The Graduation

Spring wasn't coming easy to the Navy in Newport. Mid April might be officially spring, but the wind off Narragansett Bay is unkind. We of the fourth class of 1975 at the Officer Candidate School did our best to shield ourselves from it as we marched to class each day. This was a low point for a Navy that had been shrinking since 1973, and now had to endure frequent news coverage of the fact that it was so short of sailors that its ships sometimes couldn't get underway. We were to be the bow wave of the new Navy that would fix that.

Along with our three officer candidate classes were three international classes — Iranians, Saudis, and Cambodians. Each of the international classes were kept segregated, for language, cultural, and training requirement reasons. The Saudis and Iranians all drove sports cars when they were permitted off the base. The Cambodians walked or took the bus if they left at all.

Richard Nixon, the President who had “vietnamized” the war that had divided our country for so long, had resigned the previous summer. Our new president, Gerald Ford, had inherited a Far East that his predecessors had set afire, and that he had no desire to be involved with. Each day we saw the Cambodians march down from their own special floor in King Hall, our massive dorm, eyes straight ahead, and go off to study the naval arts that would be of use back in their besieged land.

Saigon and Phnom Penh fell in the same month. My soon to be wife had a Vietnamese room mate. I heard all about what was happening in that country as her room mate tried to get her family out. The fall of Cambodia, on the other hand, passed almost without notice; we were getting ready for commissioning, our final orders, and travel to our ships. But in spite of the fall of Cambodia, the Cambodian officers continued to train, marching to classes with straight faces, never smiling, just as they had never smiled when they had had a country.

One day our company commander mustered us after lunch. The Cambodians were graduating that afternoon. They had no one to come to their ceremony — their country had fallen to the Communists less than a month ago. They had no family in the US, and we would be their appreciative audience.

At 1400 sharp we were in our seats, turned out in our service dress blue uniforms. The Northeast Navy Band played Anchors Aweigh, and two dozen very short naval Officers of a non existent country marched solemnly in, eyes straight ahead. When they were at their seats we all stood; the band played the national anthem of their former country. Then Captain Howard N. Kaye, Commander of the Training Center, and an inspirational officer, gave a short speech that somehow managed to congratulate the young Cambodian officers for having completed the course without referring to the fact that they had no country to return to. Captain Kaye then presented each officer with his diploma, flawlessly pronouncing each name as if he'd spoken Khmer all his life.

Then the Cambodians marched out, eyes straight ahead, to the sounds of what I assume was a well known Khmer naval tune, and we were all dismissed. When the band stopped, there was silence in the gym. No one said a word. The men without a country had gone off to their new life.