Commander Buell is justifiably acclaimed for his authorship of biographies of two of the top admirals of World War II, Raymond A. Spruance and Ernest J. King. He began working on the former while on the staff of the Naval War College in the early 1970s. The president of the college, Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner, facilitated the project. In addition to his specific research, Buell brought a background of experience as a surface warfare officer to the work. In this lightly edited excerpt from an oral history interview with Paul Stillwell on 8 May 2002, Buell recounts an incident that took place when he was weapons officer on board the guided-missile ocean escort USS Brooke (DEG/FFG-1) in the mid-1960s. His experience then was a lot different from writing books.
One of the things that I want to talk about with the Brooke I think was an interesting story. We were tied up pierside in San Diego, and I was command duty officer [CDO]. A man came running over, and he came in the wardroom where we had several wives with us who’d come in for dinner; he said, “there’s a sailor who’s got a submachine gun, and he’s holding everyone as a hostage on the ship next door.”
I said: “Holy Toledo! What’s going on?” A gunner’s mate on the ship next door had indeed gotten into the armory and had gotten hold of a Thompson submachine gun, and he was holding the quarterdeck hostage. The first thing that came to my mind was, “I’ve got to think about the protection of my own sailors.” I got all my sailors into the mess hall; I locked the door, and I said to a petty officer in there: “Don’t open that door unless you know it’s me telling you to do it. This is the way that we’re going to keep everyone safe.” And I went topside.
One of my officers was a sharpshooter. He got a carbine out, and we loaded that baby with a .30-caliber clip. I could see the sailor with the submachine gun was just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So I said: “Let’s bring the gangway in so if he wants to come over to our ship he’s going to have to jump between the two ships, and he won’t be able to shoot us while he’s still going back and forth between the two ships.” I said to my sharpshooter: “If he does try to come aboard, shoot him, but don’t shoot him to kill him. Shoot to wound him.”
Some of the master-at-arms force came running out on the adjacent ship. I can still see the sailors coming through with their pistols drawn. They said: “Where is the guy? We’re going to shoot him! We’re going to shoot him!”
I said, “Whatever you do, don’t shoot the guy, because there will be paperwork that we certainly don’t want to have to deal with.”
The CDO who was being held hostage at the ship next door was a very, very calm, collected man. Finally, he said to this deranged sailor, “Let’s go take a walk, and let’s see what we can find.” So, the CDO and the deranged sailor started walking toward the foot of the pier.
I got on my topside 1MC, and I said: “Attention everyone on the pier: there’s a sailor there, and he’s got one of our officers hostage. Whatever you do, don’t do anything to alarm him or to wound him or don’t shoot a gun at him or anything. Let’s get this done without any bloodshed.”
By that time the naval station had essentially gone to general quarters; at the foot of the pier they had put up a temporary barricade, and Marines were there with their rifles. This CDO was such a cool character. He said to the sailor: “It looks like we’re going to have some difficulty getting past that barricade. Let’s see if I can get them to let us through.”
The sailor said, “OK.” And so, the officer walked over to the barricade where the Marines were there with their rifles pointing, and he hit the deck.
The sergeant in charge of the Marines said to the sailor: “I’m going to count to three. If you don’t drop your gun by the time I count three—you’re dead.” I wasn’t there, but this is the story that the CDO told me. He said he could hear the click, click, click as all the Marines took their safeties off. About a dozen or so M1s, or whatever they were carrying at the time, were drawn up like that. The sergeant said, “One . . . two . . . three.” The sailor dropped his weapon on three. Then this guy raised his arms, and the emergency was over.
He may have been deranged, and he may have been crazy, but he didn’t want to be killed. We looked into it afterward. How did he get the key to the armory? He was the duty gunner’s mate for the day, and he told the CDO that he had to get into the armory for some trivial thing. So, he went down to the armory, and he got his Thompson submachine gun, and he held the ship hostage.
When you are a CDO, you have to handle almost everything.