Stay of Execution

Leaving Newport a little early has turned out to be a bit more awkward than I had thought. The timetable was actually set by my landlords who need to come back in mid June to continue working on my 'caretaker's cottage.'  This would have meant missing a couple of events in which my presence was wanted, so I vaguely wondered about extending my stay in Newport but in another rental if this could be found in the tourist season. Very quickly idle speculation turned into an action plan and almost before I knew it, everything was fixed. For the last three weeks or so, I shall move into another rental just around the corner and have been over to inspect it. One again it's completely different from this one - tiny (though with two bedrooms) and totally immaculate. It rejoices in being number 401/2 - yes forty and a half - and is up a little cul-de-sac. It sounds as though Harry Potter should be living there. It was also very easy to change my return flight and the two taxis at either end of the flight, plus of course alerting Nathan, the Milkman and the Newspaper people. So I'll be back early morning on July 3rd. Tomorrow I will need to extend my car rental - and that should be that. 

    While of the subject of rentals as part of my campaign to redo the Cliff Walk for one last time I found a not totally inconvenient car-park (of which more anon)  and scrambled over the rocks to get a good view of my old rooming house at Ocean View- or at least my landlady's big house to which it belonged. I knew from driving past it on Bellevue Avenue that major works were going on in the grounds (including the reroofing and presumably de-squirralling of the roof  of the Carriage House which cant be seen from this photo) , and this was apparent from the other tamer end of the Cliff Walk.

I managed to get there for a photo from the other much rougher side too. From here I could where they had kindly provided me with a bench on their front lawn so, during the Covid lock-down, I could sit and eat my sandwiches with a spectacular sea view right in front of me. Happy days - sort of. Curiously it made me feel quite nostalgic; was it really 3 years ago ?

    Other than that, work pressure has eased a bit now that the book manuscript has been sent off and the bulk of the heavy bit of my last teaching session has been done. This has meant that at long last I can start on sorting out the Admiral Hezlet papers in time to send the valuable bits of it to the archive at the Naval College in Dartmouth. It's actually quite exciting in a way. You never know what you will come across in this jumble of papers. Some of the interesting stuff includes his presence at the first atom bomb trials and also his role in sinking a Japanese heavy cruiser off Singapore. The Admiral actually wrote three books and I was intrigued by the insight into his research method of attack. A meticulous note-taker but like me tended to use scrap paper for the purpose ; he was worse than me though,  since he used envelopes, menus, official correspondence - anything at all really and sometimes what's on the other side is also very interesting. He was based in Northern Ireland and he made use of a lot of stuff from committee meeting at the University of Ulster. 

    I, and a naval colleague had to go over to Belfast to collect some of it. It gave me a bit of a jolt to come across Cherry's written directions to Bristol airport that had somehow got mixed up with all the papers, years ago. At the time we nearly inadvertently set off a security incident in Belfast airport on our return flight. [Apparently big blocks of paper  look like a very suspicious black hole to luggage scanners]. Once there, our military but plain clothes, driver took us on a tour of all the dodgy areas in the City, as neither of us had been there before. Fascinating in a depressing kind of way.   

    One disadvantage of staying on a bit at Newport of course is that one lapses in to tourist season proper. Unless one has a resident sticker (which I don't as I am not here long enough) parking is quite challenging in Newport. But after May 1st it gets much worse, so the intent is to make as much use of what's available now to do the sights of the place for one last time. Fortunately, though, I have discovered a nice coffee shop in walking distance of where I am now which won't be crowded with tourists and  I have the occasional breakfast treat routine of having a blueberry muffin and cappuccino there while doing my e-mails.

    The only danger here is I tend to be accompanied by a rather charming white dog who stares at me fixedly and reproachfully while I eat his muffin. (He gets some of course).  How could he not, especially as he's perfectly willing to accept his tribute from the polished wooden floor. 

    Otherwise, as I say things seems to be ticking over more or less satisfactorily. One incident seems worth recalling  though it quite literally doesn't reflect well on me. A Chilean naval officer, who rejoices in the name Christopher Green (there's a long Spanish name after that)  was a colleague of mine a couple of years ago and asked me to write a forward to a book he had written and published for his navy. It so happened the launch of this was to take place during a big gathering of South American naval leaders in Valparaiso. He asked me whether I would be prepared to say something about it before the assembled throng and so patched me through to the gathering via the ubiquitous Zoom. I have to say that I think the resultant picture of me pontificating has to be one of the worst I've ever seen but has been flashed all over the continent apparently. Perhaps the sooner I give this kind of thing up the better for all concerned. 

What do they do at a War College ?

 

The answer to this question is practically everything. Everything to do with war, its prevention and a lot else.  There are a huge number of very specific courses tailored to highly defined courses and groups of students. I share a building with one big group of International Students who do courses designed to help their navies deal with things like maritime security in coastal waters (responding to drugs and people trafficking, terrorism, smuggling, piracy, climate change – things like that). There are research institutes that specialise in studying China and Russia, maritime law, humanitarian disaster relief etc etc etc and they all offer short courses, that are nearly all unclassified. I’m in a unit that does historical research on navies that feeds into today’s experience and we support some of the main courses that ordinary staff college students go through. So I do an Elective on ‘How to grow a Navy’ over 10+ weeks, which will probably be my last bit of sustained teaching ever, so I’m glad it’s full and going well so far. Good to end on a high note – I hope it continues. We in this Hattendorf historical unit run our own courses, but because I am now only half-time I only do a bit of that.

I do quite a lot of ‘visiting artiste’ gigs with the other main departments.  The main one I have been dealing with has been the ‘Joint Military Operations’ department which is the most professional and war-fighting department of them all but which only operates at the unclassified levels and has full International involvement along with US students from the Navy and all the other services. Historical insights have things to offer here.

 Last week, for example, I was involved in one of their ‘war games’ . The idea is that they look at past campaigns, learn lessons and look at whether they apply today. I sat in on their re-run of the Falklands campaign, which lasted over a week. There are really complicated rules to how to run the game but the students are free to approach it (as the UK or Argentine side) as they wish, knowing of course as they do, what really happened).

They take it very seriously as you can see from the two pics with a lot of animated discussion about  the best options. Eventually the Brits ‘won’ again ( not that that’s the point of the exercise) but in a different. Way. Its then followed up with a big review of everything that was done the best way forwards. My point was that I didn’t think either team paid sufficient attention to the domestic and international limits they were operating under, or the legal constraints, which they took in good part.

Otherwise its been a quiet but busy period with the final despatch of my last book to the Publisher and then the Easter weekend. Not of course in the US Easter is the event it is in the UK. No days off, although people do take leave. Mine was unexpectedly busy with an easter family party on the Saturday, with a decided Swedish twist. This seemed to revolve around singing little verses about sea-faring issues between slugs of Aquavit. (Not entirely sure what that has to do with Easter but there were loads of eggs around too). The following day I had an Easter Sunday brunch with friends at a former Hyatt Hotel on Goat Island where Cherry and I used to stay in days gone by when I was over here for big conferences.  The other major event of the holiday was my getting scammed – my laptop was locked and to clear it I unwisely took up the invitation to phone a number I thought came from Microsoft. This was a mistake. I should have done immediately what the family said from the other side of the Atlantic, and just hard-stopped the laptop. No real harm done as far as I can tell, but I had to get my laptop cleaned, and block my bank accounts and change all important passwords, which took a few stressful hours, especially during a holiday weekend. Since then, I’ve had lots of phone calls on my US phone, quite a few from China, all of which I ignore, and have turned it to silent.  This didn’t contribute much to the festive spirit. 

However, I recovered with a walk round the bird reserve at Sachusett Point on Easter Monday. Saw a few birds, though not as many as I probably should have done. I did spot six White-tailed deer though, quite like our fallow only a bit bigger and less spotted. It was a gorgeous day though with the usual cold wind.

               Otherwise all is well. A few leaves are appearing on the bushes and from my back porch  I can see that the first cruise liner has turned up in the bay, so Spring is here at last and the Summer in sight.