by Bert Royster, STG2 1964-1966

For those who were not crew members on the USS Ernest G. Small (during her WESTPAC deployment during 1964 to 1966), I need to set the scene for this tale. In Olongapo at Subic Bay, Philippines was a bar named "The Bee Hive". When in that port, the men of our ship came to adopt that bar as their home base. We basically just took over the joint. Admission into the Bee Hive was limited to who WE wanted...or who 'Mamma-San' (the woman that owned/ran the place) told us could be in it. Mamma-san was the boss and no one to be fooled with!

During our time in port we stood three section watches, so that any night we would have maybe 200 men ashore on liberty. Of that number, maybe 30-50 (or more) would usually wind up at The Bee Hive during any night. To those reading this, it may sound like a lot of men, but remember when the fleet was in, a single carrier could put almost 2,000 men ashore on liberty.

Mamma-san came to like most of us, but she had a Marine boy friend, so she always was a little wary of her sailor men from the Small. She ran a very 'Tight Ship'! It was just a quiet little bar, with a juke box, a friendly bartender and lots of ice cold beer that made it OUR special place. Furthermore, there was no horse play allowed, at least when Mamma-san was present...which was almost always!

There I was, along with my shipmates, enjoying a cool San Miguel at the Bee Hive. Well, if the truth be known...several cool brews had been consumed by all of us. Manna-san's boyfriend arrived and she announced they were going to see a movie that evening. When she left we all promised to be on our best behavior.

As I recall, it was couple of guys from another ship who wandered into the Bee Hive and demanded 'service'. There were kindly invited to leave OUR bar, and that's what started the whole mess. A few minutes later, two 'Soft Hat' Shore Patrol men entered the front swinging doors to the place. They came in with an attitude, telling us all that WE had NO say in WHO could or could not be in the Bee Hive!

"Ok, fine...", we said. "We hear you and now you can leave too," we added. So they left, and out the front doors they went. Unfortunately, the doors were still swinging, when a couple of empty beer bottles crashed loudly against them.

Back the two came, but now they were really mad. They had a good rant and then threatened to bring the 'Hard Hats'...if we didn't improve our behavior and attitude! We didn't say nothin'! So they proceeded to leave again; only this time, 4-5 more empty beer bottles crash against those swinging doors.

A very short time later, the same two SP's show up with two "Hard Hats". They come in (walking through the broken glass appeared to upset them somehow) demanding to know who threw the beer bottles. It was the strangest thing: nobody had seen anything! The four of them go from table to table and threaten each of us, hoping we'd turn in our ship mates. But that didn't work either. After basically 'reading us the riot act' they left, but again...as the last one cleared those swinging front doors...another 1/2 dozen empties crashed into them!

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