch and having to wake Vic
up. The sonuvabitch could sleep through the last five minutes of a hocky game, a
five hundred pound bomb drop and the second coming of Christ. The COB once said
if Vic had been at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he would have slept through
it. I would rather have taken raw meat from a half-starved Bengal tiger than
have been sent to separate Vic from his rack. It ranked up there with the most
delicate surgical procedures... You had to remove the flashcover from Vic's back
without getting your lights punched out. We toyed with the idea of doing it
electrically, but how could you wire up a guy who could have the tender phone
your mom to wish her a happy birthday?

Vic Casciola... Did we remember you?

Hell no.

Everyone wore Dolphins, paratrooper wings, sent code at the speed of light and
slept like a bank vault.



--

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~k0hb